Israeli winery recreates wine drank by Jesus using native grapes

The indigenous grapes of Israel are now used by wineries to recreate ancient wines that are said to be consumed by King David and Jesus Christ.

According to The New York Times, the high-end Recantari Winery released last month a wine called Marawi. It came from native grapes that came from Ariel University project that uses DNA testing to determine if it was indeed the wine that was drunk by personalities from the scriptures. Ariel research head and oncologist Eliyashiv Drori traced Marawi and the local Jandali grapes back to the A.D. 220, also using references from the Babylonian Talmud.

"Where did these varieties disappear to? We hypothesized that our ancestors' vines became neglected when Muslim regimes took over around the seventh century. Later on, the Mamluk rulers prohibited wine production and cut down all the vineyards.

Thus, people started growing only table grapes," said Drori in a report by Israel 21. "Yet we believed that because of the strong resilience of the grapevine some would still be found in nature in the wild."

There is a problem, however, on the labeling of products from Israeli settlements. There is a new EU guideline that requires these products to be explicitly labeled before being sold to European nations. According to The Guardian, Israel brands see this as "discriminatory," prompting its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to order a "suspension of diplomatic contacts with the EU and its representatives in this matter."

West Bank farmers and wine growers can't help but worry about the impact on their business. Some already start diversifying into markets in Russia and Asia just to avoid EU rules.

Drori looked for tasters who will produce white wines using the indigenous Marawi. One of the tasters, Ido Lewinsohn of Recanati, said Marawi "is not an easy drinking wine. It is complex and interesting. The nose is very citrus and mineral; you can really feel the soil in this wine. It's not aromatic like Muscato but has lots of character on the mineral notes."

Finding Marawi is significant for Israel because it gives the country a wine ID. Now it has a product that truly comes from its native grapes.