Israel Aims to Recreate Wine That Jesus and King David Drank

NY Times ^ | NOV. 29, 2015 | JODI RUDOREN

[SJackson]

HEFER VALLEY, Israel — The new crisp, acidic and mineral white from a high-end Israeli winery was aged for eight months — or, depending on how you look at it, at least 1,800 years.

The wine, called marawi and released last month by Recanati Winery, is the first commercially produced by Israel’s growing modern industry from indigenous grapes. It grew out of a groundbreaking project at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank that aims to use DNA testing to identify — and recreate — ancient wines drunk by the likes of King David and Jesus Christ.

Eliyashiv Drori, the Ariel oenologist who heads the research, traces marawi (also called hamdani) and jandali grapes to A.D. 220 based on a reference in the Babylonian Talmud.

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Wine being prepared for export at Shiloh Wineries, based in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh, this month.

E.U. Move to Label Israeli Settlement Goods Strains TiesNOV. 11, 2015

Kobi Tzafrir, owner of Hummus Bar in Kfar Vitkin, Israel, posted on Facebook that he would give half off every hummus plate to tables shared by Jews and Arabs.

Letter From the Mideast: Peace Deal Comes With Hummus at Israeli RestaurantNOV. 24, 2015

“All our scriptures are full with wine and with grapes — before the French were even thinking about making wine, we were exporting wine,” he said. “We have a very ancient identity, and for me, reconstructing this identity is very important. For me, it’s a matter of national pride.”

[gleeaikin]

Apparently they did get the date seed to grow. The Romans apparently destroyed all these dates to extinguish the Jewish economy. I suspect the grapes were more likely to be backbred through DNA studies.

[lepton]

Do you really give a fig?