Eli Ben Zaken

The Path

Eli Ben Zaken has been the founder and winemaker of Domaine du Castel since 1983, and that longevity is the point: one estate, one role, sustained over decades. The work sits in the Judaean Hills west of Jerusalem, where his imprint has been built through repetition, continuity, and attention to place. Egyptian-born and educated in Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom before making aliyah, Ben Zaken brings an international frame to a very specific hillside site. That breadth shows up not as distance from the land, but as a way of holding it in focus.

The Work Today

The current work remains exactly what the title says: founder and winemaker in the Judaean Hills west of Jerusalem. Ben Zaken describes the vineyard side of the project in practical terms, starting with the first plantings and the scale that followed: “I was the first to plant vines, by mistake maybe, in the Judaean Hills in modern era, today we have in dunam—a dunam is a tenth of a hectare—we have about three hundred dunams, and the region has nearly three thousand dunams.” The language is unadorned, and that matters. It places the estate inside a larger regional picture while keeping the emphasis on first plantings, measured growth, and a direct relationship to the hillside itself.

Signature

The estate wines most closely associated with Eli Ben Zaken are Castel Grand Vin 1992 and Petit Castel. Those labels function as shorthand for Domaine du Castel’s identity, with his name attached to the wines as evidence of the house style he has built.

In Their Words “I am the founder and winemaker of Domaine du Castel, in the Judaean Hills just ten miles west of Jerusalem.” “It’s a very good wine country. In fact, the region was making wine for the temple thousands of years ago.” Taken together, those lines place the work between a specific modern estate and a much older wine landscape. Ben Zaken speaks to both without ornament: site, history, and continuity.

Acclaim

The quality question, in his telling, does not hinge on kosher status. Ben Zaken has said, “The kosher aspect doesn’t make a difference in the quality.” The point is plain: the standard is the wine itself, and the craft should stand on its own terms.