After celebrating and drinking so much wine during the High Holidays (one of the two peak wine consumption months in Israel), the celebration abruptly stopped and wine sales dropped to almost zero. Truth? It's understandable - who has the desire to drink and enjoy after a terrible massacre like the one that befell us, or even while fighting?
It wasn't just sales and wine shops that were affected. Many wineries all over the country were left at the very end of the harvest, filled with raw grain and with much work still needed - but without winemakers and production workers due to the extensive mobilization for the war effort. Those in the vicinity of the assembly and combat zones were particularly harmed.
Uri Akian (61) was born and raised in Sderot. After years of a career in electrical management for industry, he succumbed to the wine bug that pulsed in him from small ("I visited wineries in Israel and abroad for years, tasted and was interested") and decided to establish his own winery, "Uriel Winery", after studying practical winemaking at Sorek Winery.
Uri Akian Sderot Winery,
To establish the winery, he uses his mechanical and electrical knowledge to build a dedicated automatic remote-controlled machinery ("I operate everything in my winery from my mobile"), and for its location he chose – how not – in Sderot, even though he receives the grapes from various vineyards throughout the country. From the grapes, which are carefully harvested, he installs three different screens, totaling about 5,000 bottles a year. "The harvest actually started well this year," he says, "the Tiroche looked promising, and a significant part of it was destined to become quality wine. But unfortunately, following the massacre and the war that followed, we were evacuated from the city. I had wine in the middle of my first fermentation, and two days after the holiday I was supposed to do its squeezing - separating the pits and peels from the juice - but by then we had been denied access to the city for a few weeks.
"When I returned to the winery, the wine was finished, and I had to pour about 1,000 liters of wine. It hurts the heart, but it is better to lose some wine than human life. It's not worth taking risks. The Carignan and Petit Verdot harvests were earlier, and they were already in barrels. It will probably be the lineup of the blend this year."
Sorting grapes after harvest, photo: courtesy of Shikma Winery
Uri, who has already become an expert in identifying rocket launches, identifies a launch during the conversation and runs to the safe room. "They still shoot freely here. You can literally hear the whistle." After a few seconds of catching his breath, he continues: "You see, we've been almost two months since the incident, and most of the city is still shut down. Almost only an army is seen in the city. Now the factories are slowly starting to return, and I'm also going back to work and provide them with electricity service, but that's not it yet. I really hope we can get back to normal soon."
There used to be sycamores already
A little further north, still in an area that has been shelled and at many ranges, in Moshav Brachia near Ashkelon, lies the Shikma Winery owned by local resident Eliraz Cohen (43), an accountant specializing in risk management and internal auditing. "In 2014, I established the winery with some partners, friends from the moshav, and we made about 1,500 bottles a year, which is tiny amounts," he says, "and this year we actually jumped and harvested grapes to about 5,000 bottles."
But then the war broke out. "We managed to do the harvest as planned. And even after that, even though they fire at us a lot, they didn't evacuate us from the moshav. We also didn't have any direct hits, so in that respect the wine wasn't damaged."
Eliraz Cohen, photo: Courtesy of Shikma Winery
Eliraz grows an olive grove on the farm, "Barnea and Pishulin. Not much, but that little is missing this year too. There is almost no crop, the trees without fruit. There probably weren't enough cold rations last winter." He recently uprooted some of the trees and expanded his wine grape vineyard instead. "We planted Petit Verdot, Marcellin and Yael, an Israeli grape variety discovered in Nitzanim Sands in recent years."
The name of the winery is derived from the popular sycamore trees in the area. "When my grandparents immigrated to Israel, there was a technique here of lighting the vines on sycamore trees. To this day, in budding sands, you can find huge sycamore trees with vine models on them. And let's not forget the proximity to the Shikma River, which also got its name from the trees that grow here."
"We will put out a special wine in his memory"
Another, severe and fatal injury, actually landed on him. With the outbreak of war on Simchat Torah, he lost his younger brother, Tal Cohen z"l, a major in the Sayeret Matkal, who was killed in the village of Gaza. "The only thing I couldn't teach him was to drink wine properly. He would drink in a disposable cup," he smiles. "Just last Sukkot, a few days before, we met in our parents' sukkah and drank my wine."
Major Tal Cohen z"l, photo: from the family collection
Do you know what happened in the incident where he fell?
"We have a sister who lives in Zikim, and when the terrorists reached them, she called my brother. At first he found it hard to believe her, but he quickly got into the car and organized a force of nine fighters from the unit, and they went out into the field. He still managed to send my sister a message to go into the safe room and shut everything down, and we haven't heard from him since. "There is still no investigation by the army, and we don't know exactly what happened or how he fell, only that they were four guys from the force who stormed in, and they all fell. He was only 31 years old, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three small children. God willing, this year we will release a special wine in his memory. It's the least I can do." May his memory be blessed.
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