Moa Winery, the first winery established in the Arava, was founded by Yehuda and Zvia Friedman. The two met at Kibbutz Mefalsim, where Yehuda grew up and where Zvia arrived as part of a Nahal army-agricultural group. They married in the early 1980s and moved to Moshav Zofar in the Arava, driven by a pioneering Zionist spirit — to farm the land and make the desert bloom.

Over the years, the family grew a range of crops sold both in Israel and abroad, building the family farm that still stands today. Their introduction to the world of wine came through Elad, Zvia and Yehuda’s son-in-law, who has worked in the wine industry for over a decade. Elad and Dana would visit the Arava bringing bottles of wine and a genuine passion for the craft — a passion that gradually spread to the rest of the family.

An entrepreneurial farming spirit, a desire for something new, and real curiosity led Yehuda to study winemaking at Soreq Winery. When he finished, the family decided together to start a winery of their own. In 2014, after years of growing other crops, they set out to realize another dream — a small, family-run winery. A building that had once been a pepper packing house, and industrial refrigerators once used in the early 2000s to cool the flowers the family used to grow, became Moa Winery’s production space and barrel room.

The first harvest, in 2015, marked the start of the family’s journey into the world of wine — a journey of innovation and hard work. The winery itself sits between the family home and the young date palm orchard, bringing every branch of the family farm together in one place, close to the family itself.

The winery is named after the ancient fortress of Moa, whose ruins lie near Moshav Zofar. In ancient times, Moa served as a waystation and resting stop — one of the resting points along the Nabatean Incense Route, which once crossed the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Negev, all the way to the Mediterranean coast near Gaza.

Today, the winery is an inseparable part of the family, who work together from harvest through production and tasting, all the way to pouring a cool glass of wine.