Little did Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz know, over a century ago, that his name would become associated with one of the world’s largest kosher wine companies. Despite their popularity, labels like Cream Strawberry Coconetta, Loganberry and the venerable Concord Grape haven’t convinced wine drinkers that kosher wines can compare with the finest that France, Italy or California have to offer.
Where did the idea that “kosher wine” equals “sweet wine” come from? According to the Kosher Wine Institute, at www.kedemwines.com/institut.htm, “the poor quality of Kosher wine is due largely to historical circumstance. The Concord grape, the only available variety for Jewish immigrants arriving in the New York area, is an acidic grape which must be balanced with sugar to be enjoyed. Hence, sweet wine. Time passes, and compromise becomes tradition.”
I was impressed with the Web sites of the family-run wineries. The Herzog family’s giant Royal Wine Corp., www.kedemwines.com, traces its roots to 19th-century Czechoslovakia. The company is now based in New York and is known for its Kedem and Baron Herzog lines.
When Schapiro’s Wines was founded in 1899, the company’s motto was “wine so thick you can cut it with a knife.” America’s oldest kosher winery, at www.schapiro-wine.com, still produces its Extra Heavy Concord but also produces a Naturally Sweet Concord with half the sweetness of the original.
And Manischewitz? Actually Manischewitz wine is not produced by Rabbi Dov Behr’s B. Manischewitz company, at www.manischewitz.com, which manufactures food products. The famous name is licensed to Widmer’s Wine Cellars of Naples, N.Y. That Web site is at www.manischewitzwine.com.
In California, you’ll find newer winemakers like Ernie Weir of Napa’s Hagafen Wineries, at www.webwinery.com/Hagafen. One of my favorite kosher wine sites, www.ganeden.com, belongs to Gan Eden Wines and its only permanent employee, CEO Craig Winchel. In addition to describing the wines that he produces and bottles, Winchel has also written an essay about rediscovering Judaism and living a kosher lifestyle in Sebastopol. And you can read more about the evolution of kosher wine in an article from Wine Spectator, at www.winespectator.com/Wine/Spectator/Feature/kosher.
I found a delightful piece of Jewish wine trivia on the Web site of California winemakers Martini & Prati, www.martiniprati.com/history.htm. The Martini Wine Co. was one of the few wineries in the United States to remain in operation during Prohibition. When Narciso Martini found out that rabbis were allowed 50 gallons of wine per year for religious purposes, the site says, “he shipped as much as ten thousand gallons of wine a year — all perfectly legal — to rabbis in New York for the duration of this period.” His son Elmo was amazed by “how many more rabbis there suddenly were in New York during Prohibition.”
Daniel Rogov gives an excellent and amusing overview in Israeli Cuisine and Wine, at www.travelnet.co.il/israel/Wine.htm. He suggests that although the land has a tradition of winemaking that stretches back millennia, those ancient wines were nothing to write home about. “The wines shipped to ancient Egypt were so bad that they had to be seasoned with honey, pepper and juniper berries to make them palatable, and those sent to Rome and England during the height of ancient Roman civilization were so thick and sweet that no modern connoisseur could possibly approve of them. So bad were most of these wines that it was probably a good thing that the Moslem conquest in A.D. 636 imposed a 1,200 year halt to the local wine industry.”
Fortunately things have changed. Rogov has sampled wines from Israel’s largest and smallest wineries and is quite upbeat about their products.
Kosher winemakers may pride themselves on delivering a more sophisticated product for a more discriminating consumer. But not everybody’s impressed with these changes — like Alice Feiring’s mother. Her story is at http://winetoday.com/story/0001219.html.
“Mother took a sip, and with her totally uneducated palate said, ‘It tastes like wood.’ She was right. Then she said, ‘You know what this needs?’ She took her bottle of ‘naturally sweet’ Kedem Matuck Rouge and cut the Herzog wine half-and-half. She took a sip and said, ‘Now, that’s a wine.'”