David Zibell is busy testing the alcohol level of the liquid flowing from his outdoor copper still. Then, touching his head to ensure his kippah is in place, he heads inside to carefully place labels on the whiskey bottles lined up inside his distillery.
The small warehouse in an industrial zone in the Golan Heights town of Katzrin may not look like much from the outside, where his makeshift whiskey still is essentially a large metal pot connected to a blue plastic garbage pail. But Zibell — a bearded, bespectacled French Canadian who made aliyah in 2014 — is the first person to bottle and sell whiskey in Israel, where it hit th e market earlier this month.
Over the past decade, however, Israel’s alcohol industry has blossomed. It now boasts award-winning wineries and microbreweriesl.
Now, with three distilleries that have opened in Israel over the past four years, it may be whiskey’s turn.
“Whiskey was always my passion, but now there’s a bigger demand for it,” said Zibell, 36, the founder of Golan Heights Distillery. “Whiskey sales in Israel went up 45 percent in the last three years.”
These new Israeli whiskey-makers are capitalizing upon the spirit’s rising popularity around the world, said Jonathan Ishai, the founder of the Israeli Whisky Society. When Ishai founded his group back in 2003, he said he had few comrades. But today the group boasts 5,000 members who gather at whiskey tasting events, lectures and occasional trips to Scotland.
Pelter, a well-known winery in the northern Golan Heights, was the first operation in Israel to begin distilling whiskey in November 2013.
But Milk & Honey was the first to build its own whiskey distillery in Israel. It began construction on a 10,000-square-foot facility in Jaffa in June 2014 and started distilling in March 2015. Last month the company opened a sleek visitor center, which offers tours, tastings and private events.
“Six whiskey-loving friends decided they wanted to turn a dream into a reality,” said Eitan Attir, Milk & Honey’s new CEO. “Most of them are from high tech and have startups, and this is a bit like a startup.”
Meanwhile, the Golan Heights Distillery remains a tiny, one-man operation. When Zibell moved to Israel with his wife and three of his six children, he
found romance in the idea of distilling in the picturesque Golan Heights, near his Katzrin home.
That Zibell succeeded in being first to market hinges on a technicality: There are no whiskey regulations in Israel, as there are in Scotland or the United States. In Scotland, the birthplace of whiskey (or whisky, as it is known there), laws mandate, among other things, that whiskey age a minimum of three years in oak barrels. In the United States, federal law regulates the percentage of grains and alcohol in labeling various spirits. So while Zibell’s spirit may be considered whiskey in Israel, it wouldn’t necessarily be labeled as such elsewhere.
Fortunately for Zibell and his young spirit, whiskey matures much faster and more intensely in Israel due to the hot and humid climate, according to Ishai.
Zibell formally launched on Israeli Independence Day on May 12. Calling his spirit Golani Whiskey — both for its geographic origin as well as the IDF infantry brigade whose logo inspired the bottle’s green label — Zibell is releasing 100 bottles each week of the 900-bottle run. An additional 600 bottles will soon be available in the United States.
This month, Whisky Live, “the world’s premier whisky tasting show,” will come to Tel Aviv for its third year. And this year, for the first time, visitors will be able to sample locally made whiskeys.