By: Nathan Lifshitz

Published in Wine & Gourmet Magazine

They are sitting in the shaded area and listening. The audience has come a long way from kibbutzim in the north, to visit the Agur Winery, taste the wines, and witness what Shuki Yashuv refers to as his “Dance of the Winemaker.” The “dance,” is in fact a learned lecture punctuated with Shuki's witty anecdotes. Shuki enjoys his act and hopes the guests will enjoy it too – enough to buy a bottle or two of wine.

Open Fermentation

The “dance” is performed on a number of improvised stages. Following the introduction Shuki gives in the shaded seating area, the visitors move into the winery – a relatively small room, in the rear of which stand the barrels, while the wine ferments in open containers. Shuki’s “Dance of the Winemaker” moves on to describe the historical aspects of his winery. This winery, as Shuki explains, was built to resemble earlier traditional wineries. He describes the drinking rituals of ancient civilizations and refers to archeological findings that were discovered in the area. This area, he explains, is one with a longstanding winemaking heritage, and scattered throughout the surrounding hills are

 ancient wineries.

Shuki’s dance now turns to the professional aspects of winemaking. “Open fermentation requires constant supervision and frequent stirring,” he explains. “Getting a full night’s sleep is out of the question.” This form of fermentation does not allow for a large margin of error, especially towards the end of the fermentation process. The layer of carbon dioxide emitted from the fermenting grape juice, prevents it from oxygenating. Once the fermentation is over, the protection no longer exists and the wine has to be tended to swiftly before it goes bad. Shuki is already well-experienced in this method of fermentation, since for the past two years he has been using it to ferment some of his wine. The rest of his wine is fermented in sealed stainless steel containers in separate rooms. Eventually they will all be combined to create the different wines of Shuki's winery.

The final stage of Shuki’s dance is a victory dance, performed at the winery’s little shop. Marketing poses the greatest challenge for all small wineries. The winemakers' dances are not enough to realize the commercial aspect of winemaking. For this reason the “Truar” company was established, and Shuki uses its services for his winemaking business. However, his sights are set on marketing overseas, and he is speaking specifically of the U.S.

A question of belonging

Talk of U.S marketing began as a result of a trip to Washington made by a delegation of winemakers from the Judea region. The delegation was organized as part of The Jewish Agency's Partnership 2000 project in the wake of an association formed with the local Jewish community in Washington. Barry Forman, a retired employee of a major wine distribution company, organized a week-long seminar on exportation of Israeli wines to the U.S., and the Israeli winemakers decided to take the opportunity to examine the different options it offered them. “There were those who scorned the delegation,” says Shuki. “It seemed pretentious, perhaps even naïve. But during our visit we discovered that in many cases, the key to successfully marketing Israeli wine in the U.S. was not its  being kosher, but its quality, the uniqueness of the wine, not the rabbi’s signature on it.” The delegation returned with the optimistic conclusion that with a collective effort even small, non-kosher wineries could find a market for their wines in Washington. “With all due respect to the Jewish community, our salvation is not going to come from them buying our wine for Sabbath Kiddush, it will be because of the wine’s Middle-Eastern origin. Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern cuisine is rapidly expanding into America’s gastronomic scene: Americans have come to realize that its food is not only healthy but also delicious. Restaurants specializing in Middle-Eastern cuisine have become remarkably popular in America, providing a decent market for high-quality Israeli wine.

“I make wine to satisfy my own needs. To my surprise I found I can satisfy not only my needs, but also those of many people, both local and foreign. Perhaps the wine is just an excuse for a much more basic need to feel a sense of belonging.” Shuki refrains from using the term "Zionism" as a part of this feeling of belonging. He prefers to describe it as a natural connection to his land, a patriotic sentiment common in most normal countries. “Everyone feels proud of their product and takes pleasure in it, and so do we. It’s all part of our country’s normalization process. Local winemakers like me discover it through their wine, and to my surprise others do too.”

The "sense of belonging" aspect of winemaking works not only in the American market, but on the local scene as well. Many families of Kurdish origin living in Agur make their own wine – an Agur tradition that has its counterpart in many winemaking areas around the world. Small-scale, family-owned wineries nurture and reinforce a pride in family and tribal traditions. When Shuki first arrived in Agur in 1999, locals arrived at his winery with their homemade wines, and the “Agur Winery” assumed a new role on the local scene: Shuki’s winery became the local center of knowledge and experience in winemaking, to the benefit of the entire community.

A redhead in spirit

Shuki Yashuv is an extraordinary individual. A quintessential redhead, he certainly doesn not consider himself a romantic person. Looking around at the property and the winery, and Shuki’s doleful eyes, I raise a skeptical eyebrow. But Shuki explains that a romantic person is driven by the wish to make dreams come true, and he is not. “The reason for making wine came to me in retrospect, while explaining to my thirteen year-old daughter why she was brought to live in this rather remote moshav.”

“The need, as I explained to her, was in fact created when I was her age, at the time of my Bar Mitzva which I celebrated overseas. My family was constantly traveling – my father was a representative of The Jewish Agency, and spent his life bringing immigrants to Israel from all over the world. And so I spent my childhood living for periods of time in Israel and then overseas. In those days traveling abroad was not at all common, and to many of my peers I became the object of envy – the lucky guy who spoke five languages, experienced the wonders of the big world, ate exotic foods and drank the finest wines from the age of ten. I was the little guy of the big world.” 

“But there was a great gap between people’s perception of my life and the fact that I was extremely jealous of every oleh (new immigrant), because olim got to settle down in Israel while I stayed abroad. I missed the smells, the colors, and the flavors of Israel – I was homesick. I have an excellent memory for smells and flavors – a primitive sense that today helps me as a wine maker, but back then only intensified my homesickness. I felt I had to find a way to settle the conflict between feeling physically drawn to Israel and my lifestyle of traveling all around the world.” At the age of seventeen Shuki returned to Israel. He left everything behind, and joined the Israeli army. “And so I fought here and stayed here. Over the years I studied Humanities at university and became a carpenter, but still I felt something was missing.” The need for something steady and rooted did not cease as Shuki grew older. His childhood yearning lived on, never letting him be at peace. “I found myself making wine at a relatively advanced age – my mid-forties – in an attempt to find a way to calm the yearning that hadn’t left me since my childhood.”

Today Shuki understands that the ‘something’ he had longed for had in fact been a sense of belonging. This was a personal feeling of his, similar perhaps to the feeling he perceived among the Jews in Washington, which he himself only attained with the planting of his vineyard and creation of his own wine. “Here, on my land, I feel myself beginning to relax, and perhaps one day I will find myself at peace here. I am beginning to understand my true calling. I get up in the morning and go out to the vineyard to see whether there’s anything left to do in preparation for the upcoming winter. Or else I go to look at the wine, that’s my bond to the land. It will be very hard to dislodge me from this place, and impossible for me to leave. I feel bound and anchored to the place. Here finally I feel I belong. Unfortunately, as you can maybe see, it still demands a great effort on my part. Hopefully it will come more naturally to whoever comes after me

A boundless adventurer

Shuki Yashuv’s complex character slowly emerges. An actor, intellectual, craftsman, uncompromising professional, an adventurer who knows no bounds, and an army combatant. As a carpenter and as a winemaker, he believes in performing his craft professionally. In Shuki’s opinion, winemaking is not necessarily an art, and like carpentry, it has strict rules. Winemaking also involves a respect for the raw material and a striving for beauty, harmony and balance. Sometimes, the simpler wines take much more work. To Shuki, the satisfaction of improving a wine of initially mediocre quality is the great delight of the adventure. 

“In the 'dance of the winemaker,’ I put the audience at ease – lest they should feel any apprehension regarding the drink they hold in their glasses – by telling them it is simply grape juice that has been fermented for two years. And so, without underplaying the value of great wines, I truly believe that there exists such a thing as a wine for every soul. When it comes down to it, the wine is the product, and comes from the earth – someone planted the grapes, took care of them, waited for years and then harvested them, fermented them, mixed them and created this wine. You hear my story, which in itself is perhaps a lot of nonsense, but it’s actually enchanting, and it’s a reality. The “dance of the winemaker” is a genuine dance which is very much part of this world, it’s pure fun – that’s all.”

Shuki fascinates his audience with his vast world of metaphors, the unassuming intellect which is bound up in emotions. The red demon within him is alive and kicking, enticing the spectators and embracing them. Shuki draws people to him like a magnet, and he can only hope for the right frame of mind and the free time. For Shuki, the “dance of the winemaker” is an inseparable part of winemaking. “It’s just a pity,” he says, “that I’m not always in the right mood to dance it. I thought I was just making wine, and all of a sudden I have to dance and reveal myself and meet people I never thought I’d meet. It’s some adventure!”

Shuki has had some extraordinary experiences, and even his favorite books are adventure books. The winemaking is undoubtedly a manifestation of the adventurer in Shuki. “Winemaking does not involve actual travel, but it is most certainly a journey into the unknown. It is an almost impossible combination of passion and patience, sometimes even concurrently.”

“Today I understand how, through my winemaking, I can express many things. I found that I have in me the ability not only to taste wine and say smart things, but also to stand over a pile of grapes and come across a pressing and difficult problem, the kind that could make your eyes bulge with panic, and wham! I fix it. It’s a journey! It’s an adventure! There’s a storm at sea, no time to explain, I must get up and battle the waves. I can lead the battle, and whoever can follow me in this insanity, stays with me. Whoever can’t – farewell.”

Shuki’s outlook on life is comprehensive and intellectual. Within him there’s an ongoing battle of theses, antitheses and syntheses. Winemaking for Shuki is a need. It’s a way of life that pulls him in one direction. “The intellect in itself cannot even begin to give me the same emotional experience that winemaking does. There’s no greater joy than having a tangible product; than looking at something you have produced, tasting something you have created.”

A magical reality

“Whenever I’m told that I look like a true moshavnik, I laugh to myself and I think how I have people fooled. I’m an actor, and I thoroughly believe in operating as a genuine actor, a task which requires an intellectual effort and hard work. It’s important for me to create a genuine wine. There is a fine line between kitsch and a genuine creation and I do not want to cross it. Affection but not affectation, enthusiasm but not kitsch, to be an actor but not an artiste.”

The character Shuki relates to most of all is that of the winemaker in the story of San Michele, who cries ‘frizzante,’ (the Italian word meaning fermented); it's like a tune on the tip of his tongue, and he is actually part winemaker and part magician.

From this it is perhaps easy to understand how Shuki came up with the name for his wine: "Kesem" (Hebrew for ‘magic’) – an acronym for Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot and a clear reference to the person who created the wine – a magician. Shuki makes reference to A Thousand and One Nights and Ali Baba standing in front of the stone, sealing the gate and shouting the magic words “open sesame”;  he suggests that perhaps the Arabic word sumsum (sesame) evolved over the years into the Hebrew word, kesem – the uncorking of a wine bottle can open the gates to magical realms!

And the gate was indeed opened to two wines recently released: Kesem 2003 is a dark red wine with a hint of purple, an aroma of wild berries and spices, and a medium body. The Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 is also a dark red with the same aroma of wild berries and spices. It has a full body and the tannin in it is still dominant, it was aged for 20 months in oak barrels. The grapes are brought from select areas of the Judean hills and The Ella valley. There the vineyard is tightly planted on the stoney ground, affected by the summer breezes and fierce winter chill. The result: a low harvest of high-quality grapes.

In 2002, which was a difficult year because of a heat wave damaging the grapes, Shuki became familiar with the Ripasso technique, a method in which wine from a previous grape harvest is left to soak with the peelings of the new harvest. To improve the 2002 Merlot, Shuki soaked it for a week with the saturated peelings of the 2003 harvest. Thus the 2002 wine acquired its color and intensity from the 2003 peelings, and following the malolactic fermentation a complex and interesting wine resulted. "I don't use Ripasso because it's sexy to write about it. In fact, last year I didn't use it because the wine didn't need it. It's certainly a manipulation, but it's an attractive and elegant manipulation that utilizes your own resources, and when needed, it is a fine method to use. But there's a difference between being smart and being a smart aleck." In general, Shuki believes that winemaking calls for great humility. "The snobbism regarding wine amuses me, it distances people instead of bringing them closer. The wine is deep and multi-dimensional, and the snobbism minimizes that by choosing to only acknowledge a narrow segment of it."

Winemaking as Therapy

“When it comes to wine – and in general for that matter – many people lack a sense of humor and especially self-irony. This too is part of growing up. On many occasions I find myself explaining that some people drink wine at their doctors’ recommendation, but for me the making of the wine is the therapy.”

The interview with Shuki takes place on the eve of Yom Kippur, thirty-two years after the war that haunts him to this day.   Shuki suffers from post-war trauma, and receives treatment care from the army to this day. He likens his experience of finally being able to freely discuss and understand his situation to that of homosexuals coming out of the closet. “People helped me, pulled me up, and I myself never noticed my condition until I overcame it. I feel an obligation to speak of what I went through and to help others get through it as well – to overcome the shame and find a new way to manage; for me, it is a sacred duty.”

“Through the wine I get to meet many different people and we open up to each other. Those of us who experienced post-war trauma have highly refined sensibilities, and again, like homosexuals, we recognize each other easily. And that recognition, that kinship, helps. The physical contact, the smell of those men, those machos, who seem so strong on the outside but who, deep inside, just like me, harbor the same unhealed war wounds. Meeting with these men gives me great comfort and consolation. The wine makes the encounters easier; it refines the senses, breaks barriers, opens doors and removes all divisions.”

“How could I have known six years ago, that by making wine I would come to understand the many sleepless nights, the nightmares in which I come across people who I haven’t seen in over thirty years – some of whom have already passed away – and that this is my therapy. And when I raise a glass of wine and say “le'chayim” (‘to life’), I really mean it – and always have – except now I fully understand what I mean.”