Vintners Gabriel and Shimon Weiss, the co-founders of Shirah Wine Co., don’t even attempt to hide their true nature: They are geeks — wine geeks.
But as Gabriel and his brother pointed out while they opened a bottle from their Vintage White line, a blend of viognier and grenache blanc grapes grown in Santa Barbara County, they are poor man wine geeks.
Each, but particularly Gabriel, 35, has a deep knowledge and love of the elements that go into good wine. And each, but particularly Shimon, 32, is a self-taught wine manufacturer.
A small, niche company created in 2009, Shirah (shirahwine.com) is slowly becoming a known entity in the kosher wine world. It is distributed by The River and sold at stores in New York, New Jersey and at The Cask LA here in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.
Shirah’s introductory line, Power to the People — a dark red syrah sourced from two vineyards in Santa Barbara County and fermented with a touch of viognier — sold 300 cases (each case has 12 bottles) at $65 per bottle. The success of that blend, which also has hints of apricot and violet flavors, prompted the Weiss brothers to bottle and sell two more red wines, each from grapes grown at the same two vineyards sourced for Power to the People.
Now carrying anywhere from three to six varieties at any given time, Shirah Wine produced the equivalent of nearly 22,000 bottles in 2013 (still aging) and sold 70 percent of its 2012 production, the brothers said.
Although they can sound like lifelong oenophiles, the Weisses are as surprised as anyone to be sharing time living between their homes in Los Angeles and their facility in Santa Maria. Born in Cincinnati and spending time in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Israel and Monsey, N.Y., neither brother had even the faintest hint that wine would be in their future as they came of age.
Gabriel was taking night classes in product design in 2005 as a yeshiva student in Monsey when one of his friends had a brother who worked for Herzog in Oxnard. The winery needed extra hands for that season’s harvest, so Gabriel flew west to work as a temporary “cellar rat,” a not-so-endearing term for the guy who does the dirty work needed in any winery — lugging barrels, cleaning tanks, sanitizing hoses.
Then, Gabriel and a few of his buddies reaped leftover grapes from that year’s massive yield in a San Luis Obispo vineyard to produce nearly 300 bottles of syrah aged in a friend’s garage in Los Angeles. Gabriel’s growing knowledge of wine persuaded his younger brother — who was working as a carpenter — to leave Monsey in 2007 and join him working on Herzog’s harvest. (Shimon thought it would be temporary.)
Living together with a friend in an Oxnard apartment down the road from the winery, the Weisses put their combined experience and connections to entrepreneurial use, gaining access to a Santa Barbara winemaker’s crushing and pressing equipment to make and sell 90 cases of their “Syraph” and “1-2Punch” creations out of about two tons of grapes.
“It was head and shoulders better than any other kosher syrah that I’ve ever had,” Gabriel said, characterizing the intoxicating introductory line as “17 percent alcohol rocket fuel.”
The company’s name, Shirah, means “song” in Hebrew, but its inspiration came from an older Orthodox Jewish man whom Gabriel knew, a “kabbalist on Pico” now living in Israel.
“I asked him, ‘So what should I name this wine?’ So he’s like, ‘ “Shirah,” because it’s syrah,’ ” Gabriel said.
Proudly pointing to the label on a bottle of Shirah’s Coalition, an exotic, fruity blend of sangiovese, dolcetto, zinfandel and merlot, the Weisses showed how their art-inspired backgrounds in product design and carpentry seeped into their current trade. It’s designed in the style of the Declaration of Independence and reads like it was written by a colonial Brit — in penmanship and syntax. Just above the label sits a red wax seal with the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter in Shirah.
Shimon, who plays Shirah’s bean-counter to his researcher and bookworm brother, said the company’s next big move is launching a wine club this winter, which would allow paying members to purchase yet-to-be-produced bottles of the brothers’ more select, higher-end wines.
Overall, business and life are good for the Weisses. Gabriel lives in Valley Village with his wife and two children, and Shimon is newly married and living in Pico-Robertson.
During an interview, as the two slowly sipped some of their wine, Gabriel summed up his philosophy: Expensive, fancy wine is unimpressive.
“Give me something that’s hard to find, something different and unique,” he said.
Sounds like the story behind Shirah. After all, are there any better adjectives than “different” and “unique” to describe two Orthodox Jewish brothers with backgrounds in product design and carpentry who move 3,000 miles across the country to harvest grapes, with a dream of creating a successful high-end kosher wine label?
