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Wines I enjoyed over Passover 2017
Well, I have been off for too long, that is for sure. First Passover, then travels to Japan and more work. Finally home for a bit, Passover was great as it was enjoyed with family and that is what makes the holidays so great!
I will keep this short and sweet – the wines were mostly good to great, except for one wine that I was really looking forward to tasting – sadly it was clearly not stored well. Other than the single disappointment – the rest of the wines were solid wines.
I also had the opportunity to enjoy some wines with friends at EZ’s house, with BC and CG. It was a lovely evening and we enjoyed 6 wines – the best of which was the 2012 Domain Netofa Latour Red, followed by 2010 Hajdu Grenache, 2011 Netofa Red, the 2004 Chateau Montviel (which is in drink up mode at this point), and the 2011 Hajdu Grenache. Many thanks to EZ and his wife for hosting us so graciously.
The wines are listed below – and I hope you had a great Passover as well:
2012 Herzog Petite Sirah, Clarksburg, Prince Vineyard – Score: A-
I found this wine to be showing better than the Hajdu PS, at least for now. Lovely blueberry jam and crazy black plum, with mounds of fresh vanilla, sweet cedar, with lovely floral notes, and sweet spices. Lovely full body wine with still searing tannin and lovely acid showing rich extraction and crazy spices with boysenberry and blackberry with rich sweet spices and elegance at the same time, along with ribbons of charcoal, and mineral. The finish is long and jammy, with rich leather, and mounds of mineral and black tea, with sweet tobacco, and sweet fruit lingering long. Drink by 2020.
2012 Hajdu Petite Sirah, Brobdingnagian – Score: A-
This wine was really a wine I was looking forward to tasting again, and it is either in a real funk, or it has taken a step back from its earlier stature. The wine opened quickly, it was not as closed as in the past, showing ripe blackberry, blueberry, and lovely dirt, and earth, with root beer galore and spice. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich, but lacking the impressive extraction of old, with rich layers of blue and dark fruit, sweet oak, and tannin that does not let up. The finish is long with layers of dark fruit, leather, spice, Swiss mocha, boysenberry, and nice tart, and sweet fruit. This wine is on target, but lacking the complexity of old. Drink by 2021.
2007 Yarden Blanc de Blanc – Score: A- to A
Same as last time, deep, mineral, and attack that is almost hedonistic.
NV Gamla/Gilgal Hashmura Brut – Score: A- (crazy QPR)
This is the new vintage (which is now out of stock in most places). The way to know it is the most recent vintage is to check if the wine says extra dry – otherwise, it is a previous vintage and not as fun, the wine is mostly 2011 grapes. The nose on this bubbly is sick with lovely quince, apple cider, with straw and tart citrus. The mouth is full and an attack force of small mousse bubbles, followed by yeast and rich undertones, followed by layers of pear and madly refreshing with crazy acid and pith, and more bubbles that do not give up. The finish is long with dried fruit, nice dry mouthfeel, that flows into nice dried herb, and rich white tea. BRAVO!!!!
Tzora Vineyards Winery and the latest releases
Well, I have finished all the KFWE posts, and my past personal wine tastings posts, and now it is time to get back to posting about wineries I visited on my last trip. To remind you, I came to Israel for Sommelier 2017, then flew to Paris and back the next morning for the Bokobsa tasting. Upon my return to Israel, I drove north for a day, before coming back to the Jerusalem area, and then flying home. I have already posted all the wineries I visited in Israel’s North. I also visited wineries in the Jerusalem area, including one of my absolute favorite kosher wineries in the world – Tzora Vineyards Winery. Why? Because Tzora (and Domaine Netofa Winery as well) are wineries that prove you can make GREAT old-world style wines in the new world of Israel! All that you really need to make great balanced and beautifully made wines is to care, and Tzora winery cares!
If there is a winery that gets terroir in Israel it would be Tzora. I wrote about the late founder, Ronnie James, who sadly passed away in 2008. He saw the power of terroir in Israel. He understood what vines to plant where and why! It was his passion and belief that great wines could be made in Israel, that continues to fuel Eran Pick MW (Master Of Wine), the head winemaker and General Manager of Tzora Vineyards and the rest of the winery, forward. I have had the honor to meet with Mr. Pick many times at the winery now, and each time it is always a joy to see how the winery continues to grow leaps and bounds above the rest of Israel’s date juice producing masses. For the few that can understand the quality and beauty of Tzora’s wines, there is a treasure to be reaped for sure! Here is a winery that cares, and does not sell out to the million bottle siren and the date juice wines that it demands.
It had not been long since I was last at Tzora Winery, but there were new wines to taste, the new Misty Hills and the new red Shoresh, as well. Mr. Pick was very kind to do the tasting with us, and he even had the winery put out these incredibly fragile and lovely wine glasses, from Zalto – just to make sure we were on our toes and very careful! The glasses were the first surprise, but the second one was the insane wine we tasted at the end of the tasting. It was a wine that is yet to be bottled but one that has already been pulled from the barrel, the 2015 Misty Hills. I swear that if I was tasting blind, I could have guessed it was a 2012 Saint Emilion. It was bone dry, old-world in the absolute real sense, and did not taste ripe or Israeli in any manner. We also got a blind taste test and sadly this time, I did not get it. The blind tasted wine was a glass of pure Petit Verdot, it was very ripe and somewhat unidimensional, but its color, depth, and tannin were really impressive. Eran allowed us to taste components of the Judean Hills Blanc 2016 and some of the 2016 Shoresh blanc as well, they both showed beautifully, but till those wines are complete and put in a bottle, I will hold my notes.
The best news (for me anyway) is that Skurnik Wines, who has been importing Tzora wines for many years now, has all of these wines in NYC! However, the even better news is that they will also be on the west coast very soon! Yes, can you believe it, someone finally listened to me, and Skurnik will have a West coast distribution setup, and ready to go by May 2017! Finally!
The wines are available from Gary at Taste Co – email him at: info@tastewineco.com or call at (212) 461-1708. Some of them are also available at kosherwine.com and skyviewwine.com.
Adir Winery – Latest releases
I have been visiting Adir Winery for years now, and it finally dawned on me that I have not yet made a proper post on the winery. I did post about the winery in passing two times, here and here, but it was high time to take a little more time to talk about this winery and to post wines notes for the current releases.
This was my third winery that I visited on my trip to the north, on my last visit to Israel. I had already been Kishor in the early morning, followed by Matar by Pelter after that, and then on to Adir Winery after Matar.
Adir winery started long before it was a winery, long before they thought of a winery. It started with the Rosenberg and Ashkenazi families. The Rosenberg family came to Israel in the late 1940s, leaving war-torn Poland for a new life. The Ashkenazi family immigrated to Israel in the early 1950s from Turkey. Eventually, they both found themselves in the Upper Galilee, near Moshav Ben Zimra. The Rosenbergs started planting vines in the 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, essentially planting much of the vines on the now famous Kerem Ben Zimra slopes and plateaus. In the meantime, the Ashkenazi family raised the largest flock of goats in the north, producing milk and cheese.
In 2003, the families got together and built what to many did not seem obvious from the start, a dairy and a winery in one. The dairy serves lovely cheeses and ice cream to the masses that come to the winery, while the wine is served on the other side of the building.
The winery has three main lines of wines. The first is their Kerem Ben Zimra wines, which has Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Then there is the A wines, which are blends, and have a white and red. Finally, there is the Plato and now a 10th Anniversary wine.
As I was visiting this time, Adir is in the midst of its biggest ever expansion, moving from two large building to 3 even larger buildings. The current wine cellar will move to another building, while the current tasting room will expand into another building as well. It will all be state of the art, and from what I could see very cool, with audio and visual sensory technology, along with lots of space to serve more cheese and wine than before. Read the rest of this entry
Kishor Vineyards Winery – the latest 2015 and 2016 wines
I wrote about Kishor Winery a couple of times, when I saw them at Sommelier the last few years. I also wrote a more in-depth article about the winery here, last year. Well, since they did not come to this year’s Sommelier, it meant I had to go and see the winery again this year.
Last year I loved the 2014 Kishor Savant Red, but when we tasted this again late last year, it had turned hard. I asked to taste it again at the winery, and it had indeed become another wine, not the crazy old-world wine I adored last year.
Well this year, there are new releases, and many are quite nice, even if they were 2015 wines. As I have stated before, in my post on the Sommelier event, 2015 whites were and are a disaster. There were a few here and there, but the vast majority were horrible.
That said, I am finding that the 2015 reds are actually drinkable, at least some anyway. Sadly, the curse of Rose in Israel has continues into 2016, the crop of roses so far are B+ wines at best. However, the clear white grape of 2016 is Viognier – it is doing very well in all the wine regions of Israel.
I arrived early, really early, like 9AM early, and my many thanks to the team for meeting me at this early hour. As I stated on my Bokobsa post, I had just landed at 5AM, dropped my bags at my host, then I essentially drove directly to Kishor! So, it was early when I arrived, and it was great to taste some nice coffee and get down to tasting wine!
Yair Una, the winery’s marketing agent was there when I arrived, and he was VERY kind to call the winemaker, Richard Davies, to come from the fields to taste the wines with me. Richard Davies is one of those Vignobles of Israel. He makes the wines and he prunes the vineyards himself! He is one of those Renaissance guys you read about in the wine books!
The winery has three labels. The Kerem Kishor wines (rose, white and red) are the first label. Next is the Kishor Winery label, which seems to only have Viognier, and finally the Savant label, which has the red blend. Read the rest of this entry
Domaine Netofa Winery – tasting the first batch of the new 2016 wines
As I stated in my previous blog post, I was in Israel for a few days (and Paris for a few hours) and I made the most of all the days there, wine wise anyway. One of the places I had to go to again, was Netofa Winery. Yes, I was there at the end of last year, to taste the new 2014 Domaine Latour Netofa red, and it was a true joy to enjoy, and it made it to my top 25 wines of the year.
So, I made sure to come by again in 2017, to taste the new wines that will be released soon. The 2016 Domaine Netofa Rose, and the 2016 Domaine Netofa White were ready, but sadly the 2016 Domaine Netofa Red was not yet ready to taste. Thankfully, he also brought an early sample of the 2016 Latour Netofa Roussanne.
Yes, there are two new horses in the Netofa stable, Roussanne and Grenache!! The Grenache shows itself nicely in the new 2016 Rose, and I hope will allow the rose to stay alive longer than previous vintages. The Roussanne is a new wine, aged in oak, like the other Latour Netofa wines, and is made in the classic old-world Hermitage style. It was a very early sample, and I am sure it will change more with time. This sample needed two to three hours of air till it came around, so this one will be a doozy for sure, when it is finally released in July 2017, or so.
When I was in Paris at the Bokobsa tasting, they had the two new 2016 wines, the rose and the Netofa white, but I said no, I am tasting them with the chef himself (Mr. Pierre Miodownick) the next day, so I kindly bowed out and moved on to more French wines!
So indeed that is what I did, I tasted through all the 2014 French wines and then ran out the door to catch my plane back to the Holy land to spend time with the chef himself! I actually arrived on time again! Two times in a row, maybe I will make a habit of it going forward!
We enjoyed the new white, rose, and the epic Roussanne. I must be honest, at the start, the Roussanne was a bit too oaky. However, I have learned from being around wines in their incubation state, oak has a very interesting effect on wine. When you drop the wine in the barrel to start, it seems to soak up the oak like a drunk sailor (maybe a sponge would have been a better analogy). However, after some time, the oak stops being noticed as much as what the oak is doing for the wine. I am not a winemaker so I cannot talk to what the difference is, but I can feel that this wine was not in the soaking stage as much, and more in the maturation stage, but what do I know. After, an hour or more, the oak receded to the background and the wine’s rich and unique flavors really started to pop out. Gone was the oak and in was the rich straw, flowers, nuttiness, all melding with the oak’s inspired brioche and cobbler. Really unique. There will be no score on this wine, as it is not a final product, but it is unique to say the least, and please look for this when it is released in 6 months. Read the rest of this entry
Domaine Netofa Winery – when once is not enough
In late November, 2016, I asked Pierre Miodownick if I could come by the winery to taste his new 2014 Latour Netofa red, and he was very kind to let me come by again. I normally visit Netofa Winery once a year in February, and I taste the new wines of that vintage. This time, there was no 2015 vintage, yet I came anyway to taste the new 2014 Latour White, and re-taste some older wines, in early 2016.
When I arrived – Mr. Miodownick was there and we tasted through many of his wines again. I must say, that netofa reds and whites age so well, like classic French wines. I have posted often about Netofa Winery in the past four years, and I think it is one of the top 5 wineries in Israel, when you look at its quality, price, and the fact that they rarely to ever have duds. Add in the fact, that they make great old world wines in a New world climate, for both the reds and whites, and you quickly understand why they are in my top 5 of Israeli kosher wineries.
This time we once again tasted some lovely older wines, side-by-side some newer ones and once again I was blown away from how old-world the wines tasted. Mr. Miodownick really has it down pat by now, and as the vines grow older and get more in tune with their environment, the wines will only get better and better.
In case you missed it, I made the 2014 Domaine Latour Netofa red one of my top 25 wines of the year.
My many thanks to Mr. Miodownick and the winery for letting me come by and enjoy the wines with him! My wine notes follow below:
2011 Domaine Netofa Latour White – Score: A-
WOW what a nose! This wine is also 100% Chenin Blanc, but was aged in French oak for 7 months. The nose on this lovely wine is stunning, with rich smoke, flint, green notes, with intense straw, and hay, really lovely floral notes of cassia, and ripe apple but dried fruit as well, lovely. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and viscous, with ripe but dried tart fruit of green apple and quince, with beautiful brioche and straw, along with beautiful mineral, Asian pear, with saline and herb, WOW. The finish is long and buttery with great viscosity, but perfectly balanced with lively acidity, butterscotch, caramel, and lemon, lovely. BRAVO!!
2014 Domaine Netofa Latour White (QPR) – Score: A- to A
So the previous vintages of this wine were medium bodied but this one was full and layered and viscous – impressive! As I said before, these wines are improving and changing as the vines have more age under their belts! WOW what a nose! This wine is also 100% Chenin Blanc, and was aged in French oak for 7 months.
The nose on this wine is equally redolent with notes that are far more Sauvignon Blanc in style than the lees driven funk that I have come to find in this lovely wine, however, it does show the lovely straw, dry grass, mad honey, peach, honeysuckle, and more mineral. While this mouth is full-bodied as the 2013 vintage, it has even more acid, more focus, with dried quince, quince, all balanced well with grapefruit focused citrus, an overall impressive mouthfeel, viscous, tart, bright, with balance of oak influenced notes. The finish is long with saline, hints of bricohe that will show later in the aging process, and honeysuckle! BRAVO! Read the rest of this entry
My top kosher 25 wines of 2016
Well, I have posted my year in review, and now I wanted to get to my top wines for 2016. Please beware that I know I missed many wines and that this list does not include wines that I have tasted that are not available on the open market.
I wanted to make this post short and sweet – so the criteria are simple I could care less about price, color, or where it was made. All that matters is that it is/was available this year sometime to the public at large and that I tasted it in a reliable environment, not just at a tasting, and that it was scored an A- to A or higher. Also, there are a few lower scoring wines here because of their uniqueness or really good QPR. I also included some of the ebst wines I tasted this year – they are at the bottom.
On an aside, there continues to be a whole mess of madness around wines notes and scores, even the Jewish Week weighed in on the matter. So, let me explain this really simply – go look at some of my recent blog posts – they talk about some nice enough wines, but wines I would not specifically buy. They have all the nice words and such, which were all true and to the point. But without the final value score, I can tell you a Cabernet is full bodied with good fruit and spice – and you may say cool I want that – but then I would say well, yeah but it was not complex or layered. You could try to reason that out of the words I wrote, because the words complex and layered are missing. However, the simple fact that it was scored a B+ or whatever, would have told you that it is not always a wine worth going after (unless it is the Terrenal or such where it gets a QPR moniker).
My point being that wine notes – without a proper context (AKA a real score) – is like looking at a wedding hall through a slit in the window. Sure you can “see” the hall, but are you really sure you want to get married there? I never scored wines to tell people to listen to my score. I score wines to set the context and to always read the notes to see if that sort of wine works for you!
I posted this about my scores – and what they mean, so I hope these are useful to you. OK, enough of the darn score rant for the day, back to the matters at hand, being wines of the year. The list is long – get over it. It is a list of wines that I would buy, have bought, and will buy again – simple enough I hope. I hope you enjoy!
2014 Elvi Wines EL 26 – Score: A- to A
This wine is a blend of 45% Carignan, 35% Grenache, and 20% Syrah. This wine is showing far more accessible than previous vintages. The 2014 vintage in Spain makes fro wines that are easily approachable now and yet has the power to last a long time. The nose on this wine is fruit forward with dark candied raspberry, blackberry, and spiced boysenberry, with root beer and earth, showing spice, anise, and cranberry. The mouth is beautiful and controlled, with great mouth coating tannin, sheer elegance, with great sweet and focused fruit, lovely extraction, showing ripe and tart strawberry, raspberry, and boysenberry all mixed together into a compote, with black fruit and earth. The finish is ridiculous, some of the best of the evening, with sweet fruit and ripe structure, yet balanced and focused, with coffee, leather, and sweet spices, nutmeg, and mineral galore, with scraping graphite, BRAVO!!
2014 Capcanes Peraj Habib – Score A- to A
This wine is a blend of 45% Grenache, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 20% Carignan. This wine is showing far more accessible than previous vintages. The 2014 vintage in Spain makes fro wines that are easily approachable now and yet has the power to last a long time. The nose on this wine shows nicely, with chocolate and oak, along with crazy red fruit, roasted animal, toast, graphite, and lovely smoke, with floral notes galore. What a lovely wine, full bodied with great extraction, ripping acid and great crazy tannin that gives way to blueberry, blackberry, lovely cherry, and insane fruit focus that is backed by intense graphite, and mineral, scraping mineral, with mouth drying tannin all coming together into a far more accessible wine than any year before. The wine is really young but accessible, with insane fruit and mineral all coming together. The finish is long and epic, with leather, and rich extraction lingering with coffee and sweet spices coming together beautifully. Bravo!
2013 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Solomon lot 70 – Score: A- to A
Really lovely but pushed nose, with ripe black fruit, tar galore, with garrigue, earth, and rich blackberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and extracted, showing an impressive attack with rich focus of blueberry, intense gripping tannin, spicy oak, sweet dill galore, with massive almost tactile mouth showing black fruit focus, with impressive inky structure that gives way to black and blue fruit. The finish is long and spicy, with green notes, foliage, good dirt, all wrapped with dark chocolate, leather, tobacco heaven, more green notes, and rich Asian spices.
2014 Elvi Clos Mesorah – Score: A- to A
This wines a blend of 50% Grenache, 35% Carignan from vines that are 105 years old, and 15% Syrah. Wow what a California Syrah nose, with intense root beer, watermelon, crazy how this smells like Shirah Syrah, with blueberry, and boysenberry, and spiced plum punch. The mouth on this full bodied wine wow, the mouth is full bodied, extracted, and crazy rich, with layers of extraction and concentrated fruit, showing searing tannin, ripping acid, that gives way to black and blue fruit, blackberry, plum, with crazy chocolate and coffee coming together to show mouth drying tannin, with earth, spice, cloves, black pepper, and spicy, with heady spice and blue fruit. The finish is long and spicy, with sweet spice and fruit that gives way to chocolate, roasted meat, and graphite. Really impressive wine bravo!
2010 ELvi Wines Rioja Reserva – Score: A- to A
Wow what a glass of umami, pure hedonism, bravo! The nose on this wine is pure joy, with root beer, blueberry, roasted meat, black pepper, mushroom, dirt, smoke, and toast. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is far more accessible than the 09, with sweet fruit, earth, dirt, sweet blue fruit, crazy candied and juicy blue fruit, that gives way to cherry, candied and spiced raspberry, with mouth coating and drying tannin, rich juicy and concentrated fruit, with insane focus and attack. The finish is long and juicy, with sweet fruit, nutmeg, sweet baking spices, milk chocolate, smoke, and crazy spices, anise and licorice. Bravo!
Assorted wines I enjoyed over the past few weeks
Well, I hope I get into the flow of weekly posts, or even more often. For now, I am behind on wine posts from Yom Tov and other get-togethers. So, here is a list of wines I have recently tasted. Some I enjoyed and well, some not. There are a few shmita wines here, so be careful, as always I highlight them as shmita of course.
2007 Elvi Utiel-Requena Makor – Score: A- (Crazy QPR)
This wine is a blend of 85% Bobal and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon. The nose on this wine is rich with lovely umami, soy sauce, ripe plum, rich earth, loam, mushroom, raspberry, and black cherry. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and impressively structured for such an old wine, showing really nice acidity, still integrated tannin, with an inky mouthfeel of velvet and texture with crazy mushroom, earth, barnyard, dark concentrated fruit, blackberry, ripe fruit, perfectly balanced with ripe currant, dark red forest berry, and green notes. The finish is long and tart with more dirt, and barnyard, showing still gripping tannin, and nice ripe and rich fruit. The oak does not show strongly in the mouth but it’s influence is felt nicely. BRAVO!!
2014 Louis Blanc Crozes Hermitage – Score: A- (Good QPR)
This is a lovely black fruit Syrah, with hints of blue fruit in the background. The nose on this wine is lovely, with roasted meat, rich licorice, with blueberry notes in the background, along with earth, loam, mineral, and spice galore! The mouth on this medium bodied wine is balanced and well-focused, with a mineral core, followed by sweet boysenberry that comes alive with time, followed by blackberry, spiced plum, and rich loam, that is wrapped in spicy oak, rich mouth coating tannin, and fig. The finish is long and spicy, with leather, chocolate, lovely charcoal, and bitter almond notes that give the wine its edge. The sweet fruit shows quickly and really is a nice wine, I hope it turns more French with time. It is ready now and will be at peak in two years. Drink till 2021.
2015 Psagot 7 Shmita Red – Score: B to B+ (shmita wine)
This is a blend of all the varietals that Psagot bought/used for the Shmita year of 2015. The white shmita blend was really nice, while this was good enough. It is very green.
The nose on this wine is cranberry, cherry, and asparagus salad. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice, but nothing spectacular, other than the very impressive mouth coating tannin. Other than that, it feels like a second label French wine, with lots of press juice, very harsh and not balanced, with black and red fruit. The finish is long and green, with good acid, and mounds of herb and foliage.
2015 Psagot 7 Shmita White – B+ to A-
This is one of the nicer Shmita white wines, it is a blend of all the white varietals that Psagot has under control. The nose is redolent with Mango, lychee, floral notes, honeysuckle, and lovely bright citrus notes. The mouth is medium bodied with good acid, nice balance, all wrapped in straw, cut grass, mint, green notes, with lovely grapefruit, peach, and pineapple. The finish is long with nice acid, mineral, and spice. Nice!! Read the rest of this entry
Last days of Passover – wines and all
Well I am back from Israel again, this trip was all about Passover and not wine trips. It was beautiful in Jerusalem for Passover, other than two scorching hot days. Other than them, the days were temperate, and really quite enjoyable.
The access to wine in Israel, is abundant, and when u are shooting for whites, roses, and bubbly, you really cannot go wrong. The reds were limited to the very safe options, Tzora, Netofa, and Matar.
Food wise, my in-laws did most of the cooking, but for me, it was cheese and matzah for almost every meal, along with lunches on Yom Tov. Dinners were meatballs, brisket, and fish (not in that order).
Overall, the wines were fantastic in the second round of options – better than the first round which included a dud. Sadly, the wines I enjoyed are not available here in the SUA yet – and may not even get here. Many of them are Royal’s and they are not embracing the white/rose wine revolution that is taking over Israel as much as I would have hoped. Which means I will need to hand import a few more of these beauties.
A special thanks to SB and DF for hosting us for a dinner. We brought over the two rose and we enjoyed them along with some great food and two lovely wines, which I sadly have no notes for. One was the 2011 Tzora Misty Hills – a great wine for sure. The other was the 2010 Recanati Cabernet Franc Reserve. The wine is still kicking nicely and has another year or two left in the tank.
We did not get to the 2014 Matar Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon wine – I had it at the winery and will post it here – but I did not taste it over Passover.
So, without further ado – here are the wine notes:
Domaine Netofa Winery – a world-class shmita observant winery
If you have never heard of Shmita – I doubt you live in Israel. Last year, like many past Shmita years, was very complex for haredi Jews in Israel, as they were not allowed to consume fruits from Israel. Every 7 years, the land needs to lie fallow, and in doing so farmers are without income for the year. The Torah describes that when the Jews are following the laws and abiding by his commands, God will give double or more in the 6th year for the 7th year and the 8th – till food is once again harvested.
Nowadays, that promise is not working, so what happens to the farmers that still want to leave their land fallow? Well, the Israeli government supported some, while other organizations from around the world collected funds to support these courageous farmers. Once such organization; Keren Hashviis, collected some 22+ million dollars. According to this article from vosizneias, Keren Hashviis said that in total 33,000 hectares of land, or 81,500 acres, were left fallow this shmita year, and some 3,500 farmers ceased their work. However, according to the ministries of Agriculture and Religious Services, approximately 200 farms totally ceased agricultural work during the shmita year, or made use of another alternative, while 4,656 farms signed up to the heter mechira system. The article goes on to explain the discrepancy – but what is very clear to me is that this past year was one of the more concerted efforts by Israel and its religious Haredi Jews to move Israel towards truly leaving its lands fallow.
In terms of kosher wineries, there were not many that followed the Shmita concept to its fullest. Interestingly, Vitkin Winery chose 2015 to turn kosher – now that is not an easy plan to work out, though to Vitkin, like many wineries in Israel nothing changed for them by going kosher, and whomever was buying their wines before would not know or care that they were now kosher! Read the rest of this entry
