About - Covenant Wines

An Urban Winery

Old Tradition
New Paradigm

In 2003, Covenant founders Jeff Morgan and Leslie Rudd tasted an Israeli wine that inspired them to bring a new California perspective a 3500-year-old winemaking tradition. What started as a 500-case Napa Cabernet project has now grown more than ten-fold. Today, Covenant’s 7,000-square-foot urban winery is situated in Berkeley, California, also home to other urban wineries. Covenant’s sister winery, Covenant Israel, was founded in 2013. Since 2013, Covenant Israel wines have been made in the northern Galilee.

What is Kosher Wine?

Essentially, all wine is kosher. Because kosher wine is also a beverage used to sanctify the Sabbath and other holidays, tradition mandates that it can only be handled in the cellar by Sabbath-observant Jews. That said, our Covenant wines are made very simply, with natural, indigenous yeasts and no fining. Many of our wines are also unfiltered and produced from organic or biodynamic vineyards. We don’t “boil” our wines either. In fact, we make our wines exactly as we would make them if they weren’t kosher. We just don’t work on Saturday or other Jewish holidays.

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From Napa to Sonoma to Lodi and even northern Israel, Covenant is fortunate to work with exceptional vineyards and growers.

Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from several exceptional vineyards in Napa Valley. Pinot Noir is sourced from Francis Mahoney’s hilltop Carneros vineyard. We also have long-standing relationships with growers in Sonoma’s Bennett Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Dry Creek Valley and Sonoma Valley and Lake County. In Lodi, we work with the Mettler family’s vineyards. In Israel, our best Syrah is grown on Israel’s only biodynamic vineyard—Tzivon—in the Upper Galilee.

Richard Mounts Vineyard

Dry Creek Valley

Zinfandel, Petite Sirah,
Grenache

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Allan Nelson Vineyard

Dry Creek Valley

Sauvignon Blanc,
Merlot

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Moaveni Vineyard

Bennett Valley

Syrah

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Scopus Vineyard

Sonoma Mountain

Chardonnay

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Rudd Vineyard

Mt. Veeder

Cabernet Sauvignon,
Merlot, Malbec

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Rudd Oakville Estate

Oakville

Cabernet Sauvignon

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Mahoney Vineyard

Carneros

Pinot Noir

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The Covenant Crew

At our winery in Berkeley, Covenant’s crew is a bit like an extended family. In fact, some of us are actually related! The production and marketing teams operate in close proximity and often share lunches together outside the winery under the California sun. We’ve grown together as a business and as friends. We hope that our wines promote the same kind of comradery that we experience here in the winery at dinner tables throughout the world.