Taybeh, Palestine: The Village Behind Palestine's Only Beer and Wine

Taybeh, Palestine sits on a hilltop some twelve kilometers northeast of Ramallah, and it holds a distinction no other Palestinian town shares: it is the only village in the West Bank where every resident is Christian, and it is home to the only brewery and winery in the Arab world. The vineyards that cover its slopes are not new. Families here were harvesting grapes for wine a century ago, and the village's name in Arabic, at-Taiyiba (الطيبة), means "the good one." Visitors who want to carry a piece of that heritage with them can browse FALASTIN's Palestinian Clothing collection alongside reading the fuller story below.

Origins and Ancient History

Taybeh's older name was Ephraim, and the Gospel of John names it as the town Jesus withdrew to after raising Lazarus, when the authorities in Jerusalem had begun planning to have him killed: "Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there into the country near the wilderness, to a city called Ephraim, and there he stayed with his disciples." Some scholars connect the same site to Ophrah, a town of the tribe of Benjamin named in the Book of Joshua.

The village's current name dates to around 1187, according to local tradition. The Muslim leader Saladin is said to have passed through during his campaign against the Crusader kingdoms and renamed the town after its inhabitants showed him hospitality, from the Arabic root for "good" or "pleasant." The Church of St. George was built on the village's eastern edge in the fifth century, during the Byzantine period, and Crusader-era builders added to it in the twelfth century, making it one of the oldest standing churches in Palestine.

Landmarks in Taybeh

• The Church of St. George, the fifth-century Byzantine church on the village's eastern edge, with Crusader-era additions from the twelfth century.
• Three working churches for a village of roughly a thousand people: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic (Latin), and Melkite Greek Catholic, each maintaining its own parish.
• Taybeh Brewery, built next to the Khoury family home, with public tours of the brewing floor.
• Taybeh Winery, a smaller operation that opened in 2013, drawing on grapes grown in the surrounding hills.
• Terraced hillsides of olive groves and vineyards that surround the village on every side, visible in photographs taken here as far back as the 1930s.

A Cultural and Economic Hub

In 1994, a year after the Oslo Accords, brothers Nadim and David Khoury returned to their family's home village to build a brewery. Their family had left for Brookline, Massachusetts, where they ran a liquor store, and Nadim had started making his own beer as a student at Hellenic College before studying brewing formally at UC Davis. Their father, Canaan Khoury, financed and oversaw construction of the building next to his own house. Taybeh Brewery is considered the first Palestinian brewery and the first microbrewery in the whole Middle East, producing its Golden lager alongside Light, Dark, Amber, and White varieties, plus a non-alcoholic option for the wider regional market.

The business stayed a family one. Nadim's daughter Madees returned to work there in 2007, and the brewery describes her as the first and only female brewer in the Middle East at the time. His son Canaan, Nadim's namesake grandson of the elder Canaan Khoury, graduated from Harvard in mechanical engineering in 2013 and came home to open Taybeh Winery the same year, using grape varieties grown locally alongside the traditional winemaking his grandmother had taught him as a boy.

Why Does Taybeh, Palestine Have the Region's Only Brewery and Winery?

Part of the answer is simply who lives there. Taybeh's population has remained entirely Christian for centuries, an Ottoman tax register from 1596 already counted twenty-three Christian families in the village, and alcohol production never carried the same friction it would in a mixed or majority-Muslim town nearby. The rest of the answer is the Khourys themselves: a family with the capital, the brewing education, and the stubbornness to put $1.5 million of their own savings into a business most people around them in 1994 thought could not work in the West Bank. No bank would lend to them, so they sold their property in Brookline instead.

The result reshaped the village's economy. Each October since 2005, Taybeh has hosted an Oktoberfest-style beer festival that the brewery calls one of the largest cultural events in Palestine, drawing visitors to a town that would otherwise see very little outside traffic.

What Are Some Lesser-Known Facts About Taybeh?

• Taybeh's population today is estimated at around 1,200, down from roughly 3,000 at its peak, as more residents have left for the diaspora.
• An Ottoman register from 1596 already recorded twenty-three Christian families living in the village.
• In 2009, a joint Palestinian and French archaeological team uncovered Byzantine and medieval artifacts in the courtyard of the Church of St. George.
• Taybeh Winery sits at roughly 3,000 feet of elevation, among the highest vineyards in the region.
• Taybeh Brewery was, by 1997, the first Palestinian company to open a franchise operation in Germany.

What Taybeh Carries Forward

A village of around a thousand people, on a hilltop that has carried three names across three different eras, still makes wine and beer the way it has made olives for generations: because the land and the climate have always supported it, and because the people who stayed kept doing it. The same instinct runs through Beit Jala's own terraced vineyards further south, and through the quiet discipline of Al-Eizariya, the biblical village of Bethany, another small town near Jerusalem that has held onto its name and its story. It is the same instinct behind carrying a key to a home that is still remembered: keeping something going, in public, because it is yours to keep.

At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Palestinian Clothing collection.

100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.

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