This time, we pruned the grapes
Following the laws of orla during volunteering at Domaine du Castel Winery
We’re still doing agricultural volunteering on Thursdays, even though it’s beastly hot out there. My sister
pushes us to get started early, heading out by 6:15 and starting work by around 6:45 am. I gotta say, she’s right, it does help to be working in those early hours, and we finish up at around 11 each time.It’s also somewhat magical outside as we drive down familiar roads, sometimes overhung with fog in those post-dawn hours. Last week, we made our way toward the community of Beit Meir outside Jerusalem, next to Shoresh. We hung a right toward the historical Burma Road and continued on from there to the Castel vineyards that needed work.
It had been a lot of dragging branches and clearing twigs over the last few weeks, hot, sweaty work that’s satisfying, don’t get me wrong, especially when you look back at a row of grapevines and see the branches all neatly tucked in, just so.
But this time we were given a new task, new to us, of course, because we’ve only been working in the vineyard since February, and each season, or every few weeks brings a different task.
This time around, we were in a new vineyard, maybe a year old, Sauvignon Blanc grapes. We had to prune the grapevines, extracting the three main branches that would form the ‘T’ of the grapevine, clipping off any extraneous branches. Our ‘boss,’ head agronomist Shine, told us to clip off any new fruit, and it felt completely wild, to bravely chop any of the small, hard green grapes that were already growing on the vines.
The reason, of course, for pruning those first grapes is that they are considered orla, the fruits of the first three years of the grapevine. In order for the wines of a vineyard in Israel to be kosher, as Castel is, none of the fruit in the first three years of the vineyards may be harvested. That is, only the grapes from the fourth year can be used to make wine.
A vineyard belonging to a Jew in Israel may not be harvested in its first three years and the flower buds are removed to prevent fruit formation. Or, as in our case, if the fruit has been formed, you need to toss it.
These grapes? These vines? All being pruned and groomed and grown for what they will yield in year four. That’s a long lead time for a product, am I right?
I’ve gotten somewhat accustomed to the concept of orla after living here for the last twenty-something years. When we first moved into our home, and planted some fruit trees in our backyard, our gardener, an immigrant from Vancouver, who also happened to be a Jew by choice, tutored me in the Jewish laws of gardening, which included paying attention to orla for our passionfruit vine, our peach tree and eventually, our grapefruit, lime and pomelo trees.
I even seem to remember a pamphlet she gave me about the Jewish laws of Israeli gardening and I read it cover to cover, less impatiently than I normally would, because it was something I knew so little about and felt so, well, local.
The passionfruit vine and peach tree are no longer — passionfruit vines are wily and take over everything in their reach, while the peaches were always small and mealy — but it was clear in those first three years of the trees that the fruit was no good anyway. It does take a few years — three, as it would seem — for the fruit to become full-fledged globes, tasty and flavorful. It seems that orla actually makes a lot of sense.
There are loopholes that bypass the waiting of three years to eat the fruit in your yard or orchard, and that’s by buying fruit trees that are several years old, and close or past the orla stage — in fact, I’m pretty sure we did that with some of our fruit trees.
But not so for Castel’s Sauvignon Blanc grapes, still far from full-fledged and requiring hands that will pick and dump the clusters growing on the vine.
Shine, our fearless agronomist leader, told us that she’s friendly with a chef who always begs her to give him these early grapes, because he’s got plenty of creative ways to use them. But she can’t, for while he doesn’t care if they’re considered orla, and Shine may not either, Castel can’t be considered a kosher vineyard if the orla grapes are used in any way.
And so, we clipped and tossed them on the ground.
It felt daring at first, and then, like so much agricultural work, you get into the swing of things and don’t think about it too much after a while.
After working for a couple of hours in the hot June sun, all I could think about was what kind of iced coffee I’d get at Aroma when we were done. (Iced Americano with almond milk and a squirt of sugar water.)
But we made it down a few rows of vines, each of us taking our own row, including my friend Sara, visiting from the States and gamely taking on the task. We worked quietly as we often do, sometimes breaking into conversation or questions about a particular vine. There were plenty of other workers in the vineyard this time, young Israelis, some of them post-reserve duty and figuring out what’s next, others just looking for shift work and this fits into that rubric.
We all took a break together around 11 (admittedly, we also took our 10 am break around 9:30), digging into a watermelon and ice cream sandwiches that Shine bought for us.
The four of us — me, Sara,
and nephew Eliav, who’s been a stalwart companion but now has a new job and won’t be able to come on Thursdays — were done by then, needing iced coffees, showers and a return to our regular work.But, as always, those hours in the vineyard offer a glimpse into another world, with dirt under our fingernails, sweaty shirts and dusty boots, and, of course, the grapevines, those green tendrils and leaves growing out of wild, knobby branches. A divine opportunity.
The grape/wine industry reminds me of the haftara we read on Tisha B'av morning where Jeremiah says " there are no grapes on the vines, nor figs on the fig trees" when now we have grapes and figs. We are in the process of returning, step by step.
I was not aware of those laws and you explained it so clearly.
Your descriptions of the heat and grime under your nails, made me feel as if I was in the hot field with you. To be able to write, so that the reader feels present in the moment with the event being described, is such a talent. I continue to look forward to your every article so that I can , be with you , on each adventure !!