Excerpt from: The Cork Jester's Guide to Wine
CHÂTEAU L’CHAIM
Not your zeyde’s kosher wine
MY NEIGHBORS started bringing over meals when I confessed to being so un-domestic as to do my grocery shopping at Office Depot. Since I write with the spontaneity and delight of someone passing a kidney stone, I have to budget my time. Besides, recent experiments (mine) indicate you can meet your short-term nutritional goals adequately with Golden Kernel Deluxe Mixed Nuts and Wint-O-Green LifeSavers. Who needs food groups? They’re so collective.
However, when even the tiny bottle of Tabasco that had been with me through marriages, moves and divorces, was empty, I broke down and hit the supermarket. This is a good way to discover what holiday season you’re in. Passover’s up, with Easter on deck and Mother’s Day in the hole. The kosher food display caught my attention. From matzo to borsht it’s all made by Manischewitz. Yes, the wine company. Is there a synergy I’m not aware of between vinification and fish-gefiltration? You tell me. Whether you’re Jewish, Christian or Wiccan you’ve tasted their purple treacle. And that’s probably your
notion of kosher wine.
Surprise, surprise. It’s safe to go back to the Seder. Kosher wine has improved enormously. Now, instead of Malaga or elderberry, you can celebrate with well-made Chardonnay, Cabernet and Merlot. What took so long?
From Bacchic gang-bangs to first communion, wine has been lubricating religious rites for eons. It’s a stand-in for blood, and even life itself, and opens doorways to that altered mind-state where you converse with God or think you can sing karaoke.
But none of that requires it tastes good. During a Seder, they pour four glasses of wine, to represent four stages of Exodus. But they’re generally sipped, not savored. A fifth glass is poured for the Prophet Elijah who typically uses his ghost status as an excuse to avoid drinking it. (“Hey, thanks, I’d love to, but I’m plasma.”)
The Concord grape, chosen because of its ubiquity in America, was responsible for the cloying sweetness of past wines. By itself, the grape is acidic enough to pucker your whole face. Only a cru full of sugar makes the medicine go down.
But with better grapes, there’s nothing in the process that precludes making good wine. What makes it kosher is that every step, from grape-picking to winemaking to bottling, is supervised by a rabbi and performed only by Sabbath-keeping Jews. No viniculture is allowed from sundown Friday to sundown
Saturday, or on religious holidays. Yeast, fining agents and any chemicals that touch the wine must be kosher, and all equipment—barrels, tanks, filters, bottling lines—must be reserved exclusively for kosher use.
Some wines go a step further to become mevushal, or immune to contamination by goyishe handlers like waiters and store clerks. This used to be achieved by boiling, which, granted, was a little destructive. Now they use flash pasteurization, which some experts claim actually enhances colors and aromas. True, it can destroy bacteria that help wine age gracefully, but since when is “cellar-worthy” a requirement of Passover wine?
Inconvenient as all that is, wineries have accepted the challenge. Vineyards from Australia to France to Napa are growing noble grapes, under kosher laws, and making sophisticated wine.
As for quality, it depends on the producer. Like all other wines, there’s lousy and there’s very good indeed. Some kosher Champagne is excellent. Israeli wines take a little getting used to, but it’s worth doing. They smell as clearly of the desert as Burgundies do of mulch, and the fruit has a subtle, Old World elegance.
If you’re invited to a High Holiday dinner or Seder, do everyone a favor and come bearing decent wine. If you’re hosting one, for God’s sake don’t make your guests suffer. Good kosher wine will kick the joy factor up a few notches. I’m told joy is a requirement of the practicing Jew. And for dessert, I’d recommend a tin of Danish Butter Cookies. You’ll find it right between toner cartridges and paperclips.
For permission to reprint this in your publication, contact
Howard Cohen at (513) 861-4045 x14 or hcohen@emmis.com
For cover scans, review copy requests or to book an interview with Jennifer Rosen, contact publicity@emmis.com
THE CORK JESTER’S GUIDE TO WINE
By Jennifer Rosen
Clerisy Press September 2006 $14.95
Paperback 224 pages ISBN 1-57860-277-7
