Putting on a kiddush? You won’t be judged solely by the standard of food on offer. To really impress, you have to fork out for really good whisky. Until now, that’s meant a Scotch. But now there’s the option of whisky from Israel’s first whisky distillery, Milk & Honey.
The investment needed was still a risk for co-founder Gal Kalkshtein when he and his partners started planning the country’s first distillery in 2012, decades after the renaissance of Israel’s wine industry. It was set up three years later but the product is only now on sale.
He admits that people questioned his wisdom. “People said it was stupid, and wondered what I was doing” says the tycoon, whose fortune is founded on computer-based trading: “I own 16 companies — 15 are hi-tech and the other one is the distillery I love.”
The reasons to stay out of the spirit-making business were overwhelming, he admits: “There was no whisky tradition in Israel as there is in Scotland, and a lot of investment was needed both in money and time.
“You need to have patience —and I think Israelis lack that. But I went ahead because I wanted to make the impossible possible — my dream was to make a single malt whisky that could stand proudly on the shelf with other whisky brands.”
It wasn’t easy to get whisky production under way in a country that can only grow a fraction of the raw material needed:
“We have to import our barley from the UK and Belgium.” The founders called in expertise from Scotland, where the late Dr Jim Swan helped them design mash tuns in which to mix and ferment their imported grain with Israeli spring water.
The first batches were small — just a few hundred bottles at a time — but they sold out. Whisky aficionados paid an average price of £500 per bottle, and only seven per cent of those buyers were Israeli.
Kalkshtein explains that the next 5,000 bottles will be more competitively priced, thanks to scaling up production, and are expected in Europe by September. Milk & Honey whisky will be available here in off-licences and bars by the end of the year — the distillery’s Levantine Gin, infused with local botanicals including za’atar, is already available here.
For now — just in time for Purim on March 20/21 when we are encouraged to drink alcohol — there is a single malt. It’s too young to be legally classified as whisky (for which it needs a minimum of three years ageing in a cask) but it has already won medals in Israel and abroad.
"We won a silver medal at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London last year," says Kalkshtein.He’s proud that judges found it hard to believe a malt aged for only six months could yield such depth of flavour.
“It’s much quicker to make whisky in Israel because of the climate and humidity” he explains. He also believes Israel’s terrain may make a unique contribution in future to the whisky’s flavour profile. “We think maturing some casks at the Dead Sea at such low altitude will bring something special to the drink no one else can offer.”
He also thinks that the Israel’s warmer, drier climate brings a greater depth of flavour to Israeli whisky and that the faster ageing means it can be mature in four to six years, considered young for a whisky in Scotland.
Milk and Honey’s master distiller, Tomer Goren has introduced notes of orange, marzipan and oak to the whisky in an attempt to distinguish the brand from others. He adds no colourings or flavouring agents to the basic ingredients of water, barley and yeast.
Milk and Honey is the first but not the only Israeli whisky. Since Kalkshtein opened his distillery, others have followed on a smaller scale: a whisky distillery in the Golan, and others being built in Jerusalem and elsewhere. “We shared our knowledge with all who asked because we want all Israeli whisky to be high-class,” says Kalkshtein.
Kosher off-licence, Grapevine, in Hendon and Stoke Newington, imports whisky from the Golan Heights Distillery and will also be offering tastings of Milk & Honey whisky at their annual Whisky Event on June 2.
Just a decade ago, the options might have been restricted to Scotch, Irish and American, but we now offer world-class whiskies from Japan, Taiwan and India as well as Israel,” says Grapevine’s Abe Lubelsky. “Israel has a well-established wine-making tradition, but British drinkers have only recently had a chance to taste what Israeli whisky has to offer. The feedback thus far has been overwhelmingly positive!”
