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Meet the new path in the Negev that is entirely dedicated to wine - voila! tourism

2022-08-17T04:22:53.039Z


Wine grapes have been grown in the Negev for 2500 years, and this weekend also ancient wineries for a new path ("The Winery Trail") that will be inaugurated at a holiday wine event in the Negev Mountains. Watch Walla! tourism


Get to know the new trail in the Negev that is entirely dedicated to wine

In the Negev, grapes have been grown for wine for 2500 years, but beyond the remains of germinating vineyards, it will be possible to see ancient vats from this weekend along a new path ("the vats trail") that will be inaugurated at a festive wine event in Abdat.

And also: what wine did they drink in the desert 1500 years ago?

Researchers have found the answer

Ziv Reinstein

08/16/2022

Tuesday, August 16, 2022, 4:19 p.m. Updated: Wednesday, August 17, 2022, 7:17 a.m.

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The Hagitot Trail in Abdat (photo: Ziv Reinstein, editing: Gilad Man Mannheim)

A new trail will be inaugurated this Friday in Abdat National Park in the Negev -

the Gitot Trail

- which miraculously depicts one of the wonders of desert agriculture that began 2500 years ago - the creation of wine under almost impossible conditions.



The path will pass through four giths that were found, renovated and preserved in Abdat - one of the most important cities of the Nabataeans on the perfume route - where the preservation of the southern ghat, perhaps the most beautiful of them all, was recently completed, which was used by the Roman-Byzantine settlers of the city and even into the beginning of the Muslim period for the production of industrial wine that was sent to Europe.



"Something is happening here that is no less than a miracle," says Lior Schwimmer, South District archaeologist at the Nature and Parks Authority, who is responsible for the new path and even excavated and preserved some of the excavations in Abdat.

"We are talking about developed agriculture from about 300 to 800 AD, and this area becomes a focus for wine production."

Renovated and maintained very recently.

The southern Gath for the Giyatot path (photo: Ziv Reinstein)

As then, grapes are grown in the desert today.

Pinto Winery in Yeruham (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Passes between four large industrial alleys.

The Gitato Trail in Abdat (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Three sedimentation pits in the southern Geth, which contained about seven cubic meters of tyrosh (photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Wine - one of the three staples of ancient times

"Abadet was a Byzantine settlement that at its peak was home to about 4,000 people," Schwimmer adds, "but what is less known is that there was tourism here."

By this he means Christian pilgrims who stopped in the city on their way to the monastery of Santa Caterina in Sinai, or wanted to isolate themselves in churches in the area, for example in Sheba.

But not only Christians came to slavery, but merchants who transported agricultural products to the entire region of Europe and the south-eastern Levant.



The Byzantine residents of the Negev Mountains planted about 11 thousand dunams of cultivated land, mainly of wheat, grapes and olives.

Dr. Shahar Shiloh, head of the Department of Tourism Studies at Ashkelon Academic College and who until recently managed Mount Negev tourism in recent years, says that wine is one of the three main sources of food in ancient times - grain, tyrosh and itzhar - as mentioned in Deuteronomy. "The wheat, the vine and the olive There were the three basic crops of Baal agriculture in the Mediterranean basin in ancient times, and it was possible to store their products - wheat grains, wine and raisins, olive oil and pickled olives, from season to season," he says. "Therefore these crops and the types of food produced from them occupied a central place in all aspects The culture, technology, art and folklore of the region in ancient times."

More in Walla!

Drink, eat, hang out: 15 wineries in the north that are open on Shabbat

To the full article

At its peak, about 4,000 people lived in the Byzantine settlement.

Abdat (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

"What is less known is that there was tourism here."

Dr. Shiloh and Schwimmer for the Ghitots (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Hundreds of terraces for growing wine in the river channels

The ascent up the path marked with local stones is not difficult, although it is uphill.

On the way Schwimmer points to one of the stones on which a beautiful rosette has been carved.

The landscape reveals the vineyards of that time, which still grow today in the same valleys that used the river channels for irrigation.

In the Southern Geth, which was dug in the 1960s but covered, there are three pooling pits of about seven cubic meters in total.

The must flowed into the pits from the stepping stones paved with straight and beautiful stones, which, according to Schwimmer, were looted and are now found in houses in Jaffa or Acre.

Around the lake, hundreds of terraces can be seen in the stream channels next to which farmhouses were built, where the grapes were grown.



"What is rare about this geth is that it has another tread in addition to the large one," explains Schwimmer, who also preserved it.

"We don't know if it's a different type of grape or maybe it belonged to a different family, but it's interesting to see that a stone-paved channel emerges from this surface, which transferred the juice to the sedimentation pit and from there to a 1.3 cubic meter storage pit."

A rosette on one of the stones for the Gitatos (photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Lior Schwimmer points to the wine growing terraces (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Meet the "Shiruki" and "Dabuki" grapes

The Byzantines kept the wine in older Roman burial caves near the city, which were later used as a wine storage site.

Four inscriptions were found in the cave commemorating righteous women who were buried there, and may have served as priestesses of the goddess Aphrodite, and were discovered in the excavation of Avraham Negev in 1958.

"In Abdat there were about 250 caves, for each house a cave behind it and there they kept the grape juice for a few months until it turned into wine," says Schwimmer.



According to him, if today they produce about 800 liters of wine from an acre of grapes, he estimates that at the time they produced about 200 liters from an acre.

From Rabat, the wine continued to move on camels to the port of Gaza - the last city of Nabatim on the wine journey - and from there it was transported by ship to Rhodes, France and Great Britain.

It is impossible to escape the thought that the French in the Bordeaux region at that time considered the Haaretz-Israeli wine to be excellent.



Beyond that, the wine researchers had to ask the question: what kind of wine would be produced in the desert?

So until recently they didn't know, and the grape seeds they found in the garbage didn't tell anything either.

But two years ago, the darkness was cracked when it comes to the type of Haaretz-Israeli wine.

"They dug a cave in the opposite hill, and Daniel Fox, a researcher of ancient seeds from Ben Gurion University, took samples of seeds found in that cave," Schwimmer explains about the path to discovering the ancient grape variety.

It turns out that in the year 540 or so a plague occurred in the Middle East, the "Justinian plague" (named after the emperor Justinianus), which caused a drop in the amount of grapes and an economic collapse as a result.

Schwimmer says that the researchers were able to extract charred seeds and tested them in laboratories around the world and finally extracted genetic information from five grape seeds, and from two of them they were able to conduct a perfect genetic mapping.

"Each of them belonged to a different type - red wine and white wine," he says, "and they date back to 690 AD.



The name of the red grape is

"Shiruki"

and the name of the white one is

"Dobuki"

.

Both, by the way, have survived to this day in monasteries in Lebanon.

Dr. Shila adds that today the Teperberg winery uses grapes for white wine, which come from the Mount Hebron area. Schwimmer says that there is a future thought to bring the seeds and grow them in Abdat. Half excited.

About 250 caves were discovered in Abdat.

The entrance to the Roman burial cave (photo: Ziv Reinstein)

In the cave there are 22 burial mounds, probably for women, which were used in the 4th century to store wine jugs (photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Aimed at European tourists

But until the shiroki and dabuki arrive, there are quite a few fine grape varieties in the Negev Mountains that enjoy the local terroir - from the strong sun during the day on the one hand, and the nighttime chill on the other - and provide beautiful raw material for 25 wineries that produce excellent wine.



Today there are more than a thousand dunams of grapes growing in the area, and the intention is that the cultivation will expand to 2,000 dunams.

"We want to turn the entire Negev and desert region into an area of ​​wine tourism with its own branding, like they did in Tuscany," explains Dr. Shila, who recently began to head the DMO (Destination Marketing Organization - Negev Regional Tourism Directorate). According to him, the combination of a desert and growing wine in it, is a product that will attract European tourists who come to Israel. "There is no European who does not drink a glass of wine or a drink in the evening, and the realization that we have in Israel an area that is the only one in the world where wine is grown in the desert, is almost a miracle that we should attract tourism here." , He says.

One of the first to make wine in the Negev (1999).

Zvi Ramek at Sde Boker Winery (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Small winery, big taste.

Nabato Winery in Mitzpe Ramon (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)

Wine came in - event came out

You can also taste the desert wine at a special event that will take place this Friday (August 19) called:

Desert Wine Route - open wineries in the Negev Mountain

- which will take place from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. (the tutorials will start every round hour), where the Negev Mountain wineries will open their doors (and quite a few bottles) and invited to tours, explanations and activities around wine.

Tasting card price - NIS 120 per person.

The wineries are spread out in each of the Negev mountain areas: Pethat Nitsana, Mitzpe Ramon and Rocham.

Participating wineries:

Kerem Pinto, Yeruchem

Sde Boker Winery, Kibbutz Sde Boker

Ramat Negev Winery, Kadesh Barnea

Toshiya Winery, Be'er Milka |

Rota Winery, Rota Farm (near Revivim) |

Navato Winery, Mitzpe Ramon.



For registration and details: 050-6577747 or

on the Mount Negev tourism website.

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Source: walla

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