At the dawn of the First Aliyah, the first large wave of Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine in 1882, 100 Romanian Jews settled on top of Mount Carmel and eked out a living in a place they dubbed Zikhron Ya’akov. The pioneers had to constantly worry about malaria from the swamps at the foothills of the Carmel, and there were few other Jews in the area to help them. The land they bought was rocky, remote, and hardly any of these immigrants knew how to farm.
Yet out of all places, this is where the once-thriving winemaking industry of ancient Israel was revived.
Today, vineyards in the Jewish state are flourishing, and Israeli winemakers regularly receive international praise and recognition. As in ancient times, the Mediterranean climate of Israel has again proven to be most conducive to viticulture. And since time immemorial, wine has been intimately connected with Jewish traditions and customs.
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Wine in Pre-state Israel
The first settlers in Zikhron Ya’akov didn’t bring much with them. All they had was their intense devotion to Zionism, their grit… and the financial backing of a wealthy banker with a vision named Edmond de Rothschild. He named the settlement in memory of his father, James (Ya’akov) Mayer de Rothschild.
While Jews had already established two wineries in Ottoman Palestine in 1848 and 1870, they were for religious purposes and were dwarfed in comparison to what Edmond built in Zikhron Ya’akov.
Edmond wanted to develop a world-class wine, and he imported cuttings from Bordeaux, one of the best wine-growing regions in the world, to accomplish this. However, there was no market for his high-quality wine in Ottoman Palestine, and combined with an outbreak of phylloxera that devastated his vineyards early on, he was forced to make lower-quality bulk wines and sweet ritual wines from cheaper grape varieties.
Related Reading: What Was the Land of Israel Like Before 1948?
Although the project wasn’t considered financially viable at the time, De Rothschild persisted. By the 1890s, his wines were being exported to Poland, South Russia, and throughout the Levant.
Edmond eventually withdrew personal supervision of the major decisions of his holdings in Ottoman Palestine in 1900, but the towns and businesses he founded continued to grow. Overall, he spent 40 million francs, or about 18 billion USD today, to buy and develop land and support new villages. His contribution to the founding of the Jewish state is commemorated on the Israeli 500 NIS banknote, which features his profile on the front and a vine of grapes on the back.
While De Rothschild died before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, his influence persisted. Over time, wineries and vineyards started to pop up all over the young country. A significant development in the Israeli wine industry occurred after Jerusalem took control of the Golan Heights following its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Shortly after the conflict, a professor discovered the winemaking potential of the Golan. The area is characterized by high elevations, a cool climate, and basaltic clay soil. This type of soil is considered one of the best for growing grapes, and other wine regions in the Meditteranean — such as Sicily — have a similar soil type.
Related Reading: The Golan Heights: A Brief History
Consequently, in 1983, the Golan Heights Winery was established. Using an innovative combination of cutting-edge technology, great soil and climate, this winery was the first to focus on producing extremely high-quality wine. The Golan Heights Winery would go on to gain international recognition, which inspired other Israeli businesses to develop high-quality wines in other parts of the country. In the 1990s, dozens of boutique wineries were established.
Today, Israel has some 250 commercial and boutique wineries. Older wineries, such as Carmel in Zikhron Ya’akov, responded to the success of these new wineries by striving to improve the quality of their own products. Over 100 years after the first Jewish pioneers first worked the fields in Ottoman Palestine, Edmond de Rothschild’s vision was finally achieved.
The Ancient Roots of Israeli Wine
Although the wine industry in the modern State of Israel has a short history compared to some of the world’s renowned wine-producing countries like Italy and France, the Jewish state’s wineries are actually built on ancient foundations.
Archaeological evidence attests to the fact that a wine culture in the ancient Land of Israel (Canaan) dates back at least 4,000 years, but is likely even older. Several years ago, researchers uncovered a 3,700-year-old wine cellar in the remains of an ancient Canaanite palace in the northern city of Nahariya. The quality of the wines shocked scholars:
“It’s not wine that somebody is just going to come home from a hard day and kick back and drink,” said Andrew Koh of Brandeis University. He found signs of a blend of ingredients that may have included honey, mint, cedar, tree resins, and cinnamon bark.
Another archaeologist noted that the jars all contained the same wine recipe, a testament to the high standards and consistency of the ancient drink. With such complex wine being produced 3,700 years ago, it’s clear that the ancient inhabitants of the Land of Israel were experts in their craft.
Along with this, the oldest wine storage vessels ever discovered actually originated in Canaan, and were known as Canaanite jars.
Archaeologists also found a tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh from 3,150 BC. There, they discovered nearly 700 Canaanite jars that held 4,500 liters of wine. The finding dates back to the period before ancient Egypt had developed its own wine industry, proving that the Egyptian elites nonetheless had a thirst for the beverage.
Related Reading: The Jewish Connection to the Land of Israel
Wine is also mentioned in the Hebrew Bible numerous times. Noah is said to have planted a vineyard after the flood, and the kings of Judah were famous for their vineyards and wine cellars. There’s even a guide in the Book of Isaiah that explains how to take care of a vineyard.
Later on, when Judea was part of the Roman Empire (6-135 CE), wine became an important export product and major economic mainstay of the kingdom. Many ancient wine presses have been discovered from this time, showing the industry’s prominence.
However, during the sixth century, when Judea was under Byzantine control, there was a great famine in the area that devastated the thriving industry. And when the Muslim conquest took over the region, Islamic prohibitions against drinking alcohol led to the end of ancient winemaking as a commercial industry.
While various indigenous grapes continued to be grown, it was on a tiny scale by a few Arab families. To this day, several Arab Christian wineries operate in Israel.
The Next Great Innovation?
Most wine in modern-day Israel is produced from European grape species, although some companies are trying to revive the use of indigenous varieties. While many of these grapes became extinct over time, some remained and continued to grow in the wild, or were raised by small local farmers.
In 2011, students from Ariel University, led by Professor Elyashiv Drori, spent three years locating wild grape families. Out of the 100 they found, only ten were suitable for producing wine.
Further genome testing on these grapes showed that they were distinct from types found in Europe. The European varieties originated in the Caucasus mountains, — mainly Armenia and Georgia — while grapes were domesticated in Israel independently long ago, before foreign empires conquered the area.
In the 16th century, Rabbi Menachem Lonzano, living in Jerusalem, described how there were two local varieties of grapes used to make wine in the area: The Jandali and Hamdani. He wrote that “the grapes of the Jandali are soft to chew and make weak wine and the Hamdani is hard to chew and makes strong wine.”
Professor Drori found two varieties of grapes that matched the description precisely, and local Arab growers referred to them by the same name. Drori said that “the Hamdani is very soft to eat and a [sic] has very low sugar content, so it makes a softer wine. And the Hamdani has a harder skin and a higher sugar level, so its wine is stronger. It fits exactly [what] Menachem from Lozano was saying.”
While the number of wineries using these indigenous grapes pales in comparison to industry giants like Carmel, which produce almost 18 million bottles a year, this could perhaps be the next great innovation in Israeli winemaking.
Israeli Wine in 2021: Over 40 Million Bottles a Year
Wine in the Jewish state has thus reemerged as an important agricultural industry. Israelis might drink only five liters of wine per person every year, a small amount compared with the rest of the Mediterranean, but their wine consumption is steadily increasing. Moreover, the amount consumed by Israeli Jews is likely higher, as Arab Israelis are primarily Muslim, and the Islamic religion forbids drinking alcohol.
Israeli wineries nowadays produce over 40 million bottles a year. The wine-growing regions break down this way: Upper Galilee (20 percent of Israel’s vineyards), Lower Galilee (5 percent), Golan Heights (18 percent), Coastal Plain (15 percent), Judean Foothills (27 percent), Central Mountains (11 percent), and the Negev (4 percent).
The Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widespread grape variety in Israel, accounting for 21 percent of total wine production. This variety originated in France and is also one of the most widely grown varieties in the world.
Roughly 48,700 tons of wine grapes were produced in Israel in 2019, up from 42,700 tons in 2000. About 80,900 dunams, or almost 20,000 acres of land, were dedicated to farming grapes last year, while in 2000, about 70900 dunams of land were used for grape farming. About 20% of all wine produced in Israel gets exported, at a value of 50 million dollars yearly, double the amount from a decade ago. Almost all of these exports go to the United States and Europe.
Along with all this, Israeli wineries receive international awards and recognition. Combined with the growth of the industry, this shows that the local industry is thriving and improving every year.
When the Jews of the First Aliyah arrived in the region over 130 years ago, the winemaking industry was practically dead.
Fast forward to 2021, and the Israeli wine industry is prospering, much like the State of Israel as a whole.
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Featured Image: Heritage Conservation Outside The City Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
