Kate Shuttleworth

Special for USA TODAY

NEGEV, Israel — This desert region may seem an unlikely spot to grow grapes, but soon people at Passover tables around the world will be pouring kosher wines produced here in a rich history that dates to biblical times.

If there is one time of year on the Jewish calendar when people are given license to drink exuberantly, it's at Passover, when custom dictates at least four glasses of wine should be consumed during Seder, the ceremonial dinner that takes place on the first two nights of Passover.

Passover begins this evening.

For a wine to be considered kosher, it must be produced according to Jewish dietary laws, and a Sabbath-observant Jew must oversee the winemaking process.

In his latest wine guide, Israel's top wine critic, Daniel Rogov, has six top picks from the Judean Hills. Where Galilee or Golan Heights wines had previously topped the list, Yatir Winery took the No. 1 spot this year with its flagship Yatir Forest, named for the forest where the grapes are grown in the Judean Mountains near Mount Hebron.

The rich blend of cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot, merlot and malbec, aged for up to 18 months in small French oak barrels, is the first Israeli wine to be listed in the main selection of the high-end department store Selfridges in London.

Yaacov Ben Dor, general manager at Yatir Winery, pioneered forest agriculture in Israel in the 1990s and initiated the planting of the first vineyards in the area. Today, he leads Yatir, whose vineyards are situated nearly 3,000 feet above sea level in the forest. The winery produces 50,000 bottles a year. .

The grape harvest runs between July and September in Israel, when temperatures in the region can top out near 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We harvest the grapes in the evening, because we want the grapes to arrive cold to the winery and the grapes have to be inside the winery by sunrise," he said.

Wine sales increase by 25% during Passover.

Overseeing Yatir's top-quality red wines and several whites is chief winemaker Eran Goldwasser, who has a degree in viticulture from Adelaide University in Australia.

"Our wines are not your stereotypical New World wines that are dominated by fruit. Ours are characterized by yes, the fruit, but mainly the unique dry Mediterranean herb flavors," Goldwasser said while filtering the 2013 viognier. .

"Our challenge here is that it's a warm area with a lot of sunshine, so a cabernet sauvignon would be lighter and more elegant elsewhere," he said. "Here, our challenge is to try and restrain it and have the power and add some elegance as well."

Israel's largest planted forest, known as Yatir Forest, seems an unlikely place to grow the grapes used for the five varieties of the Bordeaux blend: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, malbec and petit verdot. But this semi-arid land, located at the edge of the Judean Hills and the Negev desert on the lower slopes of the Hebron hills, is producing Yatir's top-quality and highly rated kosher wines.

In 1964, the Jewish National Fund planted 4 million Jerusalem, Cypress and Aleppo pine trees on the southern slopes of Mount Hebron. Among the pines are many broad-leafed trees, including jujube, carob, olive, fig, eucalyptus and acacia trees.



While growing grapes in the area seemed nonsensical to some, excavations have found it isn't such a new idea. The Jewish National Fund regional forest director, Amir Mazor, said excavaters uncovered ancient wine presses and storage vessels dated to 2,500 years ago.

The area where grapes were crushed with feet in ancient times can easily be seen, and local winemakers are linking the biblical winemaking of the ancient Israelites to modern Israel.

Over the years, experts warned the Jewish National Fund that its idea of a cultivated forest would fail because of a lack of rain and the high temperatures that grip the Negev desert. Today, the forest is unbelievably lush,, and local Bedouin shepherds graze their sheep in selected parts of the forest for several months each year.

It's hard not to be reminded that the wine encapsulates a rich biblical history when shepherds herd their flocks nearby and dry fields filled with camels line the sloped plains below the forest.

"The JNF had great vision when they saw that planting trees in this area would be a good idea,' Mazor said. "And when the wine-making history of the area was uncovered and linked to biblical times, it made sense that winemakers were going back to their roots and producing wine again."