Meet Israel’s grape growers

Posted on September 28, 2008

Ha’aretz Magazine has a profile about several of the farmers who are growing grapes for some of Israel’s best wineries. Check it out.

Pleasure Hunting / In the shade of the vine
By Ronit Vered

A time to uproot

Name: Eliezer Rushansky Place: Moshav Yonatan Vineyard: Yonatan Grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Sangiovese, Pinot Noir, Syrah Wine made from the vineyard”s grapes by Golan Heights Winery: Gamla Sauvignon 2005

Eliezer Rushansky holds the large clusters of Sangiovese grapes, from which Chianti is made, and decides how much of the fruit has to be eradicated before the harvest to help the vines produce perfect grapes for winemaking. Sometimes as much as 70 percent of the Sangiovese crop is dumped on the ground and dries up.

“It hurts,” he admits. “There is nothing more painful for a farmer than to throw out fruit. But the first thing a good winegrower has to understand is the connection between the vine and the final product: the wine. Sometimes you have to forgo the good of the vine, and seemingly also the good of the farmer in the short term, to achieve a certain quality in the final product. The vintner has spoken.”

A melodious Brazilian accent still lurks in his quiet, patient voice. He was born in Recife, known as the “Venice of Brazil” because of the rivers that cross the city. He chose to lead the life of a farmer on Moshav Yonatan, a cooperative village whose small homes and jointly run institutions recall the kibbutz of yesteryear. Yonatan’s vineyard was one of the first to be planted on the Golan Heights, at the beginning of the 1980s. At first the output was sent to the veteran Carmel Mizrahi Winery, in a period when no one separated grapes according to quality or talked about regions that were appropriate for specific varieties. Subsequently, the Golan Heights Winery was founded, the harbinger of the quality revolution that transformed the Israel wine industry.

The Sangiovese, which, according to some researchers, is an ancient species in the Land of Israel that the Romans took with them to Italy and which disappeared from this country during the period of Muslim rule - is only one of the grape varieties, most of them red, for which Eliezer is responsible. His son Yishai, a biotechnology graduate from Tel-Hai Academic College, now works with him. He, too, is planning to spend his life among the vines.

The tribal elder

Name: Sara Samsonov Place: Binyamina Vineyard: Shefia Grape variety: Sauvignon Blanc Wine made from the vineyard’s grapes by Recanati Winery: Sauvignon Blanc 2006

Just two years ago, at the age of 87, Sara Samsonov stopped working the family vineyards herself and entrusted the daily tasks to a neighbor. Since then she has suffered various ills, from a broken leg to a heart attack.

“I thought my heart was made of iron,” she says with astonishment. “I have known so many troubles in my life, including the burial of a son, that I thought nothing could get the better of my heart.” She goes on to apologize for the indecent habit she has developed of late: taking an afternoon nap. “It is not my way to sleep in the afternoon. That is a time for which there are many fine uses - cleaning the pantry, polishing the silver.”

She was born in 1919 to winegrowers Leah and Moshe Shatzman, whose winegrower-parents, Batya and Zvi Shatzman, were founders of the town of Zichron Yaakov. Sara’s grandparents were among the first residents who tried, with the help of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, to restore the wine industry to the Land of Israel. They planted vines and tried to make wine with the aid of an ice machine that the baron sent from France. When that failed, they started to dig vast cellars and to build a winery - a development that was of great concern to the representatives of the Turkish sultan, who thought a fortress was in the making.

The Shatzmans’ granddaughter, Sara, grew up in the vineyards, married a local boy, Yoel Samsonov (now deceased), and brought with her as a dowry shares in the Winegrowers Society, inherited from her father. The Samsonovs planted their first vineyard together 65 years ago, in 1943, and afterward spent their whole lives in grinding, daily labor, working in the vineyards and the adjoining nursery.

Sara Samsonov witnessed almost a century of rapid transformations in the country and experienced first-hand the metamorphosis in the local winegrowing industry: from using dry farming methods to irrigation in the 1940s, and from an emphasis on quantity to quality, in the 1990s. This year, too, her Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which are used by the Recanati Winery, were the first to be picked, and won a place of honor in the small celebration held at the winery to mark the start of the grape harvest.

Sara will hold a celebration of her own in another month, to mark her 89th birthday. She refuses to think about death, but regrettably is the last of the winegrowers in the family: The plots of land are too small, she says, and no one in the next generation wants to succeed her.

Wrought by fire

Name: Avi Yehuda Place: Moshav Neve Ilan Vineyard: Neve Ilan Grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay Wine made from the vineyard’s grapes by Binyamina Winery: Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay 2007, Yogev series

“The morning after the fire everything was chaos,” Avi Yehuda says of the terrible fire in 1995 that devastated the Sha’ar Hagai region halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But from the chaos new life emerged, as happens also with the vine itself, which has astounding powers of survival. A month after the fire, the rains washed over the scorched fields, and Yehuda suggested replacing the groves of deciduous trees and the kiwi fields that succumbed to the smoke with vineyards. Thus the farmers of Moshav Neve Ilan for the first time planted grapes for wine.
The man with the telltale black-felt hat, under which lies a mane of black-silver hair, and with a messiah-style beard, was immediately captivated by the vineyards, which are one of the most important crops in the Mediterranean Basin. Winegrowing is connected with the family history: The Yehuda family originally owned about 600 dunams (150 acres) of raisin grapes in Kurdistan, and also secretly made wine for the Jewish community there.

In time, a small boutique winery was established by them on Neve Ilan (the Yehuda Winery), lacking great commercial ambitions, but imbued with love, will and skill. This week, when the harvest of the Cabernet Sauvignon began, Yehuda was the happiest of men. Not even hours of hard toil under the broiling sun could diminish his joy. Most of the Neve Ilan output goes to Tzora Winery, but other wineries also enjoy the produce, which includes Chardonnay grapes used for one of the wines belonging to Binyamina Wineries’ Yogev series; the series name is a gesture by the winery (yogev means “worker of the land”) to the vine growers responsible for growing the grapes.

James II

Name: Dor James Place: Kibbutz Tzora Vineyard: Shoresh Grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Gewurztraminer Wine made from the vineyard’s grapes by Shoresh Winery: Shoresh Blanc 2007, Or 2006 (a dessert wine in an ice-wine style)

“I hope it’s not lonely,” Dor James said quietly, referring to the sloping plot amid the fissured hills, with surface strewn with glittering riverbed fossils. But this wind-worn plot of Sisyphean toil with its delicate pedigreed grapes, which Shoresh Winery leaves to cope with the vagaries of nature by itself, does not stand alone. It is in fact a great favorite of all the creatures of the nearby nature reserve (known as “The Comb” because from a distance, the hilltop trees resemble the teeth of a comb). And what creatures! Where else in this country can you see, on an ordinary morning, a fawn belonging to a local herd of deer that is fond of the taste of vine leaves, drinking pleasurably from the water of a fountain created by a rupture in an irrigation pipe, caused by jays and other voracious birds.

The jackals, those aesthetes of taste, prefer the grapes themselves. Indeed, of all the varieties, they have a particular appreciation for Syrah, and their feeding frenzies sometimes de-cluster the vines. Between the rows strut pheasants, their bellies bulging with diamond grapes - the very thought of their prohibited flesh depraves the heart of every carnivore - and they stretch high to reach the black clusters.
The late Ronnie James, Dor’s father, the founder of Tzora Winery and considered the father of what is called the terroir doctrine in Israel, believed that the language of grapes has to be learned just like the language of children. He inculcated that language in his son from an early age, but the heir-apparent chose to head north and concentrate on an academic career in the life sciences. In 2004 his father called him and asked him to come back to the vineyards, and Dor, who wanted to be closer to him during his illness at the time, returned home for the final stage of his apprenticeship. He now tends the vines of Tzora; his facial features and inflections of speech immediately evoke his father. He has the same special bond with vineyards and grapes, and the same colorful vocabulary to describe that bond.

All the plots in the Shoresh vineyard, which is divided into dozens of small sections differentiated by the character of the terrain and the grape varieties growing on them, were the offspring of Ronnie, and are also Dor’s offspring. His greatest love, however, is for the wilder patches - those that do not give of themselves easily and whose soil is the most recalcitrant. One such plot is that of the Gewurztraminer grapes, which lies on the highest point of the Shoresh vineyard, on a steep terraced slope where herbs and low bushes sprout. In the winter the grapes here are mantled in snow, and in the waning summer, after the harvest and before the pruning, you can wander among them and nibble on Gewurztraminer raisins as sweet as honey.

Go south, young man

Name: Eran Raz Place: Mitzpeh Ramon Vineyard: Havat Nana Grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Petit Syrah, Chenin Blanc
Two years ago, on the edge of the high cliff of the Ramon Crater, in the broad riverbed of Nahal Zinn, deep in the barren ochre hills, Eran Raz planted a wine vineyard. It lies on a series of stone terraces crafted in ancient times by farmers - the last people to work this wild land, hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago. They might even have been descendants of the Nabateans, who in the Byzantine era established a flourishing wine empire along the stations of the Silk Route, which later became permanent settlements.

Now a van is standing at the edge of the vineyard and its driver is surveying the land, ahead of the construction of a boutique winery, a visitors’ center and B&Bs. Raz’s property is only the first in a series of similar plots that will be part of this new project. If all goes well, from 2010 the riverbed will be colored green by more than 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of vineyards and olive trees, cherry groves and fruit trees, all of them organic. (The fact that the fertile soil here has never been tainted by modern pesticides led the project leaders to demand organic crops.) Between the fields there will be tourist attractions, such as a farmers’ market, olive presses, boutique wineries and even a large commercial winery, which will be the standard-bearer for the Mitzpeh Ramon wine region.

Raz actually studied communications, but his roots, planted deep in the settlement movement, gave him no rest. In 1998 he arrived at the Elah Valley Winery to manage the highly cultivated vineyards of this rich kosher boutique winery, which also supplies grapes to other wineries. Afterward, he was courted by some of the country’s top wineries, in the hope that he would share his wisdom with their staff. But Raz, who loves the desert as much as he loves wine, took his family to Mitzpeh Ramon.
In the Judean Hills vine growers have to cope with deer and jackals; on the Golan Heights, with wild boar that have developed an appetite and a fondness for Gala apples; and in Mitzpeh Ramon, Raz’s bane is termites. Who knew that there were hundreds of varieties of termites in southern Israel. And that there are also camels and their riders, who treat the oasis that has suddenly sprung up on the edge of the crater as a friendly roadside restaurant, and convoys of smugglers transporting their cargo on all-terrain vehicles.

Even after the first vineyard yields its fruit, in another two years, Raz will need many long years to study the soil and decipher the region’s singular secrets. After all, in France they have been cultivating vineyards for centuries, in the Golan Heights for a quarter of a century, and both here and there they are still learning.

Agriculture will win

Name: Marc Sarbier Place: Kibbutz Tzuba Vineyard: Tzova Grape varieties: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Semillon, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc -(and experimental varieties) Wine made from the vineyard’s grapes by Castel Winery: Grand Vin 2005
An emotional cry arises from the rows of winegrowers - students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and recently discharged soldiers - heralding the arrival of the frenetic French imp, who bounds merrily between the apple orchards, vineyards, ancient olive presses and burial caves scattered across the biblical landscapes of the wadis and riverbeds. Marc Sarbier -(from the ancient Jewish name Sharbiya) was born in Tunis. At the age of two he moved with his family to France - to Montpellier and then to Dijon, where he obtained a masters degree in applied mathematics and worked as a teacher in a country that not only honors members of the teaching profession with the title of professor, but also recompenses them economically. Afterward he immigrated to Israel and chose the kibbutz way of life, in one of the few kibbutzim that has managed to preserve - thanks to the financial success of its industries - agricultural work and the principles of kibbutz life in full.

Tzuba is one of the last kibbutzim in which the word “privatization” does not hang like a dark cloud over the dining hall, which still serves three well-attended meals a day. The slogan “Agriculture will win” is widely heard, is emblazoned on the T-shirts of the workers in the fruit groves and is writ large on the hilltops.

Sarbier is a true believer. He started his agricultural career in the kibbutz groves - full of wonderful apples, organic pears, olives used for oil, vineyards - before becoming sole manager of the Tzuba vineyards two years ago. Fifty percent of the kibbutz’s wine grapes, from vineyards planted 13 years ago, are earmarked for the acclaimed wines made by Eli Ben Zaken of Castel Winery. Ben Zaken keeps a close and rigorous eye on Sarbier’s work. After realizing that it was good, the kibbutz opened its own winery, the destination of the rest of the grapes.

Sarbier’s latest dream is to make a documentary film about the children who work in the vineyard and the groves. On Tzuba, as in the old days, the young children have to do a days work in agriculture each week; in some cases they become deeply attached to the soil. Watching them give themselves to the land, Sarbier is overjoyed. A teacher is always a teacher, even when he is immersed in the mundane and distinctly unglorious work of cultivating vines.

Grapes of wrath

Name: Rachel Vekert Place: Moshav Zarit Vineyard: Zarit vineyard in Kadesh Valley Grape variety: Cabernet Sauvignon Wine made from the vineyard’s grapes by Carmel Winery: Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 from Carmel’s Kerem series

From the day Moshav Zarit was founded, its members sought an agricultural way of life in a world that became increasingly complicated for people of the soil. At the end of the 1960s, immediately after the cooperative village was established, Sauvignon Blanc vineyards were planted, along with groves of plums, peaches and cherries. The vineyards and groves abutted the then-peaceful border with Lebanon, marked by a low fence, across which bartering was conducted with the neighbors to the north. In the 1970s, the moshav became embroiled in a particularly bizarre episode of raising minks for fur.

“It was an idea of the Jewish Agency,” Rachel Vekert recalls. “If you look for the roots of the biggest failures, you always get to the Jewish Agency.”

In the 80s, as the sector heated up and war broke out, the army prohibited the moshavniks from entering the vineyards and groves, which suffered from neglect and were eventually uprooted. After a loud outcry, the members received, instead of the land appropriated by the army, plots in the Kadesh Valley, today considered one of the countrys finest wine regions. But who was thinking about wine back then The Zarit folks planted olive and plum trees. But dealing with the distance − more than 50 kilometers to fix a broken irrigation pipe − wore them down, and most gave up their land. But not Vekert, “because you don’t give up land, come what may.”

In 1995, Rachel and her partner, Yossi, planted a vineyard of Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the first in the valley. In recent years, the grapes from this vineyard have been used to produce one of the wines in the Kerem series of the Carmel Winery.

Vekert, who is the moshav’s executive chairperson and is also in charge of the local egg warehouse of the food giant Tnuva, insisted on retaining the name Kerem Zarit (Zarit Vineyard). She is capable of speaking with equal passion about both subjects: grapes and eggs. She is now conducting negotiations for the moshav with some large wineries for the future grapes that will be produced on 350 dunams (nearly 90 acres), which will be planted at the end of the shmita year (when the land is left fallow, under the biblical injunction) - once more close to the border. State authorization has been received, and the army has promised an escort for the farmers in case things heat up again. Maybe in 10 years time, the name Zarit will appear on bottles not as just a gesture of respect, but as the sign of a genuinely promising wine region.

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