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The Israeli presence in the Napa wine industry is miniscule, but one name is heard again and again: Maayan Koschitzky, who founded La Pelle Wines in Napa Valley 10 years ago and is a partner as well as director of winemaking at the high-end consulting company Atelier Melka.
While there are other Israeli vintners in Northern California who have made their mark — notably Clos Du Val’s Carmel Greenberg, the only Israeli woman to become a head winemaker in Napa, and Oded Shakked, founder of Longboard Vineyards in Healdsburg and the first Israeli to go through the viticulture program at UC Davis — Koschitzsky, 45, is a bit of a rock star in Napa’s wine world.
Last month he shared some of his story — and his wine — at the Jewish Food & Wine Retreat Camp Newman (along with Shakked in the same session). Julie Rothberg, wine consultant for the weekend, invited Koschitzky because “he is director of winemaking for one of the most well-respected consulting winemakers in Napa Valley and arguably the world,” she said. And his label La Pelle “shows his deep passion for farming and grape growing that translates into phenomenal and delicious wines.”
Koschitzsky was born and raised on Moshav Kfar Truman (named for President Harry Truman), 10 minutes outside Ben Gurion Airport. While his family drank wine occasionally, it was often inexpensive and domestically made, or imported from Chile.
As a young adult, he was introduced to more elevated wines through his girlfriend, whose family had immigrated from Argentina, where wine was more a part of their culture. (Today, that girlfriend is Koschitzsky’s wife, Dana, who runs The Tish baking company in Napa Valley, known for its wonderful babka.) When the couple went backpacking in Argentina, they visited the famed wine region of Mendoza where they could go to many wineries in one day.
“That’s really where I got the bug,” he said.
Back in Israel, Koschitzky began studying mechanical engineering, but he found that the wine bug wouldn’t leave him. He’d visit wineries on weekends, and during the week he’d be thinking about wine rather than studying.
He started to feel that an office job wasn’t for him. In 2004, “I decided that rather than doing a regular Israeli job in one of the companies that produces missiles and Iron Dome, I’m going to do a harvest instead,” he said. His interest came at the right time. After years of not having much of a wine industry, Israel began sprouting boutique wineries.
Koschitzky convinced Yair Margalit, founder of one of Israel’s best-known boutique wineries, Margalit Winery, to give him a chance, and in a span of three years went from being mentored to helping Margalit craft his renowned Bordeaux-style wines. Margalit was legendary in the U.S.; he had come to the wine world from another career, as a physicist, and wrote the pioneering book “Concepts in Wine Technology” that is widely used and revered by those learning the trade.
With his experience at Margalit Winery on Koschitzky’s resume, in 2011 he landed a harvest internship at Screaming Eagle, one of Napa’s most exclusive wineries. That turned into an assistant winemaker position. In 2014, French-American winemaker Phillippe Melka invited Koschitzky to join his wine consulting company in Oakville, and he became a business partner a few years later.
In 2016, Koschitzky started his label La Pelle with two partners, which means “shovel” in French. (“Everything sounds better in French,” he explained.) Why a shovel? For a winery that grows all its own grapes, “we are farmers, first. It comes from the land, and without the grapes, we don’t have anything.”
In 2019, Wine Enthusiast named Koschitzky one of its “40 under 40 tastemakers,” part of his long string of accomplishments in the wine world. How did he make it all happen?
“Being an outsider and bringing tradition into modernization is part of it. There’s a lack of history in the U.S. that gives an advantage to old-world winemakers who want to combine that with the new world,” Koschitzky said.
He also credits “Israeli chutzpah.”
“I was never afraid — not to become an intern again, or moving here with a baby and a dog. I wasn’t afraid to leave Screaming Eagle, even though many thought I was crazy to leave. I was confident and proud of my work and always enjoy what I do, and want to keep growing. And, obviously, we all need some luck in life.”