Passover is the time of year when Jewish people buy the most wine. So it seems like a good time to check in on how Israeli wineries are faring. You may have read that there's a war going on.
I spoke to several Israeli winery principals in November by Zoom and spoke to some of the same people, along with some new ones, this month. In November, the shock of the Hamas terrorist attack and the all-consuming nature of Israel's invasion of Gaza were fresh. Five months later, it's the new status quo.
Scenes of destruction in Gaza are on television, and there are rockets and gunfire at the border of Lebanon; some villages there have been evacuated by the army.
"Our vineyard is not in the war zone. It's more south," said Pierre Miodownick, winemaker for Netofa Winery in Galilee, who is credited with starting the quality revolution in kosher wine more than 40 years ago.
"We don't have a problem in our vines. But our winery is close to the border. Not every day the roads are open. Some day the army closes the roads for security. We are close to strategic bases of the army. We receive some times a lot of rockets. Even if the roads are open, we are working with planes and bombing and the sound. It's not a good situation. Wine needs peace. Silence. Our barrels need to be not stressed. Unfortunately, that's not the situation.
"We have to make red wines. We have to do racking of wine," Miodownick told Wine-Searcher. "We're trying to do work and suddenly you have to run to the shelter. I have a friend whose cellar was destroyed. All the villages near the border were evacuated. It's a very stressful situation for us. I hope the wine will not be too affected by that."
When I spoke to Yaara Biadgalin from Odem Mountain Winery in November, she was seven months pregnant. Now she has a new daughter, Shachar, which means "dawn" in Hebrew; she chose the name to represent hope.
"In the last couple of months, things have been changed for the vineyards," Biadgalin said. "We can go over there. But we don't know when it will be the time that we can no longer go. It's on a daily basis. You need to see if you can go or not. We started pruning pretty early compared to the years before because we didn't know if they would let us go through. On some of our friends' vineyards, like Galil Mountain Winery, the winemaker didn't get a chance to go to his vineyards. He has a lost year because he cannot go over there."
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