The challenge of making Palestinian wine

The vines are heavy with grapes, the harvest just a few days away. Yet Sari Khoury is stressed: he cannot find workers to pick grapes in his vineyards. Proud owner of the Philokalia label, he is one of a handful of Palestinians in the West Bank producing wine under the trickiest of circumstances: .A “separation wall” between Israel proper and most of the Palestinian territory it occupies towers above Mr Khoury’s cellar in Bethlehem. Mr Khoury’s vineyards are hemmed in by Gush Etzion, a cluster of Jewish settlements nudging the south of the city. Constant niggles of the occupation abound.