Sari Khoury, the proprietor of Philokalia in the West Bank, would prefer to speak of the craft of winemaking and the ancient winemaking history of Palestinians rather than of the precarious circumstances he must currently navigate simply to get his work done.
Mr. Khoury was one of the very few winemakers working in the region before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza, about 45 miles to the southwest. And his work, creating excellent natural wines, has continued through the war.
Winemaking is not widely practiced today in the West Bank, though Mr. Khoury cited one other producer near Bethlehem, Cremisan Winery, which has been making wine since 1885 and is run by the Salesians of St. John Bosco, a Roman Catholic order.
Since the war in Gaza began, Israel has intensified raids and arrests of Palestinians across the West Bank in what it describes as a campaign against terrorism. Mr. Khoury, who works in the West Bank, lives in Beit Hanina, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
Going back and forth to the vines he tends near Bethlehem is tricky because it is separated from Jerusalem by a wall and several checkpoints. “Checkpoints are not predictable,” he said. “Sometimes it’s 45 minutes, sometimes two hours, especially exiting the West Bank.”
Throughout history, in times of conflict, farmers and winemakers have tried to carry on as best they can. In Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, Israeli airstrikes across the south and in the Bekaa Valley, prime winemaking regions, have made these areas hazardous to farm. Yet the wine growers continue, just as they did through 15 years of civil war in the 1970s and ’80s.
Ukrainians are making excellent wine despite the catastrophic invasion by Russia in 2022. In Armenia, winemaking went on through that country’s conflict with Azerbaijan, and in Europe, during World War II, civilians continued to make wine.
“Wine is above politics,” the great Lebanese winemaker Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar said in 2012. “Wine is tolerance.”
Mr. Khoury’s superb wines are the first Palestinian ones I’ve tried. “Grapes of Wrath” is a red, bright and refreshing with earthy, stony flavors, the kind of wine that invites you to return to the glass again and again. It reminded me of a good cru Beaujolais, maybe a Fleurie, but it was more delicate despite the intensity of its flavor.
“Anima Syriana” is an amber wine, tightly wound, and more reticent than the red. Slowly, over the course of a couple of days as the wine was exposed to air, it began to open, revealing an intriguing minerality that, like the red, encouraged repeated sips.
Mr. Khoury makes these wines naturally from grapes grown near Bethlehem. He is especially interested in the vast variety of grapes that have been grown in this soil for thousands of years, and in exploring their potential for making wine.
“A lot of these native grapes, they are prehistory as far as modern winemaking is concerned,” he said in a conversation over WhatsApp.
The one thing he would not talk about was which grapes he used to make the wines that I found so distinctive.
“I don’t discuss grapes,” he said. “I focus on the quality of the wines.”
Mostly, grapes are grown for other purposes.
“There’s a tradition of producing multiple things with grapes,” Mr. Khoury said. “It’s like olives, which are for eating, for oil, the pomace is used for firewood. Grapes are even more diverse — grape leaves, raisins, molasses, fruit leather, grape syrup — different villages have different traditions.”
Mr. Khoury, 46, grew up in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. His family is Greek Orthodox, a minority group in the region, he said. After graduating from high school in the Old City of Jerusalem, Mr. Khoury came to the United States to study architecture at Virginia Tech. From there he moved to Paris, where he worked in architecture and got a master’s degree in business administration.
In France, Nasser Soumi, a Palestinian artist and writer, introduced Mr. Khoury to wine and told him of the long history of Palestinian wine, which fascinated him.
“Did you know Gazan wine merchants were selling wine in Bordeaux in the seventh century?” Mr. Khoury asked me.
His time with Mr. Soumi inspired Mr. Khoury to dream of making Palestinian wine with grapes native to the region.
He began traveling to European wine regions, hoping to absorb enough to make his dream real. He spent one vintage with Pascal Frissant of Château Coupe Roses in Languedoc learning winemaking. He spent time in Bordeaux and the Rhône and Loire Valleys, as well as in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus, before returning to the West Bank in 2014.
The one thing he didn’t study in Europe was farming, because he wanted to learn from older farmers in the West Bank.
“They domesticated the vine 10,000 years ago, so they must know what they are doing,” Mr. Khoury said. “I immersed myself in their environment to understand their connection to the vineyard.”
In particular, Mr. Khoury sought out farmers who had vineyards 60 to 110 years old, and who worked traditionally, not using chemicals or trellises, a modern system of training vines on wires. The vines he works with are trained high on stakes and look like small trees.
He did a tiny experimental vintage in 2014, and slowly ramped up his production to 10,000 bottles in 2022 and 2023. He worked with many different grapes, trying to identify those varieties with the highest potential for wine, and he planted his own vineyard.
“After recognizing those grapes, I wanted to make a wine that would celebrate 10,000 years of wine history,” he said. “I wanted to plant these native varieties in one plot.”
Given the deteriorating security climate in the West Bank, Mr. Khoury said, his production in 2024 was just a quarter of what it had been the previous two years.
Nonetheless, Mr. Khoury is undeterred in pursuing his ambitions.
“It’s just a risk we take,” he said. “I am looking for an avenue of creative self-expression and the pursuit of excellence. Mediocrity is often justified by the circumstances under which we live. I can’t accept that.”
Since 2021, the vintage I tasted, he has lowered yields in the vineyards. He made his own clay amphoras. His new white and red, he said, showed exceptional potential.
“We don’t have enough references, so we have to do the research,” he said. “I keep refining the cuvées every year.”
Does he ever think about what it would be like to make wine in a place less torn by conflict?
“I am more consumed by questions of meaning and how to make a creative contribution in any environment,” he said. “Despite the challenges, I somehow find more of these opportunities at home.
“I think I was naïve to the actual cost on oneself when I started this project,” he added. “The situation does make it difficult to think and plan long-term, and it also makes it difficult to communicate the value of our work. But I am doing my best.”
I was curious about why he named the red wine I’d enjoyed “Grapes of Wrath.”
“The vineyard reminded me of the book by Steinbeck,” he said. “The delusion of opportunity on one hand, the resilience and the transforming of pain into opportunity.”
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