a veteran member who greatly helped in establishing the winery.   Shlomi owns over 250 dunam of vineyards containing Cabernet, Merlot and Chardonnay grapes at an altitude of 600 meters above sea level. The vines grow in ideal climatic conditions for these species. An additional vineyard on Har (Mt.) Bracha belongs to Erez Ben Saadon, a supplier of high-quality Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to the winery, and Nir Amit’s vineyard in Moshav (cooperative settlement) Mata in the southern Jerusalem mountains supplies Viognier, Cabernet  Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes.

The entire harvest is performed by hand in the early morning hours. The short distance between the vineyards and the winery enables the grapes to arrive at the winery within an hour from the time they are harvested.

The Psagot vineyards are planted on hard, rocky limestone terrain which is terraced in the Mediterranean Greek-Italian fashion. In order to facilitate the vine’s absorption into the ground, holes were drilled into the ground so that the vine’s roots would take hold well below the ground surface. The distance between vines is one meter, and the yield is low – about 600 kilograms per dunam. The terraced terrain makes harvesting difficult, but the 900-meter altitude and the snow which covers the vineyard in the winter compensate for the aforementioned difficult growing conditions  ultimately yielding extremely high-quality grapes.

The Merlot, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc species are harvested from the Dolev vineyard on the other side of the mountain ridge. The vineyard belongs to Shlomi Cohen,