Israel Produces Whiskey?

The Milk and Honey work floor
(Credit: Milk and Honey)

Two Israeli whiskey distilleries have whiskey-lovers around the world sitting up and taking notice. Four decades after the failed attempt to produce a badly-received Ascot Special Deluxe Blended Scotch, two new groups of entrepreneurs have excited whiskey-lovers everywhere. This time, online casino bookies are giving high odds that a successful industry is being launched in the country.

Golan Heights

In 2016 David Zibell, founder and owner of the Golani Distillery in Katzrin, put the first Israeli-produced whisky on the market. Zibell is from Canada and worked there in real estate but it wasn’t until he came to Israel and moved to the Golan Heights that his future became clear to him.

“We came on vacation in March 2014 with no plans to move here,” Zibell told the Jerusalem Post. But during the family’s 3-hour visit to the Golan, they started to consider living there.

The family made the decision to move to Katzrin within days and Zibell started to think about how he was going to make a living. He had been thinking of making whiskey for awhile and had already studied whiskey-making, taking courses and working alongside mentors while in Montreal.

“When we decided to move to Israel, I figured that this was an opportunity to take this to another level and do it professionally because I knew that Israel was just starting to drink whiskey, and there were no distilleries yet. I heard of a few investors who were looking to open distilleries. I knew there was some market research available, and I saw there was an opportunity here, so I bought some equipment before we came, and I put it into the container, so that is how it developed.”

Zibell imported his distillery equipment and got his start almost immediately. He confronted some of bureaucratic delays that are common in Israel but, he says, in the end, the local government bodies were very supportive of his venture.

Since 2014 Zibell’s business has grown and he operates three distilleries, two in the Golan Heights and one in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem distillery makes rum and peated whiskey while in the Golan, one distillery makes whiskey and the other produces Kosher for Passover products (liqueurs, etc).

In addition to the Israeli market, the products are exported to the UK and the US. The Golani Distillery has won awards from London’s International Wine & Spirit Competition for both its whiskey and its gin.

The distillery also makes absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit derived from plants. Zibell’s goal is to introduce the beverage into the local drinking culture.

Milk & Honey Distillery

Israel is known in the Bible as the “Land of Milk and Honey” and that’s the name that founder Gal Kalkshtein  game to his “artisan distillery.” The double-distilled, single-malt whiskey was introduced because it had become clear that Israeli connoisseurs were looking for something unique.

To meet the market demand, Kalkshtein, a group of investors including Simon Fried, Naama Agmon, Roee Licht and Amit Dror along with CEO Nir Gilat and distiller Tomer Goren investigated how micro-distilleries were doing in other countries. They discovered that the growing interest in home brewing of boutique beers and winemaking was impacting on the whiskey market.

“Every state in the United States wants to boast of its own whiskey brand and its own distillery, and the same is true in Sweden, Australia, Argentina, Belgium, France, India and Pakistan,” Simon Fried told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, noting that in America, the 50 distilleries of 20 years ago has now grown to 300.”If it can be done in those places, there’s no reason why it can’t be done here. We’re avoiding shortcuts and want to produce a serious product.”

The distillery unveiled Israel’s first ever single-malt whisky in 2017. That whiskey ages for more than 3 years in ex-bourbon casks and red wine STR casks along with barrels used to age pomegranate wine and other red wines from selected wineries in Israel. Israel’s warm climate affects and accelerates the aging process and experts say that it is notably well-matured.

Kosher Whiskey

The founders, a group of secular Tel Avivians, decided to go for the strictest kashruth (Jewish dietary laws) certification because they wanted to make their product available to the Orthodox Jewish population which keeps the highest level of kashruth. Most laws of kashruth don’t apply to whisky production – there’s no issue of mixing meat and milk, no ingredients that are problematic and the equipment is easy to clean. Whisky wouldn’t be sold on Passover, when it is prohibited for Jews to own – much less eat or drink – any products made with wheat.

The company is obligated to ensure that no work will take place on the Sabbath, that all leavened products will be sold to a non-Jew on Passover (so the Jewish-owned company doesn’t own those products during the week-long holiday) and that the laws relating to shmitta, the prohibition against planting and harvesting in the Land of Israel during the 7^th year) are strictly upheld.

Fried told HaAretz, “Our master distiller knows nothing at all about that, so we found something we can teach him. We’re establishing the distillery with the Scotsman on one shoulder, and the rabbis on the other. In the final analysis we’ll produce a fine whiskey that makes both happy.”