Young Jewish girl Ettie capping wine bottles at the Mount Carmel Winery in Rishon Lezion, Israel; 1970. x
For an Israeli wine to be certified as kosher, several requirements must be met. In the fields, the grapes of new vines can only be used for making wine after the fourth year of planting. The fields must also be left fallow every seventh year, which is known as the shmita. It is also required that vegetables or other fruits not be grown between the vines.
Once the harvest starts, only kosher tools and storage facilities may be used in the wine-making process, and all of the wine-making equipment must be cleaned to be certain that no foreign objects remain. Only Sabbath-observant male Jews are allowed to work in the production. Some wines are flash pasteurized, known as mevushal, and there is a ritual in which just over 1% of the wine produced is poured away to symbolize the tax once paid to the Temple in Jerusalem.
