12 The Jewish Herald • Friday, March 22, 2013 31 O E N O L O G Y


Zaafrani, who is a trained cat- tleman, got excited and began to produce wine in his house. Yoav was only two at the time, and milk was not the only drink that he imbibed. “At the beginning, we would


fill the bottles in a very primi- tive fashion, using gravity,” he says. “Yoav was responsible for removing the excess wine with a pipette. But sometimes he would use his mouth and would tell me in his baby’s voice, ‘Dad- dy, it’s sour.’” Yoav doesn’t remember the


incident, but he definitely re- members the fun atmosphere at home. “Every Friday, my dad would invite over friends for wine and cheese. When they saw me, they’d say, ‘Here’s the boy who loves to drink wine.’ These days they appreciate me much more. My dad lets me work half-a-day all by myself. He trusts me to give tours to visitors and to give tastes of wine. This is a big re- sponsibility,” he says. In 2009, Ilan Zaafrani sub-


mitted a business plan to Or- tal’s economic committee to realize his dream of building a winery. The committee gave him the go-ahead and allowed him to use one of the public shel- ters. He was the entrepreneur, the vintner, the electrician, the carpenter and the plumber for the winery, and he got all his family members involved as well. “In order to build a busi- ness, you have to reduce costs,” he explains. The winery and visitors’ cen-


ter are located where an aban- doned tractor shed once stood. Yoav has been an integral part of the winery since the first vineyard was planted. He is al- ways there. Maybe that’s why he feels so connected to the winery. “These are our vineyards. We planted them, and we give them the highest quality care possi-


Safety never felt


ble,” says Yoav. “It’s a wonderful feeling to stand in a place where you are responsible for every- thing — the table, the refriger- ator, the wine, the bottle.” To learn the profession, Ilan


signed up for a winery course at Tel Hai Academic College. “At the end of every school day, Yoav would sit me down at the table and grill me for hours about what we learned that day. He would ask endless questions, wanting to learn everything. He was like a sponge and, to my delight, he remembers many things that I have managed to forget. And as his father, I am not embarrassed to ask him which vintage is located on a certain row,” he says. The child is definitely very


patient. “I can spend an entire day pushing buttons on the ma- chine that puts the corks on the bottles. My brothers would tire of this after an hour. They have no patience,” he says. And what does this young


vintner do? The real question is what doesn’t he do. He is in- volved in planting the vineyards, pruning them and in harvest- ing. He crates the grapes and brings them to the winery, transfers them to vats, weighs and adds the yeast, corks and tastes, gives tours, and infects everyone around him with his enthusiasm. Everything, though, is done under the supervision of his father. “This year I almost made


a huge mistake,” says Yoav. “I went to check the pH level of the


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wine, and instead of rinsing the pipette in the type of wine that I was checking, I rinsed it in wa- ter, and the results came out bad. Luckily, my dad was checking everything,” he recounts. Yoav is still upset about the


mistake, but his father knows that he can depend on him. “I let him do everything himself and just check the results,” he says. There is only one thing that


Yoav is not involved in: the spe- cial night-time tastings. “There’s quite a bit of alcohol in the room,” Ilan says, “and it’s really not the place for him.” Sometimes it is not clear where


the separation between father and son lies. They admire each other and display perfect syner- gy. “Me and my shadow,” people on the kibbutz call them. Four years ago the young


winery had its first harvest, and those bottles are just now being opened. They are fruity, with a light woody flavor and a long finish. Father and son learned about


the secrets of wine together, and their joy in these discoveries is endless. “We learned about as- tringency, what sparkling wine is, dry and semi-dry. We won- dered whether the color was good enough, whether it has a wood taste or not,” Yoav says. And as a result of these numer- ous tastings, Yoav has learned


to taste, smell and appreciate wine, as well as give his opin- ion without mincing words. Be- cause of his vast knowledge and young age, he is well recognized in the local wine industry. At a re- cent wine exhibition in Tel Aviv, Yoav was called over to one of the booths to taste the wine. “I said exactly what I thought:


that the wine had not undergone enough fermentation and its flavor had not had time to ful- ly come out. It tasted like the wine had been bottled as soon as the sulfur dioxide level was high enough. They said to me, ‘Kid, you’re right.’” Yoav’s name has become well


known, and people go to the kib- butz winery requesting a tour by Yoav. He loves it and never tires of giving the same expla- nations over and over again. If a sommelier, a wine steward, shows up, Yoav is extra hap- py. “Sommeliers get so excited about the wine. They buy bot- tles and say they must have our wine for their restaurants. It’s like a dream come true!” However, Yoav prefers to par-


take in the winemaking process and not in the tasting. “If you drink good wine, you don’t ap- preciate the wine only, you ap- preciate the person who creat- ed it,” he says. Yoav loves every single day,


but he loves the harvest the most. “Before the harvest, we


check the sugar and pH levels so the wine won’t be too ripe or too young, but exactly like we love,” he says. The sun is usually high in the sky when they pack the crates, carefully cut the large clusters of grapes with small pruning shears, put them in the large containers and transport them to the nearby winery. It is hard work that must be done carefully and with love. In the evening, they clean the winery for the next day of work. Yoav has no problem with re-


sponsibility. In fact, the more tasks he’s given, the more he thrives. A rare occurrence in this world of children who try to get out of helping and prefer to look at screens rather than be outside. This year Yoav is preparing


one barrel of wine that will be his alone. “I want to leave the grapes on the vines just a little bit longer, and then cut them down and dry them in the sun. They need to be flipped every six hours, which makes the wine heavier. I can’t wait to get start- ed, and I’m curious to see the results. But my biggest dream is to invent my own method for making wine,” he says. “I think that in the end, Yoav


will progress in a different di- rection,” says Ilan. “You never know; he may even become a


philosopher.” —Translated by Hannah Hochner


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