The Fizz #71: Eli Silins' Jewish identity inspires his work as a Philadelphia wine producer
In this issue, Eli and talk about how his Jewish identity connects him to winemaking, his upcoming vineyard project, and his commitment to regional expression.
For the 71st issue of The Fizz, I spoke to Eli Silins, producer at Camuna Cellars in Philadelphia, PA. Eli is a maker with a deep connection to community and regionality. He’s also a practicing Jew, and his spirituality frames the work he does in the vineyard and cellar. As a Jewish person myself, I was really happy to chat with Eli about how his faith plays into his work. We spoke about Jewish laws regarding agriculture, how Eli is thinking about sourcing his fruit locally, and what regionality means to him in a place like Philadelphia.
I’m so excited for Eli’s work with the Alliance Community Reboot, which you’ll read about further in, and the vineyard that he’s planting in South New Jersey, which has a deep history of Jewish agriculture. Eli’s spiritual connection to winemaking is inspiring, and reminds us that wine has been used as a way to connect us with ceremony for thousands of years.
Margot: I’d love to learn a bit about your upbringing—where are you from?
Eli: I’m from Chicago, Evanston. It was a circuitous path that I ended up in California. I was living with some friends in Chicago and one of my friends’ grandmothers bought some land in California in the sixties—60 acres in Santa Cruz. We all packed and camped out there for a while. One thing led to the other and through a friend of a friend, I got a job as a harvest intern at a kosher winery called Covenant.
They were doing custom crush in Napa that year. I joined on and as a cellarmaster in 2013 until we left California before harvest in 2019.
Margot: Was wine a part of your upbringing growing up? Was it a part of your family?
Eli: Not significantly. I joke that my mom would look at a glass of wine and get giggly. We were never a big drinking family. But you know, there was always a bottle of Manischewitz that people would open because you needed a bottle of wine for whatever, for Passover to make charoset with, and there it was the next year and the next year.
I grew up Jewish, but I guess I rebelled kind of. We weren't super religious and I think that probably didn't have too much to do with it, but I went to a conservative day school, like capital C conservative through the conservative Jewish movement. I loved being Jewish, but a lot of it didn't really resonate, and I didn't connect with many aspects of it.
Then I did my own thing and went to a hippy-dippy college and studied agriculture. There were no Jews. Every school has a Hillel—my school didn't have one. Every town has a Chabad. This town didn’t have one. There was nothing there. We were college kids asking the deep questions that early twenty-somethings ask about—what does it all mean? A lot of kids were going to Buddhism or going to spend time on the Hopi reservation, but none of that resonated or felt authentic to me. There was a moment where I realized I had just been scratching the surface of my own tradition. I started getting more into it and getting more observant.
I had been studying agriculture and then I got the religious thing and for my senior thesis, I spent time learning in Israel. Exploring the Holy Land, Israel-Palestine situation, trying to understand it a little bit more. It plays into what I'm doing, I think in a way. It's influenced me in lots of different ways.
My project today is a response to the basic making of the kosher Napa Cabernet, for the types of people that want and can afford that. After four years of Trump as the dominating political figure, I’m trying to make this project, while it's very Jewish, an expression of my Judaism and of me, of what I want to see and be in the world rather than just defaulting to the current norms and standard institutions, if that makes sense.
Margot: It does. How do you feel that your project is showing that connection to Judaism?
Eli: There's a lot of different ways. I compare a lot to my time in California because I felt like we were very much in the mainstream of the Jewish wine world, catering to a certain clientele. That didn't feel authentic to me. Kosher wine also has a pretty shitty reputation. In California, when I felt more established in that world, I minimized the kosher and Jewish aspect. I just want to make the wine that I want to make, and I keep kosher.
I want my wine to be that representation in the world. This wine doesn't really exist in the kosher world other than here. Moving out on my own and feeling like I didn't have to be towing the company line in a way, that was big.
I have an alternative kosher certification from a rabbi friend of mine.
Margot: What does that mean? What is an alternative certification?
Eli: There are the mainstream big name kosher certifications. We call them hechshers, they’re kosher stamps of approval. Everybody has seen them, whether they know it or not. There’s an OU or a K on a product, there’s a bunch of them and they’re mainstream institutions. The one I have is just a small one, that I basically strong armed my friend into making partially so I didn't have to pay for the big ones—it gets to be very expensive—and partially because I felt like I don't fit into that world. I don't want to have to fit myself into that.
Margot: What does that mean to Jewish people who see your certification? What can they expect from the wine?
Eli: Well, they should ask. I don't know what they should expect. The wine is made by somebody who cares deeply about Judaism, who cares about traditional Judaism, but doesn't quite feel capital O Orthodox. I keep the sabbath, I keep kosher, but I think that looks different for a lot of people. It's all a spectrum. Depending on the environment, either I'm extremely religious or I'm not very religious. I have a certification, that’s it.
Margot: What does being certified look like?
Eli: There’s a misnomer that what makes wine kosher is that it's blessed by a rabbi. Some people think the grapes need to be kosher, but most people just don’t know. There are certain halachas [Jewish laws] about agriculture. I studied alternative agriculture and my final project was thinking about what halachically informed, sustainable, modern agriculture actually looks like.
It was that kind of stuff that blew my mind actually about like Torah, like all that stuff, like shmita [every seven years, Jews are supposed to let the land rest, not working it on the seventh year] and yovel [every 50 years is a jubilee year, land is not worked] and pe’ah [Jews are not supposed to harvest from the corners of the fields, so those who are in need can take], like all these things are really radical if you think about them.
When you’re thinking about agriculture, agriculture is the downfall of civilization. It was the birth of civilization and the downfall of humanity or whatever. We became trapped and the hunter gatherer lifestyle is more free, but also there was something really beautiful about all the agricultural laws.
Leaving the fields uncultivated, this is even more mind blowing to me because you don’t leave a vineyard barren, you don’t cultivate it, but the fruit becomes ownerless. Anybody can come and take it. It's this incredibly beautiful concept.
With wine, for certification, it’s about who touches it. It's this very uncomfortable thing that I've kind of reframed, or at least this is the way I look at it, right? When we had the temple in Jerusalem, wine was one of the things that we brought as an offering, and wine that was used for idol worship was not fit to bring it to the temple. Now the way that we safeguard that is by ensuring that people who are obligated to keep the mitzvahs are the people who touch the wine. There's this weird xenophobic way of looking at it, but also I think it says something about wine and the power that wine has and how it's this living thing that can take on energy is also very cool.
Margot: When you moved to Pennsylvania, did you have an idea of what you wanted your wine to look like in this completely new area?
Eli: When we left California, there was definitely a part of me that thought okay I'm kind of like a one trick pony. If I wasn't making wine, I'm not sure what I would do. Initially, when we were looking at where to move, there were the two factors of finding a unique and vibrant Jewish community, which is hard to find, and also a place where I felt like I could be successful at making wine.
My wife is from here. She grew up in the area and we have two kids now, but she was pregnant when we moved here. So that was a big deal. She has a big family here. I kind of just figured hey, people are making wine in Vermont, people are making wine in New York and these places are garnering attention and accolades. Why not Philly, you know?
I read somewhere there are no unholy places. There are only sacred and desecrated. It’s this idea that every place has its beauty. Every place has something special about it. We don't think of this area as a wine producing region, but with hybrid fruit, with apples, with berries with other things, whatever it is, what is it that we can do well here and why? Why it is not appealing is partially because of marketing.
Margot: Absolutely. How are you thinking about the fruit you’re using now? Are the grapes coming to you locally?
Eli: I'm looking for the best fruit I can find, and the most honest growers I can find. This region is still pretty new in terms of wine growing, it feels like. It's old in the history of the United States, but because of prohibition and all the different things, there's still a lot to do. Even today, it's changing with climate change. I mean, the whole world is changing, but I think that there's a lot of exploration that still needs to happen. I'm working on a vineyard project with some folks in South Jersey, so I think that's gonna change the nature of the project if we start developing vineyards and figuring out what grows well here.
Then we'll grow these varietals and explore those and what we can do with those varietals stylistically. Right now it's more like, what can I get? What can I afford? What can I find? Who will sell to me? It's a different scene. I did a lot of research when I first came here, some successes and some failures, and I've been meeting more people as I become more a part of the winemaking community here.
Margot: What does the winemaking community look like where you are?
Eli: Right now in Philly, it's like me and another urban winery, but I've been meeting people in South Jersey, whether they have wineries or vineyards. Mostly growers. I don't actually know too many Pennsylvania winemakers. It doesn't feel like a super cohesive scene to me, or it's not a super cohesive scene. My gross generalization is that it's a different demographic that I don't interact with a lot. I'm talking to more and more people who are interested in making wine in this area, so I think it's going to change a lot.
Margot: Can you tell me about the vineyard project you’re working on now?
Eli: The project that I'm working on is with a non-profit. It's actually historic Jewish farmland in South Jersey. They were actually making kosher wine for Philly there a hundred years ago. It was called the Alliance Colony. I think it was through HIAS in New York that they brought Russian and Polish Jews and settled them in South Jersey on like 15 acres. There's an amazing history, and some of the descendants of that original colony, William and Malya, have restarted and reinvested in the area, and they've founded a nonprofit called the Alliance Community Reboot.
William is a descendent of one of the original founders, Moses Bayuk and he’s buying some of his family's historic farmland and some of the Alliance farmland and they now own 50 acres, and we're starting with less than half an acre to experiment. Nonprofit allows us to experiment with growing organically, not certified, but regenerative, holistic, whatever kind of words we want to throw at it. Honest farming, trying to do right by the land and the community and the people. Hopefully we'll be successful and it'll spread and we’ll plant more.
Margot: Will you be one of the folks who's actually on the ground planting and managing?
Eli: Yes.
Margot: Oh, that's great. Are you excited about that?
Eli: Very much so, yes.
Margot: Nice. Have you done that kind of work before?
Eli: Not for years. I studied agriculture, and I liked working on a few farms here and there. How do you make a small fortune doing this, doing that? You start with a big one. So I thought, oh, I'll get into value added products or something. That's how I'll incorporate this together. Then I ended up working in kitchens and then I ended up making wine. It brought all these things together.
I've always wanted to be outside and work outside and I don't think I could actually hold down a real job. Making something that feels fulfilling, that's in some ways integral and in some ways luxurious but also has a religious and spiritual component, but also grows in the ground, you know? That’s cool.
Margot: Do you feel a spiritual connection to the work you're doing?
Eli: Yeah. Sometimes. On the best of days, for sure. It's my spiritual practice. To me it's like we're doing the work in this world to better, and it feels very holy. I think the agricultural component of that part is missing for me, but there's something about the connection that wine connects the earth to like the land in the fullest sense of the word. To the divine, the celestial, whatever language you want to put on it. That’s Camuna—it’s like communion, but actually, right, because we're trying to commune with each other.
Wine is a tool that brings people together, it can be used to make connections and facilitate, I don't know, good vibes, I guess. As a practicing Jewish person, it also has this other deeper significance. When I'm really feeling good about myself, my job, I make kiddush. That's what I do.
Margot: That’s awesome. Why is it important for you to source your fruit locally? You could just ship grapes out from California. Why do you choose not to do that?
Eli: I don't believe in it. I'm not opposed to getting fruit from New York. I could have some arbitrary number. I think legally in Pennsylvania I can go 300 miles regardless of state. I believe in supporting a local economy and sourcing fruit locally. The other part is that I don't want to drive. It just makes more sense. I can talk about a carbon footprint, and obviously I want to reduce the carbon footprint, but I want to support a local economy.
I don't believe in buying fruit from super far away and having to ship it. There are people here who have made biodynamic wine in Pennsylvania and Philly probably, or you know, greater Philadelphia, shipping biodynamic fruit from the west coast. I don’t know. To me, there’s another project—working here. I mean, people say we believe the best wine comes from the best grapes, and so we ship fruit from Chile and South Africa, and to me, I'm like, how do you know that's the best fruit? Clearly there's some disconnect. You're not looking at the fruit before you buy it. It's coming from thousands of miles away. How can that be?
It's not always the “best fruit” that comes locally, but I think we can grow better fruit here and choose varietals that will do better here and be gentler on the planet and promote that.
Margot: Yeah, I love that. A few of your bottles are either blends or co-ferments, so grapes and other types of fruit. Why is that interesting to you?
Eli: I think there's a few different reasons. When I was in high school and I thought American beer was the best, we don't have any of those old purity laws and you can do whatever you want with beer and come up with whatever. Then as I got older and people started putting bacon and oysters in beer, it looked different to me—not just because I'm kosher, but because it sounds disgusting to me. I was like, whoa, slow it down. Maybe some framework is beneficial.
But now I’m here making wine—there's a permaculture farm that I bought some aronia berries from, and I foraged crab apples from my neighborhood. I bought some cider apples and some Chambourcin and a little bit of honey, and I made this super weird thing.
What does this place want to say? What can we do here? I'm really interested in regionality. I don't know how to say it but there is this allegory. There was a singer Theodore Bikel, and he used to sing Yiddish songs. Somebody asked him why do you sing Yiddish songs? And he said, well, I sing songs in however many different languages. He spoke a bunch of different languages, but I sing Yiddish songs because they're my songs and if I don't sing them, then this flower in this mosaic will be gone. I always found that really beautiful. I think to the same effect, I would love to see a regional conversation. In a way, it's a push against American homogenization.
If you want to make Burgundy in South Jersey, maybe you can do it. We can do whatever it takes to grow Pinot Noir, and then do whatever it takes in the winery to make it taste like that, whether it's selecting yeast or oaking or filtering or all the different things, all the different tools that winemakers have available to design a wine, or you could make something of this place that speaks of this place and find something interesting that you didn't even know was here. That’s putting fewer expectations on the land and rather being open to a partnership with the land.
Part of the Jewish lens that I see winemaking through is that we're partners in creation. Sometimes I'll say I'm a winemaker because it's easier to say and people understand that. I don't identify as a winemaker. We don't make wine, we're stewards, yeast and bacteria stewards. There are definitely elements that are way out of our control. I think a lot of people try and control those elements. I’m interested in trying to create the best environments, growing the best fruit, creating a nice happy space to raise wine in. I like that framing.
Margot: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time! Really excited about your vineyard project.
You can support this Eli and Camuna Cellars by buying their wines. Follow Eli on Instagram to stay up to date with his new vineyard project with Alliance Community Reboot.