16.05.2009
By: Howard G. Goldberg
What do the following wines have in common? Laurent-Perrier brut nonvintage
Champagne; Châteaux Clarke, Giscours, Léoville- Poyferré, Pontet-Canet; and St-Emilion garagiste Valandraud. Yes, they’re all pretty good, and, yes, they’re all pretty expensive …and they all have kosher versions.
All are made by special crews whose duties begin with delivered grapes and end
with bottling. These field and cellar hands, overseen by rabbis, follow production
rules that let religious Jews use the wines. Kosher wines are made across the
globe: as well as the more obvious US and Israel, they can be found in Australia,
Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and
Portugal. Producers everywhere share the same mantra: theirs is ‘great wine that
happens to be kosher’.
Yet an identity crisis besets kosher wine. It stems from the style revolution
that Israel generated in 1984 when the Golan Heights Winery’s prototype
Yarden Sauvignon Blanc 1983 – a light, dry white – reached the US. Today, dry
kosher wine, red or white, is commonplace at Passover seders, sabbath and holiday
meals and simchas (the Hebrew word for a joyous event, such as a wedding).
Although winemakers follow Orthodox rules in making high-end and everyday
kosher wines that cater primarily to Jewish consumers – especially the modern
Orthodox – they are also playing to the non-Jewish trade. And to neutralise the
public’s automatic assumption that kosher wines are primarily sacramental niche
products, winemakers are miniaturising words and symbols denoting Jewishness
on front and back labels and in marketing materials. The Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America’s powerful accreditation symbol, the letter ‘O’ with the
letter ‘u’ inside it, may be barely legible.
Some Jewish vintners confide that they don’t want non-Jewish consumers to notice
that their wines are kosher. So retailers are encouraged to put kosher Cabernet
Sauvignons in a bin of California reds instead of on segregated shelves signposted
‘kosher’. It’s the same with Israeli wines – producers want to promote them as
Israeli, but not necessarily kosher.
At the first-ever large-scale New York tasting of Israeli wines, held in February,
Yair Shiran of the Israel Economic Mission told me: ‘We want to bring
Israeli wines into the mainstream market. We want to promote them as Israeli, as
eastern Mediterranean. Some are kosher, but that is not relevant. For Israeli wine
to have potential growth, in the long run it has to go beyond the kosher market.’
Many of Israel’s more than 200 wineries want their products approached in the
same national, regional, religion-free way that French, German and Italian wines
are. Their main overseas markets are the US, the UK, Germany and Italy. Japan is
entering their radar. ‘I was in a sushi bar in Tokyo, and two of the 10 wines on the
menu were Yarden,’ says Victor Schoenfeld, winemaker at Golan Heights.
Not all Israeli wines are kosher, and this is particularly the case at the rising
number of boutique wineries, whose nonreligious winemakers, such as Tal
Pelter of Pelter Winery, want total control. But most are. To further complicate
matters, various Orthodox groupings, ultra- and otherwise, do not consider all
kosher wines equally kosher.
Because standard kashruth practices in the vineyard and cellar coincide with
universal vineyard and cellar methods, it is relatively easy to produce high-quality
competitive kosher wines in idiosyncratic and preferred standardised styles.
Thus, in an increasingly terroir-hungry world, Israeli vintners are positioned to
express their region rather than religion: Galilee (including Golan Heights), Shomron,
Samson, Judean Hills and the Negev. Adam Montefiore, development director at
Carmel, Israel’s oldest and largest kosher producer, says: ‘It is far easier for a winery
that observes kashruth to produce kosher wines of real quality than it is for a non-
kosher winery to produce the occasional kosher batch of the same quality.’
For kosher wine to be served by non-Jews – restaurants’ and caterers’
waiters – without thereby being rendered nonkosher, the post-harvest grape-must
or finished wine is flash-pasteurised to about 80˚C (176˚F) and immediately
dropped to about 16˚C (60˚F). The wine is then designated as mevushal, meaning
‘boiled,’ a term winemakers shun because of negative connotations. Generally the
finest kosher wines are not mevushal; if a wine is mevushal, its label says so. The
process so troubles some producers that some labels declare ‘Not mevushal.’
Such considerations further complicate the kosher-wine picture. Abroad, secular
Jews may be unaware or uninterested that such wines exist. Why should non-
Jews take notice? The answer is that they shouldn’t. But if commentators accept
the idea that premium kosher wines now belong to an international peerage, they
might objectify them for the world market by avoiding gooey sentimental
prose (‘Grandma fed me three drops of sweet Cream Malaga with my gefilte
fish’) that ghettoizes their image.
The Process of Purity
Contrary to a hoary notion, wine doesn’t become kosher by being rabbinically
blessed. It is kosher (Hebrew for pure) if it is made under rabbinic supervision
and meets strict production criteria that render it suitable for religious Jews’ use.
Israel has no indigenous grape varieties. All grapes used in winemaking,
vinifera and otherwise, are permissible. No regulations govern quality.
For authorities to certify a wine as kosher, the winemaker must be an
Orthodox sabbath-observant Jew. Non-Orthodox Jewish winemakers and
non-Jews may direct cellar functions, but only religious personnel can do
hands-on work involving grapes, juice, equipment and wine. Cellar apparatus
must be entirely sanitary, and devoid of foreign objects (imagine hosed
torrents of boiling water).
In winemaking, only kosher substances are allowed. Halacha (Jewish law)
decrees that clarification cannot involve isinglass, which comes from sturgeon,
a nonkosher fish, and gelatin and casein, respectively animal and dairy derivatives.
Wine designated kosher for Passover cannot have come into contact with grain, bread
or leavened dough.
In Israel, but not the diaspora, kosher wine entails ancient agricultural law.
No wine can come from a vine until its fourth year after planting. If a vineyard lies in Biblical territory, every seventh year it must lie fallow (a practice oft circumvented for
economic reasons).
The accompanying article and sidebar, by Howard G. Goldberg, appear in the June 2009 issue of Decanter magazine, based in London. Mr. Goldberg is Decanter’s East Coast correspondent in the United States.
The article is reprinted here with Decanter’s permission. Mr. Goldberg has long written about wine for The New York Times and is a columnist for Wine News, a magazine published in Coral Gables, Florida.
I buy Israeli wines in my country (Not for Israelis)
