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April 4, 2010 | 7:16 am
Kosher Wine Basics: Reality 101
Posted by Jeff Morgan
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With Passover upon us this year, we were treated to a tsunami of web and print articles concerning kosher wine. Some were correct, but others were riddled with misinformation.
To set the record straight, let’s clarify a few basics from my perspective as a kosher winemaker:
What makes a wine kosher? The fact is that all wine is inherently kosher. However to keep it kosher, it can only be handled by Sabbath-observant Jews.
Does kosher wine need to be blessed by a rabbi? No. But if a commercial winemaker wishes to have a widely accepted kosher certification, the certification will typically be provided by an organization that employs rabbis charged with making sure kosher requirements are honored.
What techniques distinguish kosher winemaking from non-kosher winemaking? Aside from not working on the Sabbath or other holy days, there is no such thing as a kosher winemaking technique. Kosher wines are made exactly like non-kosher wines, which leaves the door open to a wide variety of methods. Both kosher and non-kosher winemakers may choose to vary their techniques. But this typically has nothing to do with the wine’s being kosher. It’s just about making wine.
Is there a kosher wine style? Kosher wines come in all styles and colors. During the last 150 years in America, native Concord grapes became the foundation for something mistakenly referred to as “traditional” kosher wine. Unfortunately, Concord grapes are not even the right species of grape for making quality wine. Concord grape wine’s foxy “sweet-and-sour” aspect remains an unfortunate chapter in the history of kosher winemaking. This is not what our ancestors in Jerusalem drank! And it is certainly not “traditional.”
Kosher wines are not boiled. Yet some kosher wines may be flash-pasteurized. These flash-pasteurized wines are called, “mevushal,” which means, cooked, in Hebrew. What’s that all about? Sad to say, it’s about some two or three millennia of weird notions that have done nothing to improve the quality of Jewish wine or the reputation of Jewish winemakers.
Why mevushal? Personally, I don’t really understand what drove Jews to boil their wines and render them undrinkable back in the Old Days. Many theories abound. Some say that certain rabbis didn’t want Jews to enjoy themselves too much when drinking. (An ancient guilt-building complex?) Other folks say it was a way of sterilizing the wine—aka a health concept.
Still other theorists postulate that cooking kosher wine was a way of keeping non-believers from profaning otherwise holy wine. The idea must have been to make the wine taste so bad that no self-respecting idolator would dream of drinking it in the service of Bacchus!
Technically—according to Jewish tradition—a mevushal wine is not really even wine. That’s why anyone—observant or not—is allowed to handle it. (Those of you shaking your heads in disbelief should remember that religion is a question of faith. You can interpret it as you wish; but don’t try to write the rules.) With heat-treated mevushal wine, the “who-can-touch-it?” issue becomes irrelevant. This makes mevushal the wine-of-choice for most American kosher restaurants and catering halls, where a non-observant or non-Jewish wait staff may serve mevushal wines for Sabbath-observant Jews with impunity. (European and Israeli kosher restaurants don’t seem to subscribe to this decidedly American custom. More on this subject in a future blog.)
It’s interesting to note that mevushal wines were not allowed to be used at the altar of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. Was this because a wine that was “technically not wine” wasn’t good enough for G-d? Or was it because the Cohens and Levis couldn’t stomach the boiled stuff? We’ll probably never know. Whatever the reason, the 12th-century Jewish sage, Maimonides, wrote that if mevushal wine wasn’t good enough for the Temple, then it wasn’t good enough to make kiddush. You can interpret this as you see fit.
So, is non-mevushal wine better than mevushal wine? Not necessarily. There are plenty of lousy non-heated wines—both kosher and non-kosher. And in all fairness to the boatloads of mevushal wine currently being sold today, it’s important to remember that these wines are no longer boiled. They are flash pasteurized, which means they are quickly heated to around 180 degrees F and then rapidly cooled down. The process is less destructive than the old method of slowly heating wine a big pot or tank.
Some people maintain that heating grape juice will enhance aromatics or that flash-pasteurization is so quick that it has no effect on the wine. I’m not sure. But as a winemaker, I can tell you that flash-heating is not a technique I would consider in my quest for quality. If flash-pasteurization offered a passport to greatness, you can be sure that a whole lot of non-kosher winemakers would be doing it too!
I figure if I go to the trouble to make the best possible wine that I can, then I’m not going to mess around with something that, at best, won’t hurt the wine. It makes absolutely no sense from a qualitative perspective. But if I had a plenty of kosher wine that I needed to sell in kosher restaurants and catering halls throughout the land, then mevushal might be the way to go.
Are we Jews crazy? When it comes to wine, maybe we are a little bit. But like I said, it’s hard to argue with religion. So, for the moment, I’m just making the best kosher wines I can. And that means “non-mevushal.”
Jeff Morgan is the winemaker and co-owner of Covenant and RED C Wines, in Napa Valley. www.covenantwines.com.
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You say we shouldn’t shake our head or try and write the rules, but halakha is a rational process that’s supposed to involve logic, thinking and science.
Jochanan—Thank you for your feedback. Indeed, I agree w/you about halakha. My comment was less directed at people like you than the many Jews who don’t understand why we bother to follow the rules of koshrut when making wine. What I meant in the blog was simply that secular logic—where a belief in G-d is fairly irrelevant—doesn’t help explain what we’re up to in the wine cellar. So I’m asking Jewish (and non-Jewish) non-believers to simply suspend their their disbelief. Once they do that, it all makes sense!
This is excellent information on wine. And it explains more detail of what consumers ask me about the difference between wine I sell non-kosher and kosher. Nothing really. So the wine I handle would be kosher because I am observant? I have been selling wine and trying educate consumers for 30 years. Italian and Chilean mainly. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
I believe that you omitted the traditional explanation for making wine mevushal and other strictures on use and handling of wine - the intention was to preclude or discourage fraternizing between Jews and pagans.
no one should drink the whole wine untill the Masters return.
I could supply Kosher Wine from Ribera del Duero.
Feel free to contact us to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Hi everyone! Did you know that El Al has started serving select Israeli wines on their flights. Check out our blog at: http://www.skywordswithelal.com/?p=259 to learn more.
Enjoy!
Robert Grauman’s comment that with mevushal and other strictures on handling of wine, “the intention was to preclude or discourage fraternizing between Jews and pagans,” is not fully accurate.
There are other laws of kashruth that have this rationale, such as “bishul yisrael” and “pas yisrael” (eating only dishes or bread that a Jew was involved in their preparation). These are Rabbinic prohibitions that were added later. It is understood that drinking non-kosher wine is forbidden in the Torah due to concerns about deriving benefit from items used or potentially used in pagan worship. Since wine is often used in sacraments, it is an especially sensitive item.
Today, non-Kosher wines often have non-Kosher additives that help the clarity of the wine or fermentation. These additives, if added to an otherwise kosher wine, would invalidate its kosher status.
Pet Rover refers to addtives to non-kosher wine the fact that Bio-Dynamic and Organic wines do not add any additives. And they are both non-Kosher. In addition, if we are to break bread with our fellow non-Jews (non-Jews as Pagan’s) then haveing a nice bottle of wine to share may it be Kosher or non-Kosher. Viva Brotherhood.
Ron Halpern 12-22-10
Ron—I appreciate your interest in the subject. However, fyi, both bio-dynamically and organically grown wines can have plenty of additives—from Sulfur to egg whites and more! JM
Ron, most wines use additives that are non-Kosher animal byproducts and while most of it falls as sediment to the bottom of the tank, the fact that it was added creates a kashruth problem, even for an otherwise kosher wine. If you keep kosher and only buy kosher wines, you are assured by the kashruth agency that any additives used were kosher and if the wine is labeled as Parve (not meat or dairy) that you can use it for a meat or a dairy meal.
Regardless, even a kosher non-mevushal (pasteurized) wine that is handled by gentiles would become problematic due to the Biblical prohibition we discussed above. When having a meal with non-Jews, it is therefore easiest to by a nice quality bottle of kosher wine that is mevushal, thus avoiding the problem completely. There are many quality kosher brands that have various appellations or varietals: almost anything one can ask for. I have never had anyone say, “you know, this tastes mevushal?” Most people don’t even sense the difference, and that way, I can have the same thing they are having.
Viva brotherhood!
All wines are NOT inherently kosher. Like all fruits and vegetable, the grapes used to make the wine must be examined to make sure they are healthy, bug-free grapes. After that has taken place, they wine process must be examined itself, as the writer of this article has described.