Wine Guide - April 2022

SECOND ANNUAL EDITION

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

FEATURING

Top 10 Lists by VARIETAL

LIST OF BEST KOSHER REDS AND WHITES GAMLIEL KRONEMER

KENNY FRIEDMAN

JOSHUA LONDON

YOSSIE HORWITZ

ELIZABETH KRATZ

The KOSHER Wine Education Revolution

KOSHER WINES GROW IN US Wine Regions

Celebrating Kosher Burgundy

WINE’S RISING COSTS/Better Wines for Less

Building Kosher Wine Variety AND DEPTH

FEATURES

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APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

FEATURES

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

A Year of Growth and Rebirth for Kosher Wine “Wine gladdens the hearts of men.” --Tehillim 104:15

By Moshe Kinderlehrer/Co-Publisher

I

t gives me much pride and pleasure to present our second annual Jewish Link Wine Guide. This year’s guide was a true labor of love and passion project for our senior staff and judges, and it gives me tremendous joy to have a part in supporting the kosher wine industry and its most passionate innovators, particularly during this time of rebirth after the lockdowns of the past two years.

This year’s guide is double the size of last year’s inaugural edition and is jam-packed with information about amazing steps forward, particularly in kosher wine’s variety and availability, modernization and the increase in kosher wine education. However, that impressive growth is not the only reason this publication is important to me as the publisher of The Jewish Link.

We all noticed, and likely experienced personally, how smachot in our culture were severely curtailed over the past two years under Covid.

With everyone in their homes and fewer and smaller weddings or kiddushim to attend, we know how alone we all felt. At that same moment, our staff was first given the opportunity to publish America’s only

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independent publication dedicated specifically to kosher wine. I believe that many assumed we would fail, or that it would be a one-time thing. But they don’t know our staff.

Our Wine Guide editors, Elizabeth Kratz and Michal Rosenberg, combined with our volunteer founding judges, embarked on a mission of meaning, so to speak.

They worked hard together with the kosher wine industry to celebrate kosher wine’s successes, and to ensure that when we returned to making smachot there would be appropriate bottles to bring for a toast.

In Tehillim, Dovid HaMelech writes, “V’yayin y’samach levav enosh (Wine gladdens the hearts of men)” and we know that while it’s important not to overindulge, there is a time and place for celebration with a small tipple.

In truth, wine used for kiddush on Shabbat or Havdala, and particularly festivals, is currently our only true connection to the Beit HaMikdash.

As Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira says in the Gemara: When the Temple is standing, rejoicing is only through the eating of sacrificial meat, as it is stated: “And you shall sacrifice peace-

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

offerings and you shall eat there and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God” (Devarim 27:7). Now that the Temple is not standing (and one cannot eat sacrificial meat) one can fulfill the mitzvah of rejoicing on a festival only by drinking wine.

But as important as it is to make kiddush and indulge in wine to rejoice, the Gemara urges us to “remain settled,” and not overindulge.

Rabbi Hiyya said: Anyone who remains settled mentally after drinking wine, and does not become intoxicated, has an element of the mind-set of 70 elders. Both the Hebrew spelling for wine (yayin, spelled yud (10), yud (10), nun (50)) and the word secret (sod, spelled samech (60), vav (6), dalet (4)) have the numerological value of 70.

According to the Gemara in Eruvin 65a: Typically, when wine entered the body, a secret emerged. Whoever does not reveal secrets when he drinks is blessed with a clear mind, like that of 70 elders.

With that said, we hope that as we present this 80-page labor of love to our community, you will use it in good health, to help guide your Pesach and seudat mitzvah shopping.

And may this year continue to be one of goodness, prosperity and simcha.

Chag Kasher V’Sameach!

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FEATURES

d e t r o p Im from Sussia ‫סוסי א‬

PR

ODUCT O F

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Mevushal and Not Meushal Kosher for Passover

Imporeted by

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‫כשר לפסח למהדרין‬

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Drimia winery is located in the ancient dwelling of Sussiya, near the ruins of the ancient synagogue and on the land where grapevines were grown in biblical times.

Situated along the southern Judean Hills, between mountains and desert, at 890 meters above sea level, this semi-arid area is a meeting point between Mediterranean and desert climates. All of our wines are produced with carefully selected premium grapes, and prepared with the utmost care and dedication to details.

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‫בית הכנסת העתיק בסוסיא‬

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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SECOND ANNUAL EDITION CO-PUBLISHERS Moshe Kinderlehrer Mark (Mendy) Schwartz EDITOR Elizabeth Kratz DEPUTY EDITOR Michal Rosenberg COPY EDITOR Cathy Fisher ADVERTISING Jacob Benesch Risa Lefkowitz Meir Popowitz Steven Weisman FOUNDING TASTING PANEL JUDGES Yossie Horwitz Jeff Katz Greg Raykher Daphna Roth Yeruchum Rosenberg CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Joshua E. London CONTRIBUTORS Gamliel Kronemer Dr. Kenny Friedman Channa Fischer Bracha Schwartz (original photography) LOGISTICS Eva Katz

Kosher Wines Grow in US Regions

by Dr. Kenneth Friedman

Trends in Israeli Winemaking

by Channa Fischer

Variety and Depth at Kosher Wine’s High End

by Elizabeth Kratz

Welcome to Kosher Burgundy

by Joshua E. London

Welcome to The Jewish Link Wine Guide Top Wines Rankings Wineries of the Year Innovator Awards Kosher Wine Education Revolution

by Gamliel Kronemer

Vini Rossi d’Italia The Jewish Link Media Group

by Gamliel Kronemer

Better Wines for Less

by Yossie Horwitz

P.O. Box 3131 Teaneck, NJ 07666 (201) 366-9101 editor@jewishlink.news

The Benefit of Rising Prices

by Yossie Horwitz

Building a Home Wine Cellar

by Gamliel Kronemer

CONTENTS

Jewish Link Wine Guide judges

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16 20

26 32 38 58 62 65 68 70

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STAND APART FROM THE CROWD

The Only Kosher Pinot Noir Rosé from Willamette Valley, Oregon www.theriverwine.com

FEATURES

Kosher Wines Grow in US Wine Regions Until very recently, kosher examples from newly popular American wine regions were few and far between, but a recent influx of new wines is giving the discerning kosher wine connoisseur a proper seat at the table.

By Dr. Kenneth Friedman

A

s the world of kosher and kosher wine continually expands, new horizons open in remote appellations across the globe. Sometimes we need only look as far as our backyard, as America has become a growing global purveyor of superlative wines and regions with their own distinct styles and greatly varied microclimates.

Let us take a look at some of what our bountiful country now offers the kosher wine consumer in 2022.

New York State/Finger Lakes AVA

While New York is known for its global comestible delights (many originating in Jewish culture, of course), even wine aficionados oft do not realize that New York State has

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grown to be the fourth-largest wineproducing state in the country, behind California, Washington and Oregon.

And while this Eastern Seaboard state sits several thousand miles from its well-known American wine region counterparts out west, New York State boasts seven American Viticultural Areas (AVA) spread throughout distinct, cool climate.

Among the most notable are the Finger Lakes AVA and the Long Island AVA. Today, kosher wines are being produced in both these important regions.

Due to their northerly location, the Finger Lakes are known for their cool-climate varieties, most notably riesling. Outside of Germany and Alsace, the Finger Lakes have become a leading riesling wine region.

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Nestled between two gorges and waterside at Cayuga Lake (one of the Finger Lakes), Sheldrake Point Winery first produced kosher wines for the 2019 vintage and in 2020 produced a dry riesling and gewürztraminer. The 2021 vintage promises both varieties plus a kosher gewürztraminer ice wine. Sheldrake Point is produced from all-estate fruit in the Finger Lakes, utilizing cool climate grape-growing practices and winemaking.

Ari Lockspeiser, a négociant building a portfolio of wines sold exclusively through KosherWine.com (separately, he also imports wine for The Cellar wine store in Lakewood), is making a career bringing wines from new regions to the kosher consumer. “I believe we who keep

Gewürztraminer grapes from the ice wine harvest at Sheldrake Point.

kosher should have the opportunity to experience and enjoy all regions and grapes from all around the world,” said Lockspeiser.

Sheldrake Point, Gewürztraminer, 2020: Estategrown and hand-harvested, the wine in the glass shows bright, clear, straw gold. The pronounced bouquet on this gewürz will blow you away with citrus and stone fruits, most prominently lychee. The palate shows lively, refreshing acid, some good heft in the body, and characteristic moderate off-dry sweetness.

Sheldrake Point, Dry Riesling, 2020: Certain to be a hit. It’s a fun riesling. While perhaps a bit more off-dry for my preferred taste, this wine is a big crowd-pleaser—no simple feat for a variety of which many in the kosher wine drinking crowd are wary.

In the glass, pale gold, with a pronounced nose of stone fruit and salinity. The palate shows a bit of acidity and great balance with beautiful fruit.

California/Pacific Coast

Since emerging as an international darling following the legendary Paris

Wine Tasting of 1976 when blind tastings qualified the unheralded Californian wines as superior to the French entrants, California has set the bar for American AVAs. In fact, both seasoned and unseasoned kosher wine drinkers alike are familiar with the brilliant wines we have been afforded from established producers like Herzog Wine Cellars of Oxnard, Covenant Wines of Berkeley, and Hagafen Cellars of Napa Valley. With a storied history, Herzog Wine Cellars moved its operations from New York to California in 1985. Herzog produces a great variety of wines offering examples from disparate AVAs in California such as Lake County, Napa Valley, Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley, Clarksburg, Lodi, Monterey County and Paso Robles. Joseph “Mordy” Herzog’s “Generation VI and IX series” explores wine from even more highend regions, such as the To Kalon and Stag’s Leap districts of Napa.

Covenant’s cabernet sauvignon is sourced from several exceptional vineyards in Napa Valley and Sonoma. Pinot noir is sourced from Francis Mahoney’s hilltop Carneros vineyard. Fruit also comes from Sonoma’s Bennett Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Dry Creek Valley and Sonoma Valley, Lodi and Lake County.

Beginning back in 1979, Ernie APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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FEATURES

Weir of Hagafen Cellars issued his first release and soon established an estate winery in Napa, nestled between the famed Stag’s Leap and Oak Knoll Districts, both wellknown AVAs. Known for its great quality, Hagafen utilizes grapes from premier vineyards in Napa, Carneros, Lodi, Bennett Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Valley and Lake County AVAs. So what is California doing in a piece about “emerging American wine regions”? Most wine drinkers are familiar with Napa and Sonoma reputations as appellations for producing some of the best grapes in the world. But recent years have put other, less-heralded California regions on the map, including the Central

Cabernet sauvignon grapes from Napa’s vaunted Stag’s Leap district.

represent them: zinfandel from Santa Ynez and pinot noir from Santa Maria Valley. A fluctuating climate in Santa Ynez allows for wines which

concentrating flavors and giving Santa Maria pinot noir a lushness that is distinctive to the variety.

Twin Suns, Reserve, Santa Ynez Valley, Zinfandel, 2019: Loved by fans of robust wines, this one will not disappoint. Ruby red in the glass, with a pronounced nose of ripe strawberry and blackberry, sweet tobacco and vanilla. On the palate big fruit, full-bodied, medium-plus tannins, medium-plus acidity. Lush and jammy. Aged 15 months in 100% French oak.

Pacific Northwest

Two cellar workers at Covenant in Berkeley, California.

Coast, and more specifically, Santa Ynez and Santa Maria.

Winemaker brothers Gabriel and Shimon Weiss of Shirah Wine and Twin Suns Reserve have featured the Central Coast AVAs of Santa Ynez and Santa Maria in their wines, focusing on the grapes that best

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show as well-balanced with high acidity. The first-named AVA of the Central Coast was Santa Maria Valley, known for ideal temperature conditions for the notoriously fickle pinot noir grape. A longer growing season allows for the pinot grapes to spend longer on the vine, APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

Washington State: Would you guess that Washington is now second in the nation, following only California, in terms of wine production?

I would not have. The Columbia Valley AVA is the largest in Washington State, and its geography and climate allow for balanced wines which are fruit-forward but still austere.

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FEATURES

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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FEATURES

Pacifica, Evan’s Collection, Washington State, Riesling, 2019: Anyone who knows me knows I love riesling. Riesling is just so expressive.

And great riesling will age and gain greater character, some funk, and more body—traits we all carry! So when a new dry riesling hits the market, well, I am down. In the glass, medium yellow and clear. Aromatic and pronounced nose of fresh citrus, stone fruit and some tropicals, with the beginnings of petrol funk.

The palate shows a medium body, refreshing acidity, balanced off-dryplus sweetness, nice petrol, citrus, mineral and a long finish. This wine should change with a few years of cellaring. Worth checking back in on.

Known for its lush, world-class cabernet sauvignon, syrah and merlot, the sunny and dry southeastern corner of Washington State is home to the cult-status Walla Walla Valley AVA, a small fraction of the huge surrounding Columbia Valley AVA. Originally founded as a trading post in the 1850s, this region’s foray into winemaking is incredibly recent, dating to just the 1970s. Quickly building its reputation in producing some of the best North American red wines, Walla Walla now produces red wines that command high prices and great demand. So it is with some fanfare when a kosher option from Walla Walla becomes available.

Sleight of Hand, Kosher Magic, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2019: Produced by cult winery Sleight of Hand in the famed wine region of the Walla Walla Valley. (Cool little fact for Gen X-ers: Sleight of Hand Cellars took its name from the Pearl Jam song.) Sourced entirely from estate grapes of “Elene’s Block” at Phinny Hill Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills. Dark, impenetrable purple in the glass.

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Ari Lockspeiser, right, with Keith Johnson, winemaker at Sleight of Hand Cellars in Walla Walla, Washington.

The nose shows dark fruit, cassis and cocoa. On the palate, full-bodied, balanced and complex. More black fruit, black cherry, nice acid and medium-plus tannins. Very enjoyable.

Sold exclusively at KosherWine.com.

Oregon: Becoming an official AVA in 1983, the Willamette Valley now stands near the apex of the world in producing award-winning pinot noir.

The Valley is named for the river that runs through it, and maintains the largest concentration of wineries in Oregon.

Willamette Valley’s temperate climate of mild temperatures and medium rainfall allow for pinot noir, which serves as a bridge between California and Burgundian styles.

Ami and Larissa Nahari of The River Wine, an importer, distributor and producer of wines around the world, are very excited by several of their new offerings. “We are now producing under the Twin Suns Reserve label a pinot noir and pinot noir rosé in Willamette Valley, which results in a more classic, subtle pinot noir,” the Naharis told me.

“Willamette Valley is the ultimate region for pinot noir. Working with one of the area’s top winemakers, we are introducing the only Willamette Valley pinot noirs to kosher in red and rosé.”

The pinots were, so sadly, not yet available as of my deadline, but it should go without saying that I am APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

looking forward to tasting both.

Pennsylvania/Mid-Atlantic

Allentown, Pennsylvania? Yes! Beginning with the 2019 harvest, upstart kosher winemaker Kevin Danna of Binah Winery has been focusing on making premium wines from varieties that are a natural fit for the climate in the Lehigh Valley. “The reason I was so excited to bring the United States East Coast wine region to the kosher market is because it’s not on the radar, and it should be,” said Danna. “Our region is overlooked because it has a history of subpar wines, but the truth is, worldclass wines have been consistently produced in our region for at least a couple of decades now.”

Danna has focused on creating wines from less-familiar grapes such as Chambourcin, Traminette, Blaufränkisch, Seyval Blanc, Chardonel and Vignoles in this North American region of well-drained shale and limestone soil similar to regions of France, Germany and Eastern Europe. “These are wines our Jewish ancestors were familiar with in the Old Country,” said Danna, “and now they’re being made right in our backyard. Who would have thought? Meshuge!”

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FEATURES

Featured: Prairie Street Prime Signature Beef Tomahawk Ribeye Steak USDA Prime — exclusively available at www.prairiestreetprime.com

Passover is the most widely celebrated and perhaps most intimate holiday in the Jewish calendar. With the holiday flanked on both ends by dedicated off time, the opportunity to disconnect from distractions and reconnect with our families (and ourselves) is ever present.

For so many of us, it will be the first time we’re celebrating together again in years. And as any wine connoisseur knows, the perfect accompaniment to an exceptional bottle is an exceptional meal. It’s also the centerpiece of the holiday tradition, where the most treasured moments are shared.

As your family gathers this year, we invite you to celebrate in style with Prairie Street Prime’s kosher USDA Prime (which reflects the top 5% in terms of quality), High Choice, and Dry Aged (which reflects the top 1%) beef, veal, and lamb. Our hand-selected cuts represent the top available on the market. They’re also Star-K certified, beautifully packaged, and conveniently shipped free of charge right to your door. We’ll even have our professional chefs show you the best ways to cook our brisket or rib roast to perfection. Visit our YouTube channel — www.youtube/prairiestreetprime — to explore our chef-led cooking tutorials.

Let us help you tell the story of the seder, and to serve a meal that will make this holiday your most memorable one yet. To ensure your order arrives amidst high demand, visit www.prairiestreetprime.com — Your Luxury Kosher Experience — and reserve yours today.

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FEATURES

Binah, Traminette, 2020: It’s pretty cool that this is the only kosher Traminette in the world. The nose on this wine is lovely, with big aromatics.

Lychee, orange blossom, tropical fruits. The palate is medium bodied (dare I say it is nearing full-bodied?), with mouth-coating acid, and nice sweetness without being cloying. Long tangy finish. Really nice wine.

Binah, Grüner Veltliner, Lehigh Valley, 2020: You may hear Grüner Veltliner and think of Austria, but this grüner is produced in Allentown, Pennsylvania, another cool-climate region. In the glass, pale, straw-colored and clear. Very slight effervescence that immediately coalesced. On the nose, aromatic, loads of citrus lemonlime and hibiscus. On the palate, tropical fruit, citrus, bursting with acidity. Long, tingly finish. Nice.

Soon enough, as American wine production from underdog and unfamiliar regions continues to grow, one might need to travel only a short distance to enjoy a glass of world-class kosher wine, overlooking the vineyard

Kevin Danna, owner/winemaker at Binah Winery in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

in which it is produced. America’s refreshing lack of stringent laws regarding wine production allows vintners to plant wherever and whatever they like, with some astonishing results. With the great array of disparate microclimates, there’s no telling what American kosher wine we may be sipping in the next generation.

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Trends in Israeli Winemaking From ecological practices and sustainable agriculture to higher tech methods of distribution, “cask futures” and a renewed focus on native Israeli grape varieties, here’s a look at hot 2022 trends in Israeli wine.

By Channa Fischer

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APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

D

espite being one of the oldest wine production regions on the globe, the modern Israeli winemaking industry is still on the up and up and partially considered a “New World” winemaking region.

Wineries and distributors across Israel are constantly evaluating ways to innovate. In discussions with various winemakers throughout the country, several trends seem to have emerged in recent years—and are here to stay. Here’s what to look out for:

The harvest at Israel’s Raziel Winery.

Ecological Winemaking Practices Israeli native Michal Akerman of Tabor Winery is one of the winemakers who started the “ecological revolution” of Israeli wine production back in 2012; and Tabor hasn’t looked back since.

“The way we were growing vines in Israel was wrong in every aspect,” Akerman explained. “I decided to reach out to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), and work with them to create an agenda for becoming a 100% sustainable winery.”

Tabor’s sustainability model seeks to increase biodiversity within its vineyards, or, as Akerman aptly described, “We let nature enter the monoculture of our vineyards.” The model has since been adopted by other wineries in Israel, and has made Tabor the regional leader in sustainable winemaking.”

An up-and-coming trend in the global winemaking space is the production of “natural wines,” or wines made organically, without any additives. But according to winemaker Jeff Morgan of Covenant Wines, the term is simply a marketing gimmick—and it’s something that his winery in Israel has been doing for years.

“The greatest wines, in my opinion, are made with minimalist winemaking techniques,” Morgan shared. “These wines are made of native yeast as opposed to commercial

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Tabor’s Michal Akerman discusses ecological winemaking at a tasting in Manhattan in 2019.

yeast … the way it’s been done for the last 3,500 years.”

Morgan explained that the use of native yeast is preferable as it promotes a slower, more complex fermentation. “That’s why we’ve been using native yeast since we began making wine in Israel in 2013.”

Additionally, he said that Covenant does not add any commercial ingredients during the malolactic fermentation of its wines.

“Making wines with organic ingredients and being minimally interventionist with the planet is a great idea,” Morgan said. Covenant sources its grapes from a biodynamic vineyard to make its wines under the Covenant Israel label.

Using High-Tech Methods of Wine Distribution The “start-up nation” moniker that has made Israel famous worldwide for its start-up friendly culture, like a Silicon Valley in the Middle East, is exciting to see in many sectors.

But winemaking has not been as quick to adopt modern methods, said Jacob Ner-David of Jezreel Valley Winery, who himself works in the tech world. He has integrated his love for technology trends into winemaking.

“Some of the things we’re doing are things that have been done in the past, but we’re doing them in a more modern way,” Ner-David shared, referring to Jezreel Valley’s “cask

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futures” program, where enthusiasts can invest in a barrel of wine that has yet to be bottled. Multiple people can go in together on the investment in what’s known as “cask sharing,” the process is very involved from start to finish.

Because of the hands-on nature of cask futures, as investors typically research and taste wines before committing to a barrel, Ner-David explained that it’s something that has not quite reached the wine market outside of Israel. “Shipping barrel samples is something we are prepared to do, as we did during COVID, but for now this program is for people in Israel. One day, I’d love to expand it abroad.”

What Jezreel Winery does offer the global wine community is something unheard of in Israel: the sale of wine non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. “NFTs are obviously a relatively new concept in general. We launched the first NFT series in September 2021 … essentially, the NFTs serve as ‘digital twins’ of bottles of wine. The power lies in these digital certificates of ownership, which eliminate the need to purchase physical bottles of wine, like a voucher of sorts.” NerDavid said that because NFTs are secured with blockchain technology, the wine ownership is nearly impossible to hack.

In its first run of wine NFTs, Jezreel Valley sold 600 in a matter of several days, each NFT representing APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

six bottles of wine, for a total of 3,600 bottles purchased. “We had a chat room associated with it, and I could see that the enthusiasm for it has remained,” Ner-David said, adding that Jezreel Valley plans to do another run of NFTs soon.

Though Jezreel Valley is the only Israeli winery thus far to embrace the use of NFTs, Ner-David expressed hope that others will follow suit. “I think it will catch on pretty quickly.

It’s like the modern version of a wine club.”

Mediterranean Grape Varieties Ner-David recalled that this is not the first time Jezreel Valley Winery has done something that the rest of the Israeli winemaking industry has considered outlandish. When the winery first began production in 2011, it announced that it would be sticking to Mediterranean grape varieties, such as syrah and grenache.

“People thought we were crazy,” he said. “But now, sticking with local varietals is what everyone is talking about.”

Eli Shiran, who runs Shiran Winery, expressed a similar sentiment when discussing his wine production choices. The small Israeli winemaker has always gravitated towards

Israel’s Raziel Winery experiments with native grape varieties.

Mediterranean grape varietals since it began bottling wines in 2013, and avoids using European varieties like cabernet or merlot.

“We choose grape varietals that are native to this climate, and use them in our blends for a lighter, more elegant style of wine. I think this is where Israeli wines are headed,” Shiran shared.

The Rise of the Israeli “Micro Winery” There’s a reason why Shiran Winery has the freedom to be so creative: Eli Shiran only answers to himself. The winery produces less than 10,000 bottles of wine a year, which is miniscule compared to the major Israeli winemakers, that typically produce 10 million bottles annually.

“We are not bound to a standard set of rules in our production,” Shiran explained. “Larger wineries are committed to producing the same wines year after year, because that’s what people expect. When we make our few thousand bottles, we have the freedom to act on our whim. And we also don’t have to worry about selling large quantities of wine if they are ‘experimental’ in some way … we get to be creative and change it up every

year.”

This uniqueness and creativity in production is exactly what attracted KosherWine.com to Shiran Winery for its micro winery distribution initiative. Along with several other boutique wineries, including Gito, Nevo and Herzberg, Shiran made an exclusive deal with the online wine purveyor to distribute in the U.S. market.

According to president of KosherWine.com Dovid Riven, the initiative began back in 2017 with a trip to Israel to meet with more than 40 winemakers. In the end, Riven and CEO David Perelman selected five of these tiny wineries to structure their exclusive distribution program, which helps the wineries get their product out beyond limited brick-and-mortar locations at a fair price.

Riven described these micro wineries as winemakers who typically produce 5,000-10,000 bottles of wine, most of which “have a really good story,” thanks to a personal touch from the “good people” who run them.

According to Riven, micro wineries are a growing trend within the Israeli winemaking industry—and wine enthusiasts can expect to see more of their unique blends in years to come.

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FEATURES

Building Variety and Depth at Kosher Wine’s High End Andrew Breskin

There was a time when it was difficult to get even one great kosher wine from a historic wine region. Andrew Breskin’s mission is to give the kosher consumer a choice among great wines.

By Elizabeth Kratz

I

n large and mid-sized American Jewish communities, 2022 means one can get a kosher version of virtually anything. While this is certainly sufficient for many consumers, a growing community of aficionados of gourmet food and beverage, particularly wine, sometimes laments the lack of opportunities to help kosher wine drinkers fully understand the taste or terroir of a particular region. Terroir accounts for both minor and major changes in characteristic taste and flavor imparted to wine by the environment in which the grapes are grown.

Andrew Breskin, a boutique kosher wine importer based in San Diego, has a passion to deepen and strengthen the variety available in today’s kosher wine marketplace, especially in the world’s most historic wine regions.

Kosher wine, generally, is dominated by a single importer, the privately held Herzog family-owned Royal Wines/ Kedem, which imports, in broad strokes, about 85-90%

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of the world’s kosher-certified wines, from $10 bulkproduced California and Australian wines to high-end French wines that retail for $150 and more. The rest of the industry is dominated by smaller niche importers who focus on specific regions or producers. None other than Breskin, however, operates a club that specializes entirely in high-end, limited-availability kosher wines.

“It’s true you can get ‘a kosher anything’ but you can’t get 10 ‘kosher anythings.’ The difference is not in availability, it’s in diversity,” explained Breskin in a recent interview. “If you want cabernet franc from the Loire Valley, you can find one, but you can’t taste 50. You can get 200 cabernets from Israel, yes; and if you want to get a Priorat [a Spanish wine from Catalonia], no problem. But if you want to ‘taste’ Priorat, no can do.

“If you want to learn about wine and taste a region you have to go deeper, not wider,” Breskin continued. “You are

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looking to taste and get the purest sense of place. I don’t necessarily want to talk about kosher; I want to talk about wine.”

Many kosher-keepers do want to talk to Breskin, and each other, about wine. Generally, kosher wine education in America is formalizing as individuals seek to become more knowledgeable. In fact, in spring 2021, when KosherWine.com partnered with an Israeli wine school to run the first Wine Spirits & Education Trust (WSET) Level 2 Award in Wines ever offered publicly in America using entirely kosher wines, 30 Americans signed up. Courses like these, a mainstay for wine lovers and industry professionals in the non-kosher world, can help wine enthusiasts turn a hobby into a profession, or amp up one’s academic knowledge measurably.

The interest in learning more about wine can grow from a hobby into a lifelong passion that evolves only with investment, time, travel and memories. Precious few, if any, kosher-keeping American Jews have yet to successfully complete the WSET’s PhD-equivalent program, the Master of Wine, or joined the Guild of Sommeliers. Many Jews who enjoy wine actively seek out opportunities to try a variety of wines like the ones Breskin imports.

The real education, Breskin says, is in the tasting. “Being able to taste a pinot noir grown in Burgundy from 20 meters apart and 20 miles apart, it’s an experience you can’t really explain,” he said.

“In Burgundy, for example, the wine in the bottle over time, as it matures and develops, will change the most dramatically, in a good way and a complicated way. It’s the definition of why people age wines. Burgundy provides the most action in this regard; it has to do with terroir and acidity and tannin. It’s very sensitive to soil types and climate.”

Breskin’s company and wine club, Liquid Kosher, specializes

in importing high-quality kosher wines from France and Israel. He also buys private wine collections, sells “instant wine collections,” and helps clients find the specific types of wine they like most. No bottle on his website tends to be priced under approximately $50, and prices can run as high as $500 or more for individual or extremely limited-inventoried bottles. His label also distributes hard-to-find California wines, including some from the vaunted Timbre and Mayacamas Vineyards.

Experience in the Non-Kosher Wine World Breskin’s passion, however, is not specifically for expensive wine; it is driven by his experiences as a young adult working in the non-kosher world as a certified sommelier, with a particular interest in and affinity for the well regarded wines of Pomerol, a small winemaking commune in the larger Bordeaux region in southwestern France.

Breskin is 38 years old, and his foray into importing—and exclusively tasting—kosher wines is already in its bar mitzvah year. For the past 13 years, in fact after his first year of law school, when he became more religiously observant, Breskin sold off his valuable non-kosher wine collection. “That was a doozy because I had a lot of niche Rhône wines, some interesting rieslings and some California wines that were irreplaceable,” he said.

Breskin had worked his way up and learned about digital sales and wine auctions from expert wine collectors and dealers, and made a living working in wine before and during college. He worked a number of “odd jobs” on sales floors in a wine store, and made long-distance deliveries.

He also learned from an expert in terms of building, managing and selling wine collections for clients.

His depth of experience brought him to France and elsewhere, and tasting about 250 wines a month,

his palate became highly attuned to quality. He took and passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Certified Sommelier exam in 2006.

Also in San Diego, tasting, studying and working alongside Breskin at that time was Dan Pilkey, now a well known Chicago-based sommelier who builds and maintains wine lists in multiple Michelinstarred restaurants. Pilkey passed the Master Sommelier exam in 2018 and is a current Master of Wine candidate. In an interview, Pilkey said that Breskin’s attuned palate is an essential guide to quality.

“Having that Rolodex of information and experience behind tasting those benchmark wines, he has amassed a serious palate, so he can taste through a series of kosher wines to find those on par or perhaps even above those from what you might consider a ‘regular’ winery,” said Pilkey.

In fact, Pilkey explained, though he primarily works in non-kosher dining, he has placed Breskin’s wines on various lists he’s worked on for restaurants. The Concours, a private club in Miami that has kosher-keeping members who use its personal chef services, has Breskin’s imports of Domaine Roses Camille, Timbre and one of his red

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Burgundies on their wine list. “From a business standpoint, for me to be able to shop France, Israel and California, it’s important for me to have access to a variety of wines that are both very high-end and kosher,” he said.

Transitioning to Kosher Before he went to Israel for the first time, close to 15 years ago, Breskin made a decision to drink only kosher wine.

“I’m not growing out my payos or anything, but I don’t taste nonkosher wine today for business reasons or otherwise. That was it for me,” Breskin said, explaining that his experience tasting non-kosher wine earlier in his career led him to understand and seek out high quality, and he uses these memories to bring the same flavor profiles to his clients.

“That’s my edge; because I feel like if I’m going back and forth [between kosher and non-kosher] then I might not value the full picture. It’s got to be good enough for me, and my clients.

“I am all in and my clients are all in.”

‘Let’s Talk About France’ France is Breskin’s main focus, and in addition to enjoying its wines, he holds a lifelong familial connection to the region. “Some of the best wines I have ever tasted come from France.

I have always found it an interesting place. My dad was born there. His parents were refugees from Austria; my grandmother had been on Kindertransport, and went to France after the war to find her father. My grandmother still lives in London, so it’s easy for me to do business there.”

Breskin’s paternal grandfather was from Poland, and he met his wife, Breskin’s grandmother, when she was in France. But there’s a wine connection even as far back as Poland.

“My great-grandfather on my grandfather’s side was a wine broker in Poland. My grandfather used to

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Christoph Bardeau of Domaine Roses Camille

tell me that as a child, before the war, he would sneak into his father’s warehouse. He knew which was the sweet wine because they were Tokaji barrels. They would find him there because he had fallen asleep in the cellar.”

Today, Breskin’s import focus is on

“The philosophy is to listen to the terroir. We are located in the most prestigious appellation on the planet, and the most qualitative.”

–CHRISTOPH BARDEAU

only a few well chosen winemaking regions and producers. “We’re in Pomerol and Bordeaux and a little bit in Burgundy, and we are in Israel in the north, in the Western Galilee with Lahat, and central Israel, with Yaacov Oryah.”

‘Discovering’ Domaine Roses Camille “What makes our wine special is that these are all family-owned wineries with direct relationships with growers. Pomerol’s Domaine Roses Camille is the crown jewel of our portfolio. It’s being tended to by the third generation to run it, and it’s now a 100% kosher production,” Breskin said.

Breskin explained that the winery launched in 2005, and made just 75 cases. That’s three barrels. All of it was kosher. “Somehow, Wine Spectator got ahold of it and this wine made it to the top 100 2005 Bordeaux wines.

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It was not a kosher or non-kosher list. This was the top 100 Bordeaux overall.”

Christophe Bardeau is Domaine Roses Camille’s winemaker. He explained that five years of work goes into producing a single bottle of his estate’s wine. “The philosophy is to listen to the terroir. We are located in the most prestigious appellation on the planet, and the most qualitative,” he said. Bardeau added he has already been using an organic biological approach for making wines, and the winery is now officially converting to organic.

“I heard about the wine from the Rogov forum [an early wine email list/message board that ran in the early days of the internet where many wine enthusiasts met and networked, moderated by Israeli American wine critic Daniel Rogov, z”l], so I reached out to them. They sent me a couple of bottles. At that point I was keeping kosher, but with this wine I was taken back to the late nights in the wine shop tasting through Bordeaux. It was hitting every note. From there I made a small purchase of the 2005 and 2006, and we were charging $300 a bottle. It was the most expensive wine you could buy in kosher at that time,” he recalled.

Why does Bardeau entrust his few and precious bottles to Breskin for distribution? Instead of sharing facts and numbers, “we learned how to grow up together, to talk, to listen to each other, and also to taste and enjoy,” said Bardeau.

Meet Yaacov Oryah Acclaimed for his artistic genius in Israeli winemaking, Yaacov Oryah is a commercial winemaker, notably for Psagot, previously, and currently for other commercial wineries such as Pinto in the Negev, but he also makes small batch wines under his own name. He said he uses his personal brand to “explore winemaking ideas,” and enjoys doing that alongside making conventional

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LEGEND Fiddler 2013

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Secret Reserve Cabernet Franc 2017

94 MOSAIC Exclusive Edition 2016

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SOMM

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92

Mosaic Exclusive edition 2019

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0

SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

Ultimate Wine Challenge

Edition 2016

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Robert Parker

MOSAIC 2016

MOSAIC Exclusive

SECRET RESERVE Merlot 2019

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SECRET RESERVE Petite Syrah 2017

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91 92

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is

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SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

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MOSAIC Exclusive Edition 2017

Privilage 2018

Cabernet Sauvignon 2012

SECRET RESERVE Merlot 2016

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ROBERT PARKER

92

SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Franc 2017

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Cabernet Sauvignon 2014

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SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2016

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91

92 DECANTER

90 SHOR

Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

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LEGEND Fiddler 2016

LEGEND Fiddler 2017

Ultimate WIne Challenge

MOSAIC 2014

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92 95

ULTIMATE WINECHALLENGE

LEGEND Fiddler 2016

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HOR Barbera 2018

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Yaacov Oryah

wines with conventional methods in a commercial environment. Oryah has attained relative cult status for his avant-garde methods of making skin-macerated unoaked whites, often known as “orange wines,” with which he has been experimenting for about 10 years. He also works on lowering the alcohol level of red wine and reducing the influence of oak even when wines are aged in oak. He believes he is exploring ideas unique to the wine world itself, not just for kosher wines.

“It’s finding the consumers that are looking for these special wines and not just for regular, oaky, ripe cab, or something like that. There is a nice correlation between what the wine does and what people expect of the brand, and overall that works,” he said.

“Within my brand I have wines that are more conventional, red wines, but the white wines are not really conventional. They are unoaked, harvested early, meant for aging and develop beautifully over time, sometimes at the price of not being so friendly in their youth,” Oryah told the Jewish Link Wine Guide. “I have a whole program of skin-macerated wines. Today that’s a big trend, having orange wines, but when I started, I knew nothing about the trend and it was just starting in Europe, in 2007.

I just wanted to know what happens when you don’t throw out the skins at

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the beginning of the process, as most wineries do, and allow them to be— and see what they add to the wines.”

These wines often have a more floral or earthy bouquet, because the skins, said Oryah, impart more of the surrounding terroir to the wines, and he is able to coax from them an array of more subtle complexities.

Oryah wines are exclusive, hard-tofind and many of them have offbeat, unexpected names, like “Queen of Hearts,” “Eye of the Storm” and “The Human Touch.” Breskin started importing Oryah wines to the States in 2018. “Oryah wines are refreshing and they are sort of like people, like individuals,” he said.

“They will change over the course of the day. They are predictable but they can also surprise you. That keeps it interesting. You want a wine to be reliable, and to taste consistently the same, like you want a chardonnay to taste like chardonnay, not a sauvignon blanc; but with Oryah wines there are little gems, little sparks, that you get based on when you taste it, or what you pair it with. It provides a good and welcome wine experience and a good moment.”

Oryah explained that he does not necessarily want his wines to be available in stores, which is one of the selling points of working with Breskin. “That’s something I am very concerned about. I don’t want my skin-macerated chardonnay on a shelf and have someone reach out and buy it because it’s a chardonnay, because if they don’t know anything about skinmacerated wines they will be very disappointed.

“I like when there is someone who can intermediate what is in the bottle to the client, and with most other alternatives for exporting to the United States I would be mainly in stores; I can’t be in restaurants because my wines are not mevushal,” he added.

Breskin, according to Oryah, “has a clientele and he intermediates the wines to them in a professional way.”

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“Also, a lot of my wines are small scale, with very good fruit, and made with expensive materials. You end up with a not-cheap product. I wish I was able to sell my wines much cheaper and still be profitable, but lowering my prices would not make it worth it to continue producing.

Andrew has the ability to sell these wines despite the fact that they are not cheap. He knows how to direct the product to the clientele who are looking for high-quality, cutting-edge wines. It works for him and it works for me,” said Oryah.

In Depth on Israel’s Terroir With Itay Lahat Itay Lahat, an experienced winemaker in Australia and France before becoming the winemaker at Barkan, also consulted for many wineries in Israel over the past two decades and teaches at several universities in Israel. When he felt it was finally time to channel his passion for Rhône varietals into a winery under his own name, he started producing small-batch wine in the Western Galilee under his own label, Lahat. His wines went fully kosher in 2018. While still small, the winery has worked its way up to 10,000 bottles annually.

Said Breskin: “I thought it would

Itay Lahat

CONTINUED ON PAGE 76

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Welcome to Kosher Burgundy The old world wines of Burgundy, France are finally getting their share of sunlight in the kosher marketplace.

By Joshua E. London

T

he wines of Burgundy— classic, “old world,” elegant, and some of the most expensive available—are widely considered benchmarks for winemakers around the globe.

Unfortunately, the availability of kosher Burgundy has been, at best, fitful—especially in the United States.

Thankfully, there are several recent, active efforts underway to improve this situation.

The Herzog family’s Royal Wine Corp., America’s largest producer, importer and distributor of kosher wines, will soon be releasing three high-end red wines from Burgundy—a Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny and a Premier Cru Beaune, all 2020 vintage wines from Domaine du Château Philippe le Hardi (formerly known as Château de Santenay).

These are an addition to Royal’s current lineup of the excellent white Burgundy wine Château de Santenay, Les Bois de Lalier, Mercurey Blanc (to be rebranded with the Philippe le Hardi label in future vintage releases), their solid Chablis—also a Burgundy white—from Pascal Bouchard and Domaine Les Maronniers, and their enjoyable if simple entry-level Burgundies from Domaine Ternynck.

At KosherWine.com, the leading kosher wine internet retailer in the United States, the team recently launched their own high-end red

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Burgundy: the delightful René Lacarière, Gevrey-Chambertin, 2019.

This is in addition to their delicious, unpretentious, entry-level red Burgundies: Grume d’Or Pinot Noir, Louis Blanc Duc de Serteil Coteaux Bourguignons and the Louis Blanc Morcantel Bourgogne.

Liquid Kosher, Andrew Breskin’s boutique and hyper-curated wine club, has rolled out a stellar lineup of high-end Burgundys from Domaine Jean-Philippe Marchand, made by arrangement with Le Groupe Moïse Taïeb, one of Europe’s top kosher wine négociants. While G.M. Taïeb has been working with Marchand for the last eight years servicing the European market, Breskin has revitalized the program, more fully partnering with Taïeb and Marchand with the 2021 vintage, in an exciting effort to really push kosher Burgundy in the American market.

These Marchand wines stand alongside Breskin’s fast-dwindling stock of kosher red Burgundies from Domaine Chantal Lescure, which has not produced a new kosher vintage since 2017, and from Domaine d’Ardhuy, which sadly abandoned its kosher program altogether after the 2015 vintage. (Both Lescure and d’Ardhuy were also Taïeb productions, for the European and British markets, which began in 2010; Breskin began importing the kosher d’Ardhuy in 2016, and the Lescure APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

in 2017). Also in the Liquid Kosher lineup are some lovely Chablis from Dampt Frères and La Chablisienne.

There are also several lovely Burgundies from Maison Jean-Luc & Paul Aegerter starting with the 2018 vintage, made by arrangement with the high-end focused kosher négociant Les Vins IDS, imported by the Brooklyn-based M&M Importers. Also currently available are several reasonably priced—i.e., not much more money than their regular non-kosher versions—kosher Chablis, which are lovely, and an entry-level pinot noir from Vignoble Dampt, under their Dampt Frères label, made by arrangement with winemaker and négociant Vignobles David and imported by the New York-based Bradley Allan Imports. These are available through KosherWine.com, Liquid Kosher, and with limited instore distribution, too.

What Is Burgundy?

Burgundy, or Bourgogne in French, is a province in eastern France famous for both red and white wines; it is also the name of the region, its wines, and the most basic, generic category of appellation. There is also a small but steadily growing amount of sparkling, and a tiny amount of pink wine produced there.

According to recent data from the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB, known

in English as the “Bourgogne Wine Board”), Burgundy has 30,052 hectares, or 74,260.04 acres, under vine. In terms of production, there are currently 3,577 domaines viticoles (growers) producing wine (of whom 863 sell more than 10,000 bottles), 266 maisons de négoce (merchant houses), and 16 caves coopératives (cooperatives) The heart of Burgundy wine is the Côte d’Or, or “Slope of Gold,” a roughly 30-mile-long escarpment—a fillet of angled land at the edge of the plain, with outstanding soil composition, recognized for producing exceptional wines as early as a millennium ago—starting just south of Dijon, stretching in the direction of Lyon. The name is often said to refer to the golden color of the vineyard leaves in autumn, though invariably folks joke that the name alludes to the prices the wines fetch at market. A more compelling tradition has it that the name is simply a contraction of Côte d’Orient, “eastern-facing slope”—referencing that the slope of the land has the vineyards facing east, maximizing sun exposure.

Burgundy wine is grown across five primary viticultural areas. From north to south, these are: Chablis, Côte de Nuits (the northern half of the Côte d’Or); Côte de Beaune (the southern half of the Côte d’Or), Côte Chalonnaise; and Mâconnais.

The sheer weight of all this detail— and this is but a brief thumbnail sketch—hints at why Burgundy is considered so complex a wine region.

On the plus side, Burgundy has one of the world’s least complicated range of grape varieties permitted in its vineyards, and the best wines of Burgundy are exclusively made from only two different grapes: pinot noir for reds and chardonnay for whites. As is typical of French wines, however, the bottles rarely specify the grape variety, showcasing instead the geographic location where the wine came from.

Burgundy Is All About Terroir This geography focus is due to the somewhat romantic but thoroughly French belief that the natural character and taste of a wine is derived largely from where the grapes are cultivated (and the wine is made,

Where is Beaujolais?

In terms of government administration, the province of Burgundy technically includes part of Beaujolais, located immediately to the south of Mâconnais—and so there are some who naturally consider the Beaujolais wine region as yet another part of greater Burgundy. It is not. Beaujolais has its own history, soil types, topography, climate, grape varieties, winemaking styles and personalities. The difference between the wines sold as Burgundy and those as Beaujolais are as great as chalk and cheese. Further, Beaujolais is mostly in the Rhône département, and so Burgundians consider Beaujolais wines as les vins du Rhône. The general convention, followed here, is to consider Beaujolais—which I adore!—as its own thing entirely.

broadly in accord with traditional methods). At the core of this doctrine is the much-debated notion of what the French call terroir, which very loosely translates as “a sense of place.”

More than any other wine-growing region in France, Burgundy has enthroned the primacy of place.

Burgundy is where every minute geographic nuance matters, where the whole theory of terroir is explored with the utmost intricacy and devotion.

“Burgundy,” as the wine writer Matt Kramer succinctly put it, “is all about the sanctity of the land, not the brand.”

The term terroir conceptually refers to a holistic combination of such natural localized interactive factors as soil composition, topography (mostly in terms of exposure to sun and water drainage) and climate (from macroclimate down to microclimate).

The big idea is that all these factors combined confer each individual parcel of vinegrowing land its own unique terroir, which is reflected in its

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wines from vintage to vintage. Simply put, terroir is said to be the reason why pinot noir from Burgundy tastes different than pinot noir from, say, Oregon, California or Israel.

While Burgundy’s vineyards were not officially classified until the 20th century, the Christian monks of medieval France began painstakingly cultivating and identifying Burgundy’s vineyards based on the distinctive qualities each parcel transmitted to the resulting wines.

Their religious devotion to cultivating the vine, it is said, laid the foundation of modern Burgundy wine.

This fixation on terroir is largely the conceptual basis upon which France’s regional classifications of vineyards have been established. This system of classification is known as the appellation d’origine contrôlée or AOC, meaning “controlled designation of origin,” and is governed by the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO), a branch of the French Ministry of Agriculture.

Burgundy’s vineyards have been ranked according to four levels of quality. From top to bottom, these are: Grand Cru (“great growth,” these are the very best), Premier Cru or 1er Cru (literally “first growth,” just one notch down), Village (another notch down), and Regional (the bottom tier).

In a sense, this is just a fussy way of describing an especially prized real estate market: The most exclusive addresses are thought the best, and so cost the most. So, the wines from the best vineyard sites are thought to have the best quality potential and are the most in demand, and so also the most expensive. The relationship is a simple inversion: As potential quality goes up, quantity goes down; and as availability goes down, prices go up.

Unfortunately, the Burgundy wine region map

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in all its minute detail is one of the most complicated in the world. Each of Burgundy’s 33 Grand Cru—32 of which are in the Côte d’Or—has its own distinct appellation. There are 684 vineyards with Premier Cru ranking. There are 43 Village appellations—theoretically a statement on each commune’s terroir, such that, for example, a consumer should be able to taste the wine and say, with conviction, this is a MoreySt-Denis and that is a ChambolleMusigny; this is Chassagne and that is Puligny, and so on. The Regional appellations have, mercifully, been simplified from 22 to just eight.

All this complexity has its place, of course, and the wine geeks among us relish such details. But all one really needs to appreciate Burgundy, as with all wines, is curiosity, an open mind, a capacity for personal discernment of taste, an insatiable thirst and— specifically for Burgundy, alas—deep, deep pockets.

“The First Duty of Wine Is to Be Red, the Second Is to Be a Burgundy”—Harry Waugh “We wanted to bring high-quality red Burgundy back to the kosher market in America,” KosherWine. com’s Dovid Riven told me. “So, we started to call our contacts in France and explore the possibilities.”

At the time they first began the project “there wasn’t any kosher red Burgundy widely available in the U.S.,” so they perceived a real need.

After all, he added, “quality red Burgundy is truly something that should be widely available to the kosher consumer—when red Bordeaux is great, it’s really great, but when red Burgundy is great—it is sublime.”

It has often been said among wine aficionados that on the journey to wine APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

understanding, all roads eventually lead to Burgundy (though, arguably, the same might be said of Barolo and Barbarescoin Italy). Burgundy is the birthplace of both pinot noir and chardonnay, the two grapes from which all high-end Burgundy wine is produced, and so draws the attention and affection of wine lovers the world over.

For Andrew Breskin of Liquid Kosher, the appeal of Burgundy has more of the familiar twinkle-inthe-eye romance of a smitten wine aficionado. “I think that Burgundy is the highest expression of red wine for time and place,” he explained.

“As you drink other red wines and get a sense of how vintage and vineyard affect the taste of the wine,” said Breskin, “you go to a place like Burgundy and the differences are so dramatic and so exaggerated between different vineyards that are only separated by a very short distance … that it just causes you to want to learn more, and want to experience more, and taste more, to really understand the region and what about it causes such maddening and exciting distinctions in the wine and in the most delicious way possible.”

For better or worse, however, “Burgundy has become very complicated [on the production side],” Menahem Israelievitch, Royal Wine Europe’s chief winemaker, observed, “even in the non-kosher market.”

“The quantities being produced [there],” Israelievitch explained, “are really, really very small, and have remained smaller than expected every year for the past five years.”

“Demand has outstripped supply by ever-larger amounts,” Riven noted, “and the already limited supply has been further squeezed by lowyielding growing seasons.”

“Increasingly,” lamented Israelievitch, “[Burgundy] producers are having to allocate even their basic Bourgogne appellation wines, not just their higher-end wine. There simply

Terroir and the Côte d’Or The French devotion to the individual vineyards, or climat, of the Côte d’Or is seemingly boundless. The term climat refers to “a vine plot, with its own microclimate and specific geological conditions, which has been carefully marked out and named over the centuries,” and the climats of the Côte d’Or are, since 2015, part of the UNESCO World Heritage list.

These are essentially the vineyard names in Burgundy that have emerged out of the mix of 2,000 years of history, hard viticultural work and wine tasting appreciation. At any rate, there are a whopping 1,247 of these climat registered with UNESCO, stretching out in a thin ribbon from Dijon down to Santenay, south of Beaune.

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FEATURES

isn’t enough wine being produced to go around.”

As Jean-Philippe Marchand, representing the seventh generation of his family in Burgundy wine, put it to me, “Production has been going down, especially with the terrible frost of last April, and world demand is going up, and so the price is going up too … it is the first time in my life to see a situation like this—we have no wine available, and the price is quite expensive.”

Dovid Riven said their project was years in the making: “For us, it finally all came together for the harvest of 2019, so we jumped on it.”

“As it happens,” he laughed, “we weren’t the only ones then who decided to bring kosher quality red Burgundy to the American market—but this is a good thing overall for the kosher consumer here; the more the merrier!

“Instead of our project being one of a kind, it became one of several, but probably the most widely available of what’s out there.”

Riven is perfectly fine with that. “Our focus is providing for our customers, first and foremost,” he said. “If, or as, others build out the kosher Burgundy space in the market, we’ll adapt our activities accordingly.

The kosher market has plenty of room for growth.”

For Israelievitch, returning to Burgundy appealed on several levels.

For one, it was a return to his earliest fully professional days with wine.

Although he grew up in Paris and

30 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

spent years in yeshiva in Israel, invariably he returned to France at grape harvest time each year to work as a mashgiach overseeing kosher wine production.

After completing his yeshiva education in 1999, Israelievitch was hired by Royal to manage the vinification at three wineries in the Loire and four in Burgundy.

Israelievitch clearly has all the telltale signs of a French winemaker with an itch that only Bourgogne can fully scratch.

Israelievitch elaborated: “There is a certain lovely simplicity to producing wine in Burgundy because you work with the grapes from the small vineyard, trying to simply allow them to speak, and showcase what they have to offer of themselves.

The volume is less, so the work is faster—but it is generally more expensive because of the small quantities, too. Really elegant, refined, wonderful wines.”

“Once I thought the market was ready again for Burgundy,” he said, “I began urging the Herzogs … I drove them crazy, and it really wasn’t easy, and took a lot of time to convince them to try Burgundy again.” Thankfully, he persisted and eventually prevailed.

Having been given the green light, he said, “I looked for a Domaine in Burgundy with whom we could really work; I did not want to work through a négociant; I wanted to have something of high quality that we would control … and I didn’t want to have to deal with any potential APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

compromises.

“The current plan,” Israelievitch said, “is to expand this every year, to not just keep production going on the wines that are working out well, but also to include additional appellations on a small scale. Last year we launched the Mercurey, and now we will launch these reds.

“The idea is to build a real and sustained Burgundy portfolio,” he said excitedly, “but to do so in concert with what the market will bear. I want to do this right and build it out properly, and to avoid the mistakes of the past.”

Burgundy and Climate Change One of the biggest conversations around Burgundy at the moment is the impact of climate change. Burgundy is, after all, one of the preeminent and classic cool-climate production areas.

According to the BIVB, the average temperature in Burgundy has increased one degree Celsius since 1987. Widely understood as the effects of climate change, this was considered relatively beneficial until the last few years.

Over that period, bud flowering and grape harvesting have been on average two weeks earlier. While an earlier growing season increases the vulnerability of tender buds to potential spring frosts, the red grapes have enjoyed more reliable maturation and better quality overall.

As Hugh Johnson observed in his “Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book,” 2021, “all farmers will be affected, but … winegrowers are the most sensitive ... The great wines of the world are the result of fine equations of land, weather and vines chosen to ripen grapes at the right speed and the right moment. Because the equation is precise it is inevitably marginal, and marginal means fragile.”

For now, at least, there is no clear widespread programmatic response, so the obsession and its furrowed-brow hand-wringing continues apace.

FEATURES

Old Vines, New Wines

Viña Memorias Winery Reinvigorates Bobal Varietal

A

nnie Molco and her family established Viña Memorias in 2016 to make wines from Spain’s Utiel-Requena region’s historic but rapidly disappearing varietal, the Old Vine Bobal.

Imported by Red Garden, these are among the first kosher bobal wines available in the United States from this Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) near Valencia.

Bobal grapes make deliciouslyrich darkly colored wines similar to tempranillo, the grape that makes Rioja wines. Bobal old vine bush grapes, which generally only grow in this inland PDO, have been revived by a small group of producers because these grapes thrive in the region’s harsh winters and hot, dry summers, and are harvested very late, generally in mid-October. Bobal also did well

in the 1930s because it was found to be resistant to phylloxera. As of 2015, it was Spain’s third most planted grape after airen and tempranillo. The Molco family also has committed to pesticide-free sustainable farming,

By Elizabeth Kratz

strictly rain-fed viticulture and traditional craftsmanship.

“A great wine is the reflection of the land that nurtured it,” said Armando Caracena-Molco, Viña Memorias’ head of global business development. “We are devoted to respecting the characteristics of our environment.”

Located in a region with a rich 2,500 year old winemaking tradition and tending productive old vines

that date back to the 1930s, Viña Memorias’ Bobal vineyards have played an important role in Spanish winemaking. Because Annie Molco noticed that neighboring vineyards were uprooting their historic Bobal vines in order to plant more popular strains, Molco and her family decided to take on the challenge of producing high-quality, terroir-driven wines, making them kosher from the first 2016 vintage.

I tasted two of the wines: The Memorias del Rambam Crianza Bobal Old Vine 2016, which is aged 12 months in American oak. It is a vanilla scented deep red wine, with

lovely acidity, essence of dark fruits, a nice balance with rich yet soft tannins and lovely finish. Its gentle tannins make it accessible and enjoyable to both the novice and experienced wine taster.

Yunikko Tinaja Bobal 2018, which is aged for 18 months in a historicto-the-region red clay jar known as

the Tinaja, rather than oak barrels or steel vats. The jar imparts a clean yet earthy mineral essence, delivering a wine with notes of blueberry, red and black fruit and chocolate, with no influence of oak. The fruit and mineral-rich terroir are central to this wine.

Red Garden Inc. is the exclusive United States importer of Viña Memorias. “It is an honor to represent Viña Memorias in the United States and help them build their brand recognition in this new market,” said Mendel Ungar, president of Red Garden. “Their unique old-vine, single varietal wines have a cult following in Europe and Israel, and we are excited to offer them to our customers.”

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FEATURES

Welcome to the 2022 Jewish Link Wine Guide!

T

he creation of our second (now-annual!) Jewish Link Wine Guide in the post-COVID lockdown has been exhilarating and fun. The challenges we experienced in our first year of creating an independent kosher wine magazine during the first global pandemic in a century colored our subsequent experiences; likely making virtually anything that followed it a much more cheerful experience.

This year, as our worldwide kosher winemakers began to emerge from their travel lockdowns, many of us “wine people” met in person again in February and March during various wine tastings and business meetings, and it was just so good to see everyone again. The return of commerce has been long awaited, and greeting old friends, even those with whom we only share business interests, has never felt so good.

Our efforts to celebrate kosher wine this year were met with more positivity, more enthusiasm, and a lot more joy. Though we had our share of challenges as well, like anyone trying to run a business in this postpandemic world, we learned that everyone certainly had their share of logistics and pipeline issues.

For us at the Jewish Link Wine Guide, we were met with over 600 bottles as entries in our ranked

32 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

tastings, and this included wines sent in categories for which we didn’t even offer rankings! For that reason, we have incorporated even more wines into our articles, and included new rankings of top 10 varietal wines, including “best worldwide lists” for cabernet, merlot, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and a particularly Zionist variety we call “Israeli blend.”

We hope you enjoy these lists and find them useful as you shop for Pesach and throughout the year.

As always, our process of wine tastings was blind; meaning every bottle we ranked was covered and numbered so its label was not visible to the judges. The goal of blind tastings is for our judges to not be swayed in any way by their personal views on brands they have tried previously, or on any other factor other than the liquid in the glass.

The judges ranked their wines on a personally calibrated 100 point scale, which they initially developed together before the tastings for last year’s magazine. We are exceedingly grateful and fortunate to have had all five of our founding judges return to taste for us in our sophomore year.Yossie Horwitz, Jeff Katz, Greg Raykher, Daphna Roth and Yeruchum Rosenberg share a passion for supporting the kosher wine industry as a whole.

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

While the tastings took place over six long evenings in February, with as many as 100 bottles in each tasting, we benefited from our stable office environment and our ability to generally offer reasonable temperature control for the bottles, an issue we struggled with as we produced our wine guide for 2021, having to hold tastings outside in deference to Covid. We continue to grow and learn about how to improve our blind tastings.

We are grateful our efforts last year were well-received and as we conclude our preparations this year, it is with a strong sense that we continue to toil toward something important. As we celebrate the brands which grace our Shabbat tables every week, we continue to see the importance of supporting the innovators and mainstay personalities behind the brands. Every bottle of kosher wine represents an incredible amount of work on behalf of the consumer, and we could not be more grateful to celebrate and recommend so many within this beautiful community.

With best wishes for a Chag Kasher V ’Sameach, Elizabeth Kratz

JUDGES

Meet the

Jeff Katz Jeff Katz has been collecting, tasting and sharing alcohol with friends for 20 years. With an original interest in mixology and spirits, Jeff’s appreciation for wine evolved 10 years ago when his wife handed him a glass of Russian River Chardonnay. Since then, Jeff has become a member of multiple kosher wine clubs and has made good friends with many oenophiles. Jeff enjoys speaking with winemakers and hearing about their journeys which led them to where they are today. When not entertaining friends and family, Jeff works in global supply chain and customs management and lives in New Jersey with his amazing wife Eva and two beautiful daughters.

Yossie Horwitz Growing up in a tee-totaling household in Jerusalem, Yossie Horwitz didn’t have much early exposure to wine.

That all changed one Passover night when he tasted his first quality dry red wine. A lifelong passion was stoked and by the time he was 30 and living in New York City, he was penning a weekly email blast to family and friends sharing his varied recommendations. Today, “Yossie’s Corkboard” goes out to more than 11,000 subscribers around the world and covers the ever-expanding world of kosher wine. Tasting more than 4,000 different kosher wines each year keeps this deal-making attorney-by-day quite busy. Sign up at yossies_corkboard.com and follow on instagram at yossies_ corkboard.

Greg Raykher Greg Raykher has been interested in tasting, collecting and learning about wine for over 20 years. He met some of his closest friends through the old Daniel Rogov chat group. Greg loves following theIsraeli wine industry, and still remembers how excited he was when Castel went kosher in 2002, Bazelet Hagolan in 2004, Flam and Tulip in 2010, and Pelter opened Matar in 2012. When not learning about wine, Greg works in finance, with a focus on zero-carbon renewable energy projects.

He lives in Teaneck with his children, and shares his love of wine exploration with his wife Daphna, a fellow judge on The Jewish Link panel. This past fall, Greg received the Wine Spirits and Education Trust (WSET) Level 2 Award in Wines, passing the exam with distinction.

Daphna Roth Daphna Roth has been tasting and enjoying wine for over 30 years. She first introduced her husband, Greg, to wine with a gift of the “Wine For Dummies” book. They have been exploring exciting kosher wines together ever since. Little did she know that their wine journey would include being a judge for The Jewish Link. Daphna works as an adult neuropsychologist, specializing in evaluations, in private practice in Teaneck.

Yeruchum Rosenberg Yeruchum Rosenberg is a wine enthusiast who spends his days in the world of technology and finance.

He has been involved in the kosher wine scene for over 20 years. He loves family, friends, food and wine— preferably together. He enjoys cooking and frequenting Rosh Chodesh clubs.

He lives in Teaneck with his wife, Michal, and their four kids.

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 • JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

33

Meet the

CONTRIBUTORS

Michal Rosenberg Joshua E. London Joshua E. London has been drinking, writing, consulting and speaking professionally about kosher wines and spirits for more than 20 years. He is originally from Northern California, and his love affair with wine began in the late-1980s with a relatively shortlived kosher wine venture in Davis.

For over a dozen years London wrote a popular weekly column on kosher wines and spirits that appeared in several Jewish publications, and his writing has appeared in a wide variety of both Jewish and non-Jewish print and online media. In addition to writing for The Jewish Link Wine Guide, Josh joined us this year as a consulting editor.

Elizabeth Kratz Elizabeth Kratz is associate publisher and editor of The Jewish Link, and founding editor of The Jewish Link Wine Guide. She writes a monthly column about kosher wine, primarily connected to seasonal themes or yom tov. The first blind wine tasting Elizabeth attended was 20 years ago, with her friends Joshua London and Gamliel Kronemer, when all three were neighbors in Washington, D.C. This past fall, Elizabeth received the Wine Spirits and Education Trust (WSET) Level 2 Award in Wines, passing the exam with merit.

Dr. Kenneth Friedman Dr. Kenneth Friedman is a Baltimore-based kosher wine aficionado/connoisseur. He produces and consults on unique food and wine tastings, utilizing his years of experience to create memorable, exciting events. He maintains a column on kosher wine, food and spirits, and leads educational wine tastings on Instagram @kosherwinetastings. This past fall, Kenny received the Wine Spirits and Education Trust (WSET) Level 2 Award in Wines, passing the exam with merit.

34 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

Michal Rosenberg is associate editor at The Jewish Link and deputy editor of The Jewish Link Wine Guide. Her husband Yeruchum first introduced her to wine 20 years ago and she’s joined him on his wine journey ever since.

She’s learned a lot over the years, but still lets him pick out the bottles they drink.

Gamliel Kronemer Gamliel Kronemer has been writing for more than 15 years about kosher wine, spirits, cocktails and food in a number of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including The Jewish Link. In 2005, when Gamliel started writing regularly on the subject, he recalled that “back then, most newspapers wrote about kosher wine at most twice a year, with headlines like ‘Kosher Wine: It’s Not Your Mama’s Manischewitz Anymore.’

Watching the kosher wine world blossom has been utterly amazing, and I feel fortunate to have had a front row seat.” Gamliel lives with his wife, Jessica, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

FEATURES

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35

Special Thanks!

Check out The Jewish Link Wine Guide on Social Media, where we post our wine adventures year round!

36 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Instagram

@jewishlinkwinemag Facebook

@jewishlinkwineguide

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

A special thank you to Jewish Link Wine Guide Founding Judge Yossie Horwitz, a true team leader who inspires us to propel our wine education forward. His indispensable counsel on the construction of our blind tastings, as well as his making the time to answer questions of fellow judges and editors, encourages us to do better every year.

FEATURES

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

37

TOP

25 1 2 TOP RED 50 - $100

$

REDS 50 - 100

$

$

Château Peyrat Fourthon Haut-Médoc

2015

4

Shiloh Secret Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

5

Tabor Winery

Limited Edition 1/11,000 Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

8

Tabernacle Betzalel Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

9

2018

38 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Shiloh

Secret Reserve Cabernet Franc Gad Elbaz

2018 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

6

Shiloh Mosaic

2018

Covenant Israel Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

3

La Forêt Blanche Ya’ar Levanon Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

7

Nevo Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

10 11 Nevo

Shiloh

Petit Verdot

Secret Reserve Petit Verdot

2018

2018

12 13 14 15 Covenant Israel

Shiloh

Nevo

Hagafen

Secret Reserve Merlot

Red Blend

Estate Napa Valley Family Vineyard Blend

Syrah

2018

2018

2019

2018

16 17 18 19 Shirah

Gush Etzion

Château Fontenil

Dalton

Brodeux

Blessed Valley

Fronsac

Galilo

2018

2017

2018

2017

20 21 22 23 Sfar

Hagafen

Hagafen

Tabernacle

Cabernet Sauvignon Petit Verdot

Prix Reserve Coombsville Napa Valley Pinot Noir

Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

Betzalel Ketoret Blend

2018

2018

2018

2018

24 24 24 25 Shiloh

Gros

Or Haganuz

Flam

Secret Reserve Shiraz *

Shoham White Onyx *

Orot French Blend *

Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

2018

2017

2019

*These wines tied in the rankings.

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

39

TOP

25 1 TOP RED 25 - $50

$

REDS 25 - $50

$

2

Or Haganuz Marom Cabernet Franc

2018

4 Yaffo

Reserve Malbec

5

Bazelet Hagolan

Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

8 Yaffo

Reserve Syrah

2017

9

2018

40 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Dalton

El Kosh Shiraz

2017 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

6

Shiloh Shor Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

Barkan Platinum Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

3

Lueria Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

7

Golan Heights Winery Yarden Syrah

2018

10 11 Golan Heights Winery

Gito

Yarden Malbec

Shani Blend

2018

2018

12 13 14 15 Golan Heights Winery

Nadiv

Dalton

Adir

Reishit Israeli Blend

Alma Deep Red

Shiraz

Yarden Merlot

2018

2019

2018

2018

16 17 18 19 Shiran

Psagot

Drimia

Hayotzer

The Soprano

Edom

Sahar

Lyrica Meritage

2019

2019

2019

2016

20 21 22 23 Hayotzer

Twin Suns

Bazelet Hagolan

Ephod

Virtuoso Merlot

Reserve Zinfandel

Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

Regesh Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

2019

2017

2018

24 25 25 Tabor Winery

Dalton

Lueria

Judaica Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

Reserve Shiraz *

Barbera *

2017

2017

2019

*These wines tied in the rankings.

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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TOP

25 1 2 TOP RED Under $25

REDS UNDER $25

Chateau Alvignès Cahors Malbec

2016

4

Château Josephine Mourvèdre

5

Château Josephine

Merlot

2019

8

Louis Blanc Morcantel Bourgogne Gamay

2019

9

2015

42 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Dalton

Estate Merlot

2018 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

6

Galil Mountain Winery Merlot

2020

Twin Suns Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

3

Jerusalem Vineyard Winery Vintage Malbec

2019

7

Château Josephine Garnacha

2019

10 11 Dalton

Ramon Cardova

Estate Petite Sirah

Garnacha

2019

2016

12 13 14 15 Tabor Winery

Terra di Seta

Cantina del Redi

Golan Heights Winery

Adama Merlot

Chianti Classico

Pleos Toscana/ Sangiovese

Gilgal Merlot

2017

2019

2019

2019

16 17 18 19 Grume d’Or

Galil Mountain Winery

De la Rosa

Netofa

Pinot Noir

Ela

Lev St. Laurent

Domaine Red

2019

2019

2018

2018

20 21 22 23 Barkan

Gondola

La Forêt Blanche

Casa De Cielo

Reserve Merlot

Chianti

Talpiot

Pinot Noir

2019

2019

2019

2021

24 25 25 Herzog Wine Cellars

Lueria

Château La Garenne

Lineage Choreograph

Terrace *

Bordeaux *

2020

2016

2019

*These wines tied in the rankings.

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

43

TOP

5

50 - $100

$

WHITES 50 - $100

$

1 TOP

WHITE

Hagafen

Prix Reserve Oak Knoll District/ Napa Valley Chardonnay 2018

2

Herzog Wine Cellars Special Edition Chaulk Hill Chardonnay

3

2019

44 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Flam

Camellia White Blend

2020

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

4 Lahat

Laichter White Blend

2020

5

Mia Luce Blanc

2019

C O N S I S T E N T L Y AW E S O M E

IMPORTED BY

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

45

TOP

25 12

Lueria

TOP

WHITE 25 - $50

$

WHITES 25 - $50

$

J.de Villebois Pouilly Fumé

2020

4 Matar

Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

5

Cantina dell’Angelo

Greco di Tufo

2020

8

Lueria Unoaked Chardonnay

2018

9

2020

46 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Hagafen

Oak Knoll Napa Valley Chardonnay

2018 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

6 Nana

Chenin Blanc

2019

Roussanne 2018

3

Lueria Chardonnay

2020

7

Covenant Israel Blue C Viognier

2020

10 11 Lahat

Gito

Lavan Blend

Uphaz Blend

2020

2020

12 13 14 15 Golan Heights Winery

Shiloh

Psagot

Sheldrake Point

Yarden Pinot Gris

Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc

Riesling

2019

2020

2020

2020

16 17 18 19 Yaffo

Nevo

Gito

Adir

Image White

Chardonnay

Soreqa Blend

Single Vinyard Chardonnay

2020

2020

2020

2017

20 21 22 23 Sheldrake Point

Domaine GuilleraultFargette

Lavan Chardonnay

Gewürztraminer

Sancerre

Mt Amasa White

2020

2020

2020

2018

Covenant

Yatir

24 25 Domaine du Castel

Binah

La Vie Blanc

Chardonnay

2020

2020 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

47

TOP

25 12 TOP

WHITE

Pacifica Riesling

Under $25

WHITES UNDER $25

Covenant

Red C Sauvignon Blanc

2021

4

Golan Heights Winery Yarden Sauvignon Blanc

5

Vitkin

White Israeli Journey

2020

8

Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc

2020

9

2021

48 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE •

Hagafen

Lake County Riesling

2020 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

6

Galil Heights Winery Sauvignon Blanc

2020

2019

3

Dalton

Reserve Sauvignon Blanc

2020

7

Hagafen Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc

2021

10 11 Darom by Yatir

Binah

Sauvignon Blanc

Stella

2020

2020

12 13 14 15 Yaffo

Ramon Cardova

Herzog Wine Cellars

White blend

Albariño

Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc

Riesling

2020

2019

2020

2020

Delta

16 17 18 19 Château Lacaussade

Cape Jewel

Dalton

Dalton

Canaan White

Fume Blanc

Saint-Martin White Blend

Chenin Blanc

2020

2020

2019

2021

20 21 22 23 Segal

Elvi Wines

Dalton

Koenig

Native Marawi

Herenza White

Unoaked Chardonnay

Riesling

2019

2018

2020

2018

24 25 De La Rosa

Adir

Taryag Grüner Veltliner

Grenache Blanc

2019

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49

TOP 10 VARIETALS

TOP

10 CHARDONNAY TOP

10 SAUVIGNON BLANC

11

Hagafen

Prix Reserve Oak Knoll/Napa Valley Chardonnay

2018

$48.00

2

Lueria

Chardonnay

2020

$25.00

3

Herzog Wine Cellars

Special Edition Chaulk Hill Chardonnay

2019

$60.00

4

Lueria

Unoaked Chardonnay

2020

$25.00

5

Hagafen

Oak Knoll/Napa Valley Chardonnay

2018

$30.00

6

Nevo

Chardonnay

2020

$44.99

7

Adir

Single Vineyard Chardonnay

2017

$32.99

8

Covenant

Chardonnay Lavan

2020

$42.00

9

Binah

Chardonnay

2020

$27.00

10

Dalton

Estate Unoaked Chardonnay

2020

$17.99

1

1

Shiloh

Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$32.00

2

Psagot

Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$28.00

3

Covenant

Red C Sauvignon Blanc

2021

$24.00

4

Dalton

Reserve Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$19.99

5

Golan Heights Winery

Yarden Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$22.99

6

GalilMountain Winery

Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$21.99

7

Hagafen

Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc

2021

$21.00

8

Goose Bay

Sauvignon Blanc

2021

$20.00

9

Darom by Yatir

Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$23.99

10

Bat Shlomo

Sauvignon Blanc

2020

$25.00

TOP 10 VARIETALS

TOP

10 CABERNET

SAUVIGNON Over $50

TOP

10 CABERNET

SAUVIGNON Under $50

11

Covenant Israel

Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

$90.00

2

La Forêt Blanche

Ya'ar Levanon Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$69.99

3

Shiloh

Secret Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

$50.00

4

Tabor Winery

Limited Edition 1/11,000 Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$50.00

5

Nevo

Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$54.99

6

Tabernacle

Betzalel Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$50.00

7

Hagafen

Estate Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$50.00

8

Flam

Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve

2019

$65.00

9

Adir

Plato Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$82.99

10

Bazelet Hagolan

Kerem 188 Special Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$54.99

11

Barkan

Platinum Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$35.00

2

Lueria

Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$36.99

3

Bazelet Hagolan

Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$36.99

4

Shiloh

Shor Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

$30.00

5

Bazelet Hagolan

Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$42.99

6

Ephod

Regesh Cabernet Sauvignon

2018

$25.00

7

Tabor Winery

Judaica Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

2017

$40.00

8

Twin Suns

Cabernet Sauvignon

2019

$14.99

9

The Chosen Barrel

Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2014

$49.99

10

Yaffo

Reserve Caberbet Sauvignon

2018

$29.99

TOP 10 VARIETALS

TOP

10 MERLOT TOP

10 ISRAELI BLENDS Under $30

11

Shiloh

Secret Reserve Merlot

2018

$50.00

2

Golan Heights Winery

Yarden Merlot

2018

$32.99

3

Hayotzer Virtuoso

Merlot

2018

$28.99

4

Chateau Josephine

Merlot

2019

$9.99

5

Galil Mountain Winery

Merlot

2020

$17.99

6

Dalton

Estate Merlot

2018

$20.99

7

Tabor Winery

Adama Merlot

2017

$18.00

8

Golan Heights Winery

Gilgal Merlot

2019

$18.99

9

Barkan

Reserve Merlot

2019

$20.00

10

Yaffo

Reserve Merlot

2018

$29.99

11

Nadiv

Reishit Israeli Blend

2018

$25.00

2

Dalton

Alma Deep Red

2019

$28.99

3

Jezreel Valley

Nahalal

2019

$30.00

4

Dalton

Alma Red

2019

$28.99

5

Galil Mountain Winery

Ela Israeli Red Blend

2019

$23.99

6

La Forêt Blanche

Talpiot Israeli Blend

2019

$24.99

7

Lueria

Terrace Israeli Blend

2016

$23.99

8

Domaine Netofa

Domaine Red

2018

$19.99

9

Domaine Netofa

Latour Red

2018

$30.00

10

Golan Heights Winery

Gilgal Israeli Blend

2019

$18.99

TOP 10 VARIETALS

TOP

10 ISRAELI BLENDS Over $30

TOP

10 BOTTLES Under $20

11

Or Haganuz

Orot Aspamya

2018

$70.00

2

Otzar

Premium (No Sulfites Added)

2017

$74.99

3

Jezreel Valley

Icon

2018

$90.00

4

Gros

Shoham Black Onyx

2018

$72.99

5

Yatir

Forest

2018

$90.00

6

Mia Luce

C.S.M Mediterranean Blend

2019

$59.99

7

Carmel

Signature Mediterranean

2018

$60.00

8

Shiran

The Song of the Birds Blend

2019

$42.99

9

Shiran

The Trio Blend

2019

$42.99

10

Delta

Sigma Fusion

2018

$39.99

11

Elvi Wines

Herenza Rioja

2019

$17.99

2

Jerusalem Vineyard Winery

Malbec

2019

$18.99

3

Goose Bay

Sauvignon Blanc

2021

$20.00

4

Terra di Seta

Chianti Classico

2019

$20.00

5

Ramon Cardova

Garnacha

2016

$20.00

6

Pacifica

Evan's Collection Pinot Noir

2019

$20.00

7

Vineferia

White Blend

2019

$14.99

8

Psagot

Sinai White

2020

$20.00

9

Cantina Giuliano

Vermentino

2020

$17.99

10

Elvi Wines

Herenza White

2018

$15.00

FEATURES

Wines to Impress

Wines to serve when Moshiach graces your table.

By Elizabeth Kratz

I

t was our pleasure to taste a very wide array of wines for the Jewish Link Wine Guide 2022, from the most affordable to the most aspirational. While some of the long-awaited tastings were for very high end wines, tasting very expensive wines without the options of giving them the benefit of airing time or any effort toward food pairing, made them more difficult to assess. So while we are recommending 10 wines below, which came in far above our “above $50” price point which we used for rankings, this year we chose not to rank those wines that retailed for over $100.

I also know there are some readers who will be surprised or shocked at the prices of the wines pictured. This is definitely not your father’s Manischewitz! However, bear with me when I share why I think it’s a good thing for the entire kosher marketplace for wines available at every price point.

The fact is, it used to be that you had to spend a lot to get a good bottle of wine. Spending a large amount was one of our only perceived “assurances” of enjoying the bottle. But the rise of wine education and the benefits

of many more people tasting a wider variety of wines illustrates that cost is no longer the only way to assess quality. Also, the fact that wines still exist at the very high end even after this education, shows that our market has enthusiastic buyers who continue to purchase these wines year after year. This illustrates to international wine sellers that the kosher-keeping community cares about quality and continues to be interested in improvement and new offerings. (And, as each person’s wine journey is unique, perhaps these wines will someday enter the consciousness of those who would never expect to pay even $50 a bottle!) Today, the fact that a palette of $23 Ramon Cordova Old Vines Rioja—one of the best wines I’ve ever encountered—sells out in a week is because our kosher wine community has now tasted enough wine to know quality when we see it.

With that said, I invite you to enjoy the following wines for the most special of occasions; that is, wines to serve in your home when Moshiach comes to town. May we greet him soon!

$179.99

Château GrandPuy Ducasse Bordeaux 2018 $110.00

Château du Tertre Bordeaux Blend 2018 $110.00

Domaine Roses Camille Blend 2014 $159.99

Château Malartic Lagraviere Bordeaux 2018 129.99

(KosherWine.com)

(Royal)

(Royal)

(LiquidKosher.com)

(Royal)

Domaine Chantal Lescure Pommard Pinot Noir 2017 $139.00

Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 $115.00

Psagot Jewel / Blend 2017 $150.00

Teperberg Providence / Blend 2016 $100.00

Shiloh Mosaic Exclusive Edition 2017 $99.00

(LiquidKosher.com)

(Royal)

(Royal)

(Royal)

(Royal)

René Lacarière GevreyChambertin Burgundy

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FEATURES

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Celebratory Bottles for Life’s Sweetest Moments Whether it’s time to celebrate an engagement or a wedding, a milestone birthday or an anniversary, or you are looking to choose a sweet wine to begin or end your meal, we’ve found some favorites that are sure to please.

For those shopping for others: whether your friends or family like sweet, dry, or even would rather pop a beer, we’ve got a bubbly to suit everyone’s taste and budget. L’Chaim!

By Jewish Link Wine Guide Staff Freixenet Excelencia Cava The least expensive wine in our tasting turned out to be the night’s favorite. Would it be that it were always the case. At $18, this dark straw-colored Spanish sparkler has large snapping bubbles and a bouquet of peaches, apricots and lychees. Look for flavors of peaches, apricots and cantaloupe, with a yeasty overtone and notes of lemon, with cream on the finish.

Bartenura Brut Rosé This is an off-dry pink wine to enjoy at a celebration or on a hot summer day. At $21, the price is hard to beat.

It’s not as sweet as its blue bottled brother, but it doesn’t matter. This Veneto-made pink prosecco has fans all over the world.

Herzog Lineage Momentus Herzog makes the moments matter with this sparkling wine, bright yellow with notes of lemon, pear, stone fruit, as well as bready, yeasty notes. A perfect $20 bubbly to share with friends and family.

Contessa Annalisa Prosecco This very easy-todrink Italian sparkler ($14.99) has a light to medium body, a light straw color and an abundance of bubbles both large and small.

Look for flavors and aromas of lemons, apples and honey, with just a whiff of lime zest.

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Barons Edmonds de Rothschild Champagne A blend of 60% chardonnay and 40% pinot noir, this medium-bodied, straw-colored wine has an active mousse of tiny bubbles.

According to Gamliel Kronemer writing in last year’s Jewish Link Wine Guide, it has a woodsy nose with elements of bramble, pears, quince and roasted nuts. Look for flavors of pears, apples and quince, with a nice level of acid, and a just-light hint of cream on the finish. This is an expensive wine at $89.99, sure to impress whoever is lucky enough to receive it.

Jezreel Valley Natural Sparkling Wine (Pét-Nat) Pét-Nat, which is short for petillant natural, is a naturally sparkling dry rosé wine. For those among us who prefer beer to wine, this is a perfect cross-over, and a great treat for special occasions. Fizzy like light beer (and bottled with a cap, not a cork!) this fun wine has raspberry and strawberry and floral notes and is made from 100% carignan, a native Israeli grape. The light effervescence is a product of the wine being bottled before primary fermentation is finished. For those who like their food and beverage to be more natural, this wine is unfiltered, and surprisingly interesting. The bottle label is also a beautiful conversation piece. Available exclusively from KosherWine.com for $27.99.

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FEATURES Covenant Blanc de Blanc Technically speaking, this bright straw-colored wine ($40) is a carbonated wine, not a sparkling wine.

According to Gamliel Kronemer writing in last year’s Jewish Link Wine Guide, this particular blanc de blanc was born when Covenant’s former cellar master decided to see what would happen when he put some of the winery’s Tribe Chardonnay into a SodaStream! Look for flavors and aromas of apples, lemon, mango, key limes and honey. Enjoy its bracing acidity and bone dryness.

Gondola Brut Rosé This pink bubbly comes in a stylish bottle that adds interest, along with its beautiful color. At $20, it’s a great buy for celebrating life’s special moments. It has nice fruity notes and plentiful bursting bubbles. Serve it very cold. For those who want a celebratory beverage with a lot more sweetness, try Gondola’s Semi-Sweet Rosé.

Vera Wang Prosecco Vera Wang Party Prosecco ($25.99) is a very classic and simple prosecco made from 100% glera grapes from Italy’s Veneto region. This fun, opaque silver bottle really comes ready-wrapped like a present for a party. We don’t get too many of these celebrity-named wines in the kosher world, but Vera Wang, a designer famous for her wedding dresses with classy, clean lines, is somewhat of an interesting choice to headline a kosher wine (mevushal, no less!). Luckily, the pale yellow bubbly (you wouldn’t know the color from looking at the silver bottle) is also fun and pleasant. It’s not too complex but we don’t always need everything to be complex, do we? Sometimes you just want to say mazel tov!

Drappier Champagne Rosé de Saignée Brut Drappier Champagne Rosé de Saignée Brut ($53) is perfect for any occasion that calls for pink champagne. My sense is if I have the choice between white and pink, I choose the pink more often for the additional fruit flavors contributed by the small amount of grape skin contact… plus it looks super-fun and extra-celebratory in the glass! Drappier’s brut nature (traditional white Champagne) and the rosé are both made from pinot noir grapes, for which Drappier is famous. In addition to the medium-size, tight-bursting bubbles, with the rosé there’s a sense of red fruit along with all the expected yeasty, bready scents typical of historic French champagne.

Want something even sweeter? Try these special late harvest sweet wines. Late harvest wines are made from grapes that stay on the vine the longest and have concentrated sugars. The wines produced from late harvest grapes tend to have incredibly beautiful scents of fruit. They are perfect for ending a meal as dessert, or to bring to a friend or host as a gift.

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Wineries of the Year

D

uring our tasting of hundreds of bottles of wine in the course of the making of the Jewish Link Wine Guide, some wines consistently appeared at the top of our rankings, pleasing our palettes time and again and delivering a superior experience in the glass. The designation of five Wineries of the Year honors the passion and innovation of the winemakers behind these consistent, approachable labels, as well as their consistency in placement in multiple rankings categories.

We asked each winery representative what their focus is at their winery, how they’ve emerged from the pandemic and what we can expect from them going forward.

By Jewish Link Wine Guide Staff

Yaffo Winery was established in 1998 by physical therapist Moshe Celniker and Anne Marie Celniker.

YAFFO WINERY Yaffo Winery is a boutique, family-owned winery in Israel’s Ella Valley, owned by one-time physical therapist Moshe and his wife, Ann Marie Celniker.

The winery is their long-time dream come true: “We started with the production of 1500 bottles at our home cellar in Jaffa, following our dream. Today, we produce nearly 70,000 bottles annually in our boutique winery located in Neve Michael, close to our vineyards in the Judean Hills, and plan to grow our production to 200,000 bottles, while keeping it a family winery,” Moshe said.

The couple takes pride in hearing their wine is wellreceived: “We are happy whenever we meet people who tell us they love our wines. It makes all the complications we had on the way worthwhile.” But they are perhaps most proud that they “succeeded in convincing our son, Stephan, to study enology and become our next, future generation of winemaking,”

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shared Moshe.

Having a family winery has its benefits and detractions, noted Moshe, since sometimes not everyone agrees on new trends, “but we understand that it is part of working with the family.”

Yaffo winery is a labor of love for its founders: “We put all our efforts into improving the quality of the wines, testing new varieties that will differentiate us even slightly from the global wine industry. It is not always simple, but it is a long-distance game and we love it,” Moshe said.

As to the future? “We will keep on producing quality wines that happen to be kosher, “ promised Moshe.

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WINERIES OF THE YEAR

SHILOH WINERY

Shiloh winemaker Amichai Lourie is passionate about making wine in the Land of Israel. “One of my goals,” said Lourie, “is to connect people to the land of Israel through Shiloh wines.” Whenever people compliment Shiloh wines, he always makes a point to “give the credit to the Land of Israel … We have an attitude of gratitude, hakarat hatov, for the land and that we are here,” he shared.

Lourie is proud of how Israel’s wineries have collectively created superior products that have received notice by critics and customers alike: “I think that the international recognition for our wines and for all Israeli wines is very important. The best wine critics give high scores to Israeli wines, and they are winning medals; and the critics say they can age for years and are worth purchasing and putting them away.”

“We are living in a country that’s blessed,” Lourie said simply, “so you can feel the blessing in the wines; Our making wine here in Israel has the explicit endorsement and backing of HaKadosh Baruch Hu.” Lourie’s plans for the future include expansion. I am planning more vineyards, mostly in this region.” Looking ahead? “We’ve been working on a new high-end wine for several years and hope to release the wine in a year or two.”

HAGAFEN WINERY Hagafen Cellars is located in the Napa Valley, in the heart of California’s premier wine grape region.

Owned and operated by Irit and Ernie Weir, the winery is located near the famed Stags Leap and Oak Knoll Districts, where the soil is ideal for ripe, rich, intensely fruity small-lot estate bottled wines. Ernie’s motto: “I never seek to change what nature has provided. My goal is to showcase the best that our land has produced.”

Another passion at Hagafen, according to Ernie, is sustainability. “We actively take part in several sustainable activities such as powering the winery by solar power, collecting rainwater for reuse in irrigation and growing all of our own grapes organically, just to name a few. “ What’s next for Hagafen? Ernie is keeping mum: “As for future wines, well, we typically keep that quiet until release so let’s just say that we continue on with our full energy, effort, skill and knowledge of Napa Valley soils, grapes and wines to produce premium varietal and blended wines to be bottled as one or more of our three main labels: Don Ernesto Vineyards, Prix Reserve Wines and Hagafen Cellars.”

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WINERIES OF THE YEAR

COVENANT WINERY Covenant was founded in 2003, in Napa Valley by American winemakers Jeff Morgan and the late Leslie Rudd, who “hoped to honor Jewish culture, heritage and tradition through fine wine.” Today, Covenant operates in both California and Israel— the only winery to make wine in both locations.

“I am trying to make wine that accurately reflects terroir and is also on a par with the finest wines I was privileged to taste as a wine critic,” shared Morgan, who was previously West Coast editor and wine reviewer for Wine Spectator.

Morgan touched on climate change when discussing recent fires in California, noting, “We are learning to deal with the challenge of smoke and heat. Access to water is an ongoing challenge for all vineyards in warm regions like California and Israel; We are dealing with this through innovative irrigation and gray water [recycled water] use.”

Morgan gave a sneak peek at some new bottles to look out for: Covenant Solomon Blanc, a high end Sauvignon Blanc, will be available later this year, as well as the winery’s first vineyard designate—Covenant Syrah Bien Nacido Vineyard 2020—set to be released after Pesach.

To add to your Pesach shopping list: perhaps the little known Covenant fine brandy The Double Edged Sword (kosher for Passover).

Covenant Israel Winemakers Jeff Morgan and Ari Erle.

DALTON WINERY Dalton is a modern Israeli winery located in the heart of the Galilee. It is an “estate winery which means that we grow our own fruit using sustainable vineyard practices,” noted CEO Alex Haruni.

Haruni continued, “I am looking to constantly keep the winery relevant for our customers and bring new wine drinkers into the fold. We do this with constant innovation, creation of new wines and evolving packaging,” Haruni shared.

Covid prompted Haruni to “build closer ties to our customers. We intensified our digital presence, and built our own e-commerce site. We also reduced prices to help people get through the worst of the economic challenges.”

What’s next from Dalton? “We are experimenting with clay amphorae and ancient grape varieties, and have a new vermouth and sparkling wine that were recently released in Israel that we hope to bring to the U.S. soon.

We also have a few more surprises in the offing that I can’t yet reveal.” Stay tuned.

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(l-r) Guy Eshel, winemaker; Mati Haruni, Alex’s father and winery visionary and partner; Dalton Founder and Proprietor Alex Haruni, CEO.

FEATURES

Israeli Tradition.French Class.

Made of Sde Calev Vineyard's choice grapes, Ya'ar Levanon epitomises the restoration of an ancient winemaking heritage, blended with the finest French winemaking tradition.

Ramat Hevron, the historic wine-growing region dotted with wine presses dating back to the Temple days, once again produces wines fit for a King. Savor them! ‫כשר לפסח למהדרין‬ IMPOTRETED BY

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Innovator Awards first annual

By Jewish Link Wine Guide Staff

O

ver this past year, during our wine tasting process and the editorial work of researching, interviewing and writing about the winemakers and professionals who make the kosher wine in our bottles, several of them stood out as absolute innovators. The passion of these five individuals bring merit and strength to the entire kosher wine industry.

Whether it was a youthful exuberance and passion for his family’s estate winery (David Cohen Aletà), action on behalf of sustainability in winemaking (Michal Akerman), intensity in helping kosher wines travel as far as the internet can reach (Dovid Riven), advocacy for bringing “start-up nation” technology to the winemaking process ( Jacob Ner-David), or literally making more wines from never-before-seen-in-kosher wine making regions accessible to the consumer (Ari Lockspeiser), we were simply blown away.

Innovator David Cohen Aletà

The Brand Ambassador For David Cohen Aletà, wine is a way of life. He literally grew up in his family’s vineyards, Elviwines, in Spain. His father, Moises, is operator, and his mother, Anna, is winemaker. Together, the family runs the first all-kosher winery to operate in Spain since 1492. Cohen Aletà, just 24, has been working formally for three years as the winery’s sales and export manager. He is also the quintessential brand ambassador, hosting tastings and telling the story of the Elviwines around the U.S., Europe and Israel, and spreading his family’s unique message of kosher wine excellence. “In our case, this is not only a business, but a way of understanding life; we are wine people. This is what I grew up with.”

What is next for Cohen Aletà? “My main goal in the kosher wine industry is trying to be the bridge between the land, the grapes, the wine, the slow tempo of the vines and the final consumer. Being able to break this wall that exists in the consumer world where we want everything now and fast, while in the field and winery we have to appreciate what has been given to us and give respect to nature, to the land, to wine, to life.”

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INNOVATOR AWARDS

Innovator Jacob Ner-David

Building the Future of Israeli Winemaking Jacob Ner-David, who has been part of Israel’s tech startup scene for the past 25 years, co-founded the startup Jezreel Valley Winery with Yehuda Nahar in 2011, with a neverbefore-seen-in-Israel Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, bringing a millennial vibe to an already modernthinking winery. Ner-David thinks of himself as working in Israeli wine, not specifically kosher wine.

“While we are certified kosher, that doesn’t define us,” he said. Rather, using native Mediterranean grapes and combining them in ways that reflect Israel’s specific terroir is part of Jezreel’s self-definition.

One goal Ner-David would like to be remembered by? “That people stop thinking ‘kosher’ when referring to Israeli wine, and instead think ‘excellent Israeli wine.’”

Outside the wine world, Israel has become known as a place of innovation—not copycat tech but

a place that celebrates unique and authentic ways of developing and using technology. It’s Ner-David’s goal to bring the same innovation that worked with Israel as a “StartUp Nation” to the wine industry.

“I will be most proud of us as we deepen our identity as an innovative winemaking region with varieties, both historic and modern, that belong here and when you taste them, you think— Israel! And yes, we need leaders in using experiential tech to bring people closer to what we are doing, through NFTs [non-fungible tokens], bringing Israel wine into the metaverse, and more.”

Innovator Dovid Riven

The Direct-to-Consumer Revolutionary Dovid Riven’s foray into the kosher wine industry began with an operations and administrative role seven years ago. After some self-paced studying, including lots of tasting, and some formal training through WSET, he took on procurement and sourcing responsibilities. Today, as a partner in KosherWine.com, he helps curate a website that sells approximately 1,200 kosher wines, with 150 wines that are exclusive to KosherWine.com, meaning these wines can only be acquired by consumers directly from the website.

These labels include Shiran, Nevo and Yaffo from Israel, wines from Europe, as well as U.S.-made wines from Sheldrake Point, Doubleback, Sleight of Hand and Eola Hills.

What’s next for Riven? “The kosher

wine industry has come a long way over the past few decades. Today, you can find premium kosher wines in many categories, with productions covering some of the more obscure styles and regions. When I started out in the industry it was the norm to hear that ‘the kosher wine scene is five years behind non-kosher wine trends.’ Today, that gap has narrowed. It’s exciting to be part of this evolution. The best part of my job is bringing new and exciting wines to the market, and sharing in this effort with all the amazing winemakers, producers, importers, critics, reviewers and industry members. It’s really a testament to the kosher wine consumer base, eager to advance their knowledge and appreciation for wine.”

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INNOVATOR AWARDS

Innovator Michal Akerman

Promoting Ecological Excellence in Winemaking Michal Akerman, an agronomist and viticulturist, has been working for 19 years in the kosher wine industry. She spent her first five years at Barkan, one of Israel’s few commercial wineries, which produces 10 million bottles a year, and where many top Israeli winemakers also began their careers. For the past 14 years, however, she has been the winery manager at Tabor Winery,

Innovator Ari Lockspeiser

The Négociant Ari Lockspeiser, who has studied, taught and worked in the wine industry for the last eight years, currently acts as a négociant, bringing in wines for both KosherWine. com and The Cellar Lakewood.

The much-lauded kosher Finger Lakes Sheldrake Point wines are his projects, exclusively available at KosherWine.com, as is the Sleight of Hand Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon from Walla Walla, Washington. The wines from these regions have not previously been widely available for the kosher consumer, and their entry into the marketplace last year has made a splash. At this writing the Sheldrake Point Riesling 2020 had been sold out for six months, and Lockspeiser doubled his 2021 riesling production, in the hopes of meeting consumer demand.

Lockspeiser’s wines for the wellregarded wine store The Cellar Lakewood, where he is a partner, are Israeli wines Ma’ayan, made by

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Tom Winery; Italian and Spanish wines made under the Viniferia label at Cantina Giuliano and Elviwines, respectively; and Allegory, wines made in California by Shimon and Gabriel Weiss. These affordable wines made under The Cellar’s private labels have made products by established winemakers more accessible to the public. As The Cellar Lakewood now sells its wines on the web, they are now available for kosher consumers to enjoy nationwide.

What’s next for Lockspeiser? “I want people to look at wine in both a fun and serious way. We can be knowledgeable about wine, know what we are talking about, take it seriously, but still have fun and enjoy the wine, the company and experience of drinking wine together. I would love to take the pretentiousness out of wine. I also would love it if people view what I am doing as opening up their minds and tastes to a whole new world of wine that they never had the chance to experience before.”

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

which produced a more boutique number of bottles of wine annually: 1.8 million bottles. Akerman has spent her time at Tabor transforming its vineyards into “ecological vineyards,” Israel’s first. To qualify for this international certification, Tabor uses minimal pesticides, welcoming wildlife back to the vineyards; it is believed this leads to better fruit growth, more natural growth conditions and therefore better and more sustainable winemaking.

What’s next for Akerman? “It’s easy! I want people to remember me as the woman who started the viticulture revolution, a sustainable ecological revolution. And [I would like] Tabor winery to be known as the winery that understood that climate change has consequences and that we acted accordingly.”

FEATURES

The Kosher Wine Education Revolution

Like never before, both formal and informal opportunities abound to bring your kosher wine palate to the next level.

By Gamliel Kronemer

T

here are two questions that virtually every oenophile can answer: What was the wine that gave you that first aha moment of appreciation?

And how did you learn to understand wine?

When I had that aha moment in the 1990s, it was with a bottle of Georges Duboeuf ’s Beaujolais-Villages, of which he made a kosher run in 1994.

I knew then that I wanted to learn everything I could about wine. But at the time I didn’t have any friends who had more than a passing interest in wine, there were no kosher wine internet groups, and there were certainly no kosher wine appreciation classes. So I had to teach myself.

I bought a few books ( Jancis Robinson’s “Masterglass”— now published under the title “How to Taste”—was, and remains, a great introduction) and as many different kosher wines as my student budget could afford, and thus launched myself into one of my life’s great passions.

The opportunities for kosher wine education have changed a lot in the past few decades, and most particularly during the COVID pandemic. So it seemed a good time to look back on how kosher wine education has developed, and explore how a more educated consumer

base may be changing the kosher wine industry.

Informal education Before one can address the formal classes now available, one must understand what came before. One of the first informal opportunities for wine education came with website/email lists such as the late Daniel Rogov’s forum, which taught its followers both about particular wines and how to taste them. Rogov was the wine critic for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz and would patiently answer questions about specific wines as well as wine in general. Greg Raykher, a kosher wine collector and a founding judge for The Jewish Link Wine Guide, first learned about wine in the Rogov forum.

“He created a common language for people coming into wine … it was not organized, but Brad du Plessis of KosherWine.com presents one of his wine courses. it created a framework for people around the world to start concentrating around the topic [of kosher wine].”

When Rogov died in 2011, his forum slowly dissipated.

But the role that forum played, of creating a framework to discuss kosher wine, has been largely continued by a number of Facebook groups. According to Yehuda Nahar, the winemaker for Jezreel Valley Winery, in Israel APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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many younger wine enthusiasts get their wine knowledge “mostly from Facebook groups. It makes wine a language . . . mostly the younger generation is consuming their wine information from the internet.” In the U.S. one of the most influential of these online wine groups is run

by Gabriel Geller, the director of marketing for kosher wine giant Royal Wine Corp. “These days there is quite a lot of that sort of thing [wine explanation and criticism] on Gabriel’s group . . . with winemakers and other experts,” said Raykher.

The last few decades has also seen a growth of kosher wineries with visitor centers and tasting rooms.

Ernie Weir’s Hagafen Cellars in the Napa Valley has one of the oldest kosher winery tasting rooms. “When someone comes to our winery we offer them a tasting menu with five or six wines,” explained Weir. “If you pay attention to the wine, in 45 minutes you are going to understand, not everything, but quite a bit more. You can make a wine taster out of anyone if they are paying attention.

If they just want to drink alcohol they are not going to get anything, but most [who visit Hagafen] do pay attention.”

According to Nahar, “In Israel, because of all of the regulation that we had at the beginning of the pandemic, when they started shutting down the restaurant industry, wineries were not under the same category as restaurants. We had a boom at the visitor centers … they were open and we started seeing an increase of 100% of people visiting wineries. But even when the restaurants reopened, they [the visits to the wineries] did not drop. It created a situation where a lot of people discovered the option of hanging out in the winery … and [with repeated visits] they start to understand ‘what is wine.’”

There continues to be a growing

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variety of informal opportunities to learn about wine: in-store tastings, winemaker dinners and large-scale tastings, such as Royal Wine Corp.’s annual Kosher Food and Wine Experience, though the pandemic has dampened some of these opportunities. During this time, however, for a growing number of kosher oenophiles, formal wine instruction began to be offered, and with many people working from home and unable to go out in evenings, they were able to take advantage of internet-based classes. These can “provide a little bit of structure to wine prospective,” said Eli Feldman, a kosher wine collector who recently participated in

to go to the WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust] to take a wine tasting course. These days I think, like, every second waiter in a restaurant who serves wine and likes the subject is taking a course. … My visitor center manager is doing a diploma with the WSET, and he now knows about wines from around the world much more than I do.”

The WSET and its sister organization, the Court of the Master Sommeliers (the Court), are both offshoots of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, one of the City of London’s medieval livery companies. Both WSET and the Court were formed in the post-World War II era to provide certifications and education for those working in the wine trade.

Still based in the U.K., they have become the world’s leading wine education institutions. The WSET was established for those working in retail, and the Court for those working in KosherWine.com’s Brad du Plessis presents on Bordeaux wine regions. restaurants. While initially they were both restrictive in who could take their KosherWine.com’s Academy. courses, in recent decades they have opened enrollment to virtually anyone Formal Education willing to pay tuition.

Until very recently there has “The courses at the Court of the been little formalized education for Master Sommeliers have a much those wishing to study kosher wine. greater focus on the service side The first formal kosher wine class of things and require you to have in the U.S. was given by the Wine restaurant experience to get the Spectator School, which is affiliated advanced certification, [while] the with the magazine. Offered in 2006, WSET is slightly more on the the “ABCs of Kosher Wine” was academics of wine,” explained Brad what one participant described as a du Plessis, head of the KosherWine. straightforward introduction to wine com Academy, who is currently class with a “thin veneer of ‘Jewish’/ pursuing a WSET diploma. kosher information.” The course The KosherWine.com Academy seemingly was not profitable for the provides online wine courses Spectator, as they only offered it offered collaboratively by the online briefly. wine retailer KosherWine.com.

But more recently, and particularly “The pandemic has been good to in Israel, formal kosher wine e-retailers,” explained du Plessis, who education has really taken off. “Just joined the team at KosherWine.com a few years ago,” said Nahar, “you in the early months of the pandemic had to be a super crazy wine geek during a hiring push. “There were APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

a lot of amazing people joining the team who did not have a foundational wine knowledge. I talked to our management about running an internal wine class to get people up to speed on wine basics 101. … They said, ‘This is great but . . . let’s do this for our customers [too]’.”

The academy offers three six-week courses a year (101, 201 and 202); the initial 101 offering had 65 students, and du Plessis described the palpable excitement in the virtual room during the class sessions as “lightning in a bottle.”

In addition to their Academy, KosherWine.com also recently hosted the first U.S.-based kosher WSET Level 2 Award in Wines course. (The WSET offers three certificates and a more advanced diploma, the Master of Wine.) Raykher, who took the Level 2 course and graduated with distinction, came into the course already quite self-educated on wine. (“For me that involved reading a lot of books . . . and of course tasting a lot of wine,” he explained.) For Raykher, wine is a passion, but his day job is in finance, with a focus on zerocarbon renewable energy projects.

“I was surprised how many people were signing up for courses like this.

It was not a cheap class, at 900-odd dollars,” said Raykher, explaining that this level of interest in kosher wine courses “is clearly rather a new thing.” He also noted that half the participants were women, which was an interesting deviation from the male-dominated Rogov forum.

I spoke to a few of Raykher’s classmates, all of whom came to wine from a different path. Meredith Kellman, a social worker who lives in West Orange, New Jersey, said she discovered wine after looking for new evening activities about eight years ago. “I saw a Facebook event for a wine tasting at a liquor store in Monsey; I went, and the manager of the store led us through a tasting of about 10 different wines … that started my [wine] journey. … It’s a

great hobby and I just love it.”

The appreciation of wine sometimes comes only after an appreciation of another spirit, according to Jules Polonetsky, who came to wine appreciation as a hobby and also joined the WSET course. Based in Potomac, Maryland, Polonetsky is the CEO of a global technology policy think tank. “Like many, for me wine is what you had on Shabbos,” he said.

I did not stray far from a cabernet or a merlot. I’d choose an Israeli bottle to support Israel. That was the extent of my wine appreciation.

“Wine was not so accessible,” Polonetsky continued. “It is a complicated, multi-layered thing.

Frankly, I was too busy to dig into wine. COVID changed that. I had more time at home to explore. … So when all of a sudden there was an opportunity to have a kosher wine training and I was home Thursday nights, it was a fantastic opportunity to dig in.”

It is not just KosherWine.com and WSET that are providing new opportunities for kosher wine education. Cornell University, which has offered a very popular undergraduate wine appreciation course since the 1950s, is using kosher wines in its tastings. For the first time this semester, working with Cornell’s Hillel to provide the necessary kosher wines, it has kosher-observant students enrolled in the course. According to Rabbi Ari Weiss, executive director of the Hillel: “The professor was more than open to working with us. This is a pilot project for us. Once we are able to let students know that this is an option, I think it will increase enrollment in the course.”

The Impact of Education on the Kosher Wine World I asked everyone I spoke to for this article what the impact of wine education was on the demands of CONTINUED ON PAGE 79 APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE

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Vini Rossi d’Italia With growth in both quality and variety, Italy’s kosher reds are carving a new niche in the market.

By Gamliel Kronemer

W

hen most consumers— kosher and non-kosher alike—think of kosher Italian wine, a three-word phrase often comes to mind: “the blue bottle.” Moscato is admittedly the bestselling Italian kosher wine, and Bartenura’s Moscato, in particular, has become one of the U.S.’s leading brands of imported moscato, with annual sales in excess of 400,000 cases, it is the first kosher wine to become an overall sector leader.

While there may be a lot of moscato about, there is a lot more today to kosher Italian wine, though many are unaware of it. In a very unscientific survey I performed (of a dozen kosher observant friends) asking about wine shopping practices, many mentioned buying moscato, prosecco (Italy’s affordable, dry sparkler) and pinot grigio. Only one mentioned buying an “occasional bottle of Chianti.” Given all of Italy’s unique kosher offerings I was a bit disappointed—but not terribly surprised—by the outcome.

In the early 2000s and before, all of the kosher wines of Italy, both red and white, were made at large commercial wineries, at the behest of American or French importers, and almost solely for the export market.

Daniel Rogov, the late, great wine critic for Ha’aretz once described kosher Italian wines as “distinctly second class when it came to quality or interest.”

However, in 2006, the quality

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of kosher Italian red wines slowly started to change. In that year, Falesco, the noted Umbrian winery, produced a small kosher run of their Marciliano (a rich and spicy cuvée of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc with satiny tannins and big flavors of cherries, cassis and anise— more recent vintages are imported to the U.S. by M&M Importers of Brooklyn). It was the wine that opened my eyes to Italy.

This small release wine caught the attention of wine critics, but ultimately not many kosher consumers. In 2010 Tenuta Monchiero, an excellent kosher Barolo (I gave it a score of A/Awhen I first tasted it) was produced for the export market, but as with the kosher wines from Falesco, its sales were disappointing.

In that same time frame, in 2008, a small Jewish-owned winery turned kosher and became Italy’s first fully kosher winery. Located in the picturesque Tuscany countryside, a few miles outside of Siena, with 37 acres of organically farmed vineyards, Terra di Seta was founded in 2001

by Daniele Della Seta—a scion of an ancient Roman-Jewish family who can trace his Roman roots back at least half of a millennium—and his wife, Maria Pellegrini, whose family has been producing wine in Tuscany for three generations.

When I first interviewed Della Seta in 2010, I asked him why he decided to focus on kosher wine, APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

and he told me that “Italy is known worldwide for both the quality and variety of its wines. Each wine region in Italy, from north to south, has its own diverse style. I believe that both the number and quality of Italian kosher wines are not comparable with non-kosher Italian wines. I’m lucky to be in a place with a history of producing excellent wines … so I decided to represent my Jewish community through the production of a quintessentially Italian product, that’s unique to this area, Chianti Classico.”

A similar passion to produce something quintessentially Italian drives the owners of Italy’s second wholly kosher winery, Cantina Giuliano, which opened in 2015.

Owned by Eli and Lara Gauthier, a Shabbat-observant married couple, Cantina Giuliano is located in Casciana Alta, a small village about 20 miles south of Pisa. The winery is housed in a building that had been in Lara’s family for generations, and in which Lara’s grandfather Giuliano (for whom the winery is named) had produced wine and olive oil.

Eli Gauthier told me that his goal in winemaking was to “try to get the flavor of here [Tuscany] … I want to work with people, with vine growers, who are passionate about this place.

I am not interested in making an American, or an Israeli or a French [styled] wine … I want my wines to speak of this place.”

Between quality production from

FEATURES both of Italy’s kosher wineries, and a growing number of higher-end négociant kosher wines from quality producers, Italy has a lot to offer the kosher marketplace, and the marketplace is slowly starting to notice.

“Kosher Italian wines fill the same niche as Spanish wines [in the kosher marketplace],” noted Gabriel Geller, the director of marketing and wine education for Royal Wines. If one counts all of the small production kosher Italian wines, “there are more quality kosher Italian wines than there are kosher Spanish wines, and three or four years ago there was almost nothing from Italy to write home about.”

“Italy is a vast place of undiscovered wine for the kosher consumer,” said Ari Lockspeiser, a négociant and wine importer who brings in a few kosher Italian wines for the Cellar Lakewood wine shop (his négociant wines are sold via KosherWine.com). “I think that Italian wines still have enough fruit that the kosher consumer is cool with it, but [in] a little bit of a different style.”

One of the kosher wine importers that has really started to focus on “high-end” (roughly speaking, wines with a price point of $40 and up) Italian reds is The River Wine.

According to owner Ami Nahari,

“We had this dream of being a company that focused on higher-end and specialty wines, but [wine stores] kept on telling us, ‘We need moscato and pinot grigio. Why don’t you have those basic items?’ … We decided to go into Italy because we needed to have these items, but we decided that once we were in Italy and had those connections, let’s do the things we always wanted to do, and provide the kosher world with wines we have not seen before.”

The River currently sells two highend kosher wines—a Super Tuscan and an Amarone—with a third, Aglianico, just released, and another five wines either under contract or already in barrel. “Super Tuscan” is a term used to describe red wines from Tuscany made using non-native grapes, such as cabernet, merlot and syrah; Amarone is a labor intensive wine from Valpolicella, in the province of Verona, within the large Veneto region, made from partially dried grapes. “We are very excited about Italy,” said Nahari.

Not all of the new generation of Italian producers are focusing on higher-end wines. Gauthier said: “A big part of the business model I started [at Cantina Giuliano] was to try to make wines that are affordable. … My wines are not going to

compete with something that cost[s] $45, because they cost $15 or $20. …

This will come at the cost of quality sometimes, because you cannot make an exceptional wine that sells for $20, but you can make something that is very good, and very consistent.”

In the past few years sales of kosher Italian reds have consistently grown, and in a growing number of cases demand for kosher Italian wines has outpaced limited supplies. However, most of the producers and importers I spoke to believe that kosher Italian red wine will always be a niche product. “My sales have been growing slowly but surely,” said Gauthier.

“People are more interested in trying different things … but if you go into a [kosher] wine store in London or New York, [at the] end of the day people want Israeli cab.”

With Italian kosher reds in the ascendant it seems a good time to review them. However, many of the importers I contacted, such as The River, told me that they were out of stock of their current vintage, or that their new wines are still in Italy.

(When I originally reached out to Geller he wrote back that “you are a year too early.”) While I was not able to taste everything I wanted for this article I was able to taste a broad enough sampling to get a real sense of the marketplace. What follows are all the wines in my tastings that received a score of ‘B’ or better.

Terra di Seta, Assai, Chianti Classico, Gran Selezione, 2016: Made from 100% Sangiovese, this delightful Chanti was aged for 24 months in French oak. Garnetcolored and full-bodied, this wine has a bouquet that is still tight, with elements of cassis, cherries, oak and cherry

brandy. Look for flavors of cherries, toasty oak and fennel. The wine had good structure, with an abundance of mouth-puckering tannins.

Approachable now, this wine can really use some more time in the bottle. Best 2023-2027. Score A-.

with an almost full body, this cuvée of 75% cabernet sauvignon, 15% merlot and 10% syrah was made for (and exclusively sold by) Cellar Lakewood—as was the Viniferia Super Tuscan—by Eli Gauthier of Cantina Giuliano. Barrel-fermented and aged for 18 months in French oak, his wine has a bouquet of toasty oak, lavender, cassis, cloves

Viniferia, Terra di Pietra, Cabernet Blend, Tuscany, 2018: Bright garnet in color,

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Cellar Defenders and Hidden Gems: Better Wines for Less

By Yossie Horwitz

K

osher wine consumers in the know, like regular readers of my newsletter, have long been aware of a subcategory of wines able to provide great bang for the buck while also remaining relatively affordable. These are wines perceived to provide very good value for their price tag, with the phrase “high QPR” as a well-meaning yet misleading acronym for “quality price ratio.”

While a literal interpretation of the moniker would include expensive wines as well, provided they are worth such a high price, the characterization is most often used to describe entry-level priced wines that punch significantly above their weight(price tag).

When I write about these wines I often describe them as “cellar defenders” (wines that help “protect” cellaraging wines from being consumed too early by a desire for quality wines on a regular basis), “hidden gems” (wines hiding in plain sight, among a slew of similarly priced wines of far lower quality for their series/label) or even as a “case for everyday drinking” (and part of my near annual lists of a baker’s dozen wines, all sufficiently wellpriced to be enjoyed as a daily tipple).

Finding such proverbial wheat among the proliferation of near-dreck chaff, has long been among my greatest pleasures as a wine writer catering to the mainstream budding kosher wine consumer.

Historically, the unfortunate reality was that the chaff significantly outweighed the wheat in this regard,

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with a pretty small number of wines fulfilling this very important niche.

The list included Galil Mountain’s Yiron, the Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon from the Golan Heights Winery and the Peraj Petita from Spain’s Capcanes Winery. Other hidden gems could be found among the entry-level Baron Herzog or Barkan Classic series.

In addition to specific producers known for producing high-QPR wines like those above, and wines sourced from affordable winegrowing regions, a good source for better value wines are those made from lesser known or appreciated grape varieties (often referred to under its other name of “any variety not called cabernet sauvignon”).

Look for varieties like merlot (often priced lower than its cabernet sauvignon sibling within the same series), pinot noir, petite sirah, cabernet franc, zinfandel and riesling. The consumer preference for other wines helps keep prices lower for these “esoteric” varietals, while the winery’s inability to market a higher-end version created a qualitative arbitrage for these varieties in the lower-priced series.

As the number of kosher wines on the market exploded to more than 5,000 different wines annually, the amount of chaff has correspondingly increased as well. However, the good news is that we have also been blessed with a growing number of these high-QPR wines, including from traditional and less unexpected sources. The wide range of affordable APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

wines from regions like Spain and Italy is to be expected. In Spain, Elvi Wines is leading the charge across a broad spectrum of appellations and price points; there is also the recently released—and very nonkosher looking—Bodegas Faustino Rioja. In Italy, Terra di Seta reigns as QPR king across its entire portfolio, accompanied by a number of wines from Cantina Giuliano; and the wines imported by Brooklyn-based M&M Imports provide a number of attractive options too. There has also been a recent and pleasantly surprising explosion of affordable high-QPR French wines. These include Chateau Larcis Jaumut, Castelbruck, Cantaloupe and Forcas Dupree. Israel also has a number of producers with a wide range of high-QPR wines including Recanati and Dalton, with Domaine Netofa recently moving into that space as their U.S. pricing was recently adjusted to a more reasonable range.

With white wines generally costing less to produce than their darker-colored brethren (less use of expensive oak barrels and quicker time to market, which reduces the carrying cost) and continuing to be less popular in the market, they provide a fertile ground for high-QPR wines as well. This has been a boon to white wine lovers such as myself, allowing us to acquire higher-end wines for lower prices.

While their popularity continues to grow, it still lags well behind that of red wines among kosher wine consumers, a trend I hope continues to evolve given the amazing white wines available today.

FEATURES

FOUR. OR MORE. Wines by Tura Winery. Celebrate Pesach with the best.

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FEATURES

The Benefits of Rising Prices

By Yossie Horwitz

O

ver the last few years, a common theme I’ve heard from my readers is that kosher wine prices have gotten too high, with the rate of increases no longer justifiable. While the COVIDdriven supply chain issues impacting the pricing of goods globally can claim some responsibility in this regard, the issues started long before the ongoing pandemic (or endemic) and are far more attributable to factors relating to the kosher wine market than the inconsistency or unavailability of truck drivers or cargo ships.

In addition to general inflation and global economics, the primary driver of upward cost is the ongoing explosion of interest in quality wines among mainstream kosher consumers, including those who, for years, were content to imbibe wines more akin to alcoholic soda than true table wines—such as the Bartenura Moscato d’Asti—and have recently begun to dip their toes into the quality kosher wine market.

I recall not long ago when $100 was a near-taboo price point for wines, with very few readily available commercially made wines carrying that tag, and any such wine was expected to be truly magnificent along with some real cellaring potential. Since its 1990 inaugural launch, the Golan Heights Winery’s flagship Katzrin was the standard bearer for the $100 kosher wine. The winery has turned out truly special wines every few years since then, accompanied by a handful of French wines curated by smaller producers and targeted towards a very narrow wealthy crowd able to enjoy such luxuries. French wines tend to cost more than Israeli for several reasons, including the exorbitant cost

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to make kosher wine in locales far from communities in which Shabbatobservant workers are readily available.

But during the world’s recovery from the Great Recession in 2009, mainstream kosher consumers started to express a growing interest in and appreciation of quality kosher wines.

Consumers then began to show a willingness to spend for quality and

want a piece of this lucrative market.

Regardless, while hurting the wallet, oenophiles benefit from the growing proliferation of wines in genres and from wine-growing regions whose previous offerings were paltry at best.

This new willingness to spend has provided producers with the incentive to reach higher. One example of this is the return of a kosher version of Château Pontet-Canet, whose

exclusivity, and prices started to move in accordance with what the market could bear, with the former $100 benchmark rapidly moving closer to $150 and higher in recent years.

There has begun a proliferation of such wines from many wineries. In some cases, wineries perceive a need to offer an uber-premium wine in the $100 range, (similar to the need each winery feels to offer a rosé, regardless of whether it makes any professional sense to do so) and others simply

2003 kosher vintage has long been considered by the kosher wine cognoscenti as one of the world’s best kosher wines ever produced.

Doing so properly required building a complete-yet-miniscule kosher winery on premises, enabling the kosher version to be produced in the same manner as the non-kosher run from a winery that has achieved near-cult status in recent years. These efforts make the then-pioneering efforts to ensure that the 2015

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

Château LeovillePoyferre contained the exact same blend as its non-kosher sibling seem quaint by comparison. Other examples include the confidence to produce an everincreasing portfolio of ranked Cru-Classe Bordeaux and smallbatch productions of quality Burgundies in amounts never seen before on the kosher market.

With consumers jostling over small batch and highly allocated productions, we have seen the upper-tier price point rise from the now-laughable $100 to over $250 a bottle, with no end in sight. And it isn’t only the French producers. A number of additional wines reaching this upper echelon of quality (and accompanying pricing) hail from California, including the Marciano Estate Cabernet Sauvignon and Herzog’s Generation IX Cabernet Sauvignon from the acclaimed Stags Leap vineyard.

Another area in which we are seeing some great leaps forward is Italy where the [the Tassi Brunello] recently achieved a 97 point rating from James Suckling (while I place little value in scores generally, kosher wines placing this high is reflective of our little world’s growing stature among the general wine public), and in Spain, where Elvi Wines, long a champion in the affordable wine space, produced a super-premium this year from Clos Mesorah in the form of the 2016 Sublim.

However French continues to rule this perch with Chateau Pape-Clement, Smith Haut Laffite and recent productions of the acclaimed Le Dome and Pontet Labrie from Chateau Teyssier.

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So, You Want to Build a Home Wine Cellar?

Remember the film ‘The Money Pit?’ Builder beware.

By Gamliel Kronemer

I

n 1946, Eric Hodgins wrote one of the bestselling novels of that decade, “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.” It was a thinly veiled fictionalization of Hodgins’ misadventures in building a house in rural Connecticut. This novel—which inspired three movies: a 1956 film of the same name starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy; 1986’s “The Money Pit,” starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long; and “Are We Done Yet,” a 2007 film starring Ice Cube and Nia Long—has been much on my mind this past year as my wife and I joined the COVID housing rush, selling our condo and buying a suburban house, which as it happens, was built not many years after Hodgins wrote his novel.

In general, we were far luckier than Blandings in our choice of contractors, as we were not presented with a lot of unanticipated costs. Though the one fairly “Blandingseque” part of our remodel was the construction of a home wine cellar.

It all started with an innocent observation as my wife, Jessica, and I toured our soon-to-be-purchased home. While we were walking through the basement laundry/ storage room noting that there were two different entrances into the room, she suggested that I “partition off one end and turn it into a wine cellar.”

In the decades since I became a wine lover, I had dreamed of owning

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a home with a built-in wine cellar.

My dream cellar has always been a simple, clean, dark room, capable of holding a couple thousand bottles of wine at a stable 54 F. (The rest of the dream involves filling the room up and slowly drinking it down.)

I had been storing my wine in a refrigerator-sized, wooden wine cabinet, with a forced-air cooling system, that had taken up a considerable footprint in the living room of our condo. As chance would have it, the cooling unit in the wine cabinet broke within a week of us putting our house under contract, giving real impetus to actually build my dream cellar.

APRIL2022 2022/ /NISSAN NISSAN5782 5782 APRIL

That evening I did some back-ofthe-envelope calculations, believing I had captured all of the costs, but like Blandings before me, I was so wrong. I believed that I could build the cellar for roughly $4,000-$5,000.

The actual costs were roughly double.

Some costs I had not considered, and others would drastically increase due to supply chain shortages.

Read on for the major considerations—and costs—of building a home wine cellar.

The Space A wine cellar requires a space that can be kept at a cool, stable temperature. Basements are a great

FEATURES

The Insulation A wine cellar requires heavy insulation. This means that even if your future cellar already has walls, the drywall or plaster will have to

be pulled out in order to insulate the space behind the walls. Given that a cellar is likely to be much cooler than the surrounding area, it also requires a vapor barrier to ensure that condensation (and mold) do not develop in the surrounding walls.

There are two possible approaches. Either using rolls of fiberglass insulation, with plastic sheeting mounted on both sides of the insulation, or using closed cell polyurethane spray foam, which provides both insulation and a vapor barrier.

At my contractor’s suggestion I went with spray foam. He thought that given the size of the room it would only cost a “couple hundred” and would save on labor costs of installing the fiberglass and vapor barrier.

I was not present to watch what one neighbor described as a “giant truck” pulling up outside the house with long hoses running into the house to spray foam into the walls and ceiling of the cellar. However, I was very much present when writing a check to the insulation company for $1,243.

The Cooling Unit Wine cellars are generally cooled via forced air cooling (read specialty air conditioning system) designed to keep the cellar at a stable temperature and relative humidity. (I have mine set at 54 F with a relative humidity of around 60%.) There are four main companies that produce cellar cooling units, Breezaire, CellarCool, CellarPro and WhisperKOOL. The most affordable sort of units are those that vent through the wall into an adjacent room (a small high-tech version of a window air conditioner); alternatively there are also units that can sit in an adjacent room with ducts

Wall A (6 feet)

Wall B (9 feet)

choice because the ground outside the subterranean exterior walls are great insulators. . The more thermally isolated the location the less expensive it will be to insulate and cool it. Jessica and I chose to build a cellar with interior dimensions of 9’x6’. This space should be sufficient to hold approximately 1,000 bottles in wall-mounted wine racks, plus an additional 500-700 bottles on shelving in wood crates and cardboard boxes.

In order to enclose the space, we needed to build 11 feet of new walls, and this was at the height of the 2021 lumber shortage when the price of a two-by-four stud rose from $3 to more than $10. This doubled the anticipated cost of framing the space to $700 and showed me that my back-of-the-envelope calculations were going to be way off.

I later paid $1,200 for drywalling (with water-resistant drywall) and painting the cellar.

to vent outside, or (most expensively) split units that sit outside and bring cooled air into the cellar via ducts.

For my 432-cubic-foot cellar I went with a mid-range through-thewall system from WhisperKOOL, the SCPro 4000, which is designed to handle cellars of up to 1,000 cubic feet. At the time this unit cost me $2,279 (plus $85 shipping) but at time of writing the cost has increased to $2,679. (WhisperKOOL’s ‘Cellar Consultant’ convinced me that the larger unit for an extra $200 would run less often, making it more energy efficient, and reduce wear to the system.)

Through-the-wall systems are by the far the most affordable choice for cooling a cellar, often less than half the price of ducted systems, but there are some caveats. The adjacent room into which they are vented must stay within 30 degrees of the cellar (i.e., if your cellar is kept at 54 F the adjacent room must not get warmer than 84 F) and have good airflow. Additionally there must be a minimum of a 3’x3’ floor-to-ceiling empty space for the system to vent into.

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FEATURES Building Variety and Depth at Kosher Wine’s High End CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

be 10 more years until we found another Israeli winery [after Oryah] that had similar values to ours: small-production wines, made by visionary winemakers, creating wine from Israel that plays to the land’s many strengths, instead of trying to replicate a generic style in an unfriendly climate. We found all that and more with Itay Lahat, a winemaking visionary and master of terroir.”

Lahat focuses his efforts on making “local” wines, using his intimate knowledge of the area.

“Itay’s wines have a unique character, with a consistent style and identity.

These delicately made wines are unapologetically restrained and balanced, with a low percentage of alcohol, high natural acidity and deliberate dryness not often found in Israeli wine,” said Breskin.

Like many cooler climate Mediterranean wines, Lahat wines are especially food-friendly.

Lahat explained his wine is stylish and fun, complex and elegant, but also easy to drink. “I want it to be aromatically complex, acidic, and on the low-alcohol side. I want there to be lots of sub-tastes; nothing should be overcome. And I don’t want it to be too polished. We want more earthy, more Mediterranean notes of spices,” he said.

Breskin began importing Lahat in 2020, starting with his first fully kosher vintage, the 2018.

Lahat is very happy to have found Breskin as an importer, noting that while his wine cannot be found on shelves in the States, for him that’s not a bad thing. “It is important to me to not be part of the big market,” he said. “I want to be working with a boutique expert with personal service. This has worked perfectly with Andrew, who has a wine club rather than the free market. It fits my numbers and encourages the exclusivity of the brand. The wine

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goes only to those who really want it.”

Lahat, through Liquid Kosher, has found a new and growing audience for his wines, which are often varieties that fit Mediterranean growth patterns. He enjoys making wines for a group who appreciate his skills and style.

“It’s like looking at modern art.

It’s not too obvious, but you like it. I make happy wines,” he said.

A Taste of California With Timbre’s Josh Klapper Josh Klapper founded the Central Coast-based Timbre (pronounced TAM-ber) Winery in Arroyo Grande, California in 2005, and the winery is now based in San Luis Obispo. He had been a sommelier for 10 years at Sona, a high-end restaurant in Los Angeles, curating a wine list of 3,000plus wines. After his list, and Sona, won a Wine Spectator Grand Award, Klapper decided to make a career move into winemaking. He worked with many winemakers and for eight years under Paul Hobbs, a legendary California winemaker, famous for his work with Mondavi and now known as one of only a few California expert-level winemakers/consultants.

Hobbs and Klapper worked together initially at Brave & Maiden, a famous Santa Barbara region winery. “I learned under him like he was the Lubavitcher Rebbe of winemaking,” Klapper joked.

But Klapper’s winemaking skills were no joke, and his boutique winery with a focus on French varietals like chardonnay, pinot noir and Bordeaux blends made in classic French styles, but with California grapes, is no joke either. His encyclopedic knowledge of tasting wines as a sommelier led him to focus on France as his primary inspiration. Timbre, his winery, is named for the French word that describes “the color” of music. His wines have been reviewed positively in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Wine Enthusiast. He started making some kosher wines at APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

the request of his father, who lives in New York.

While Klapper is Jewish, he explained that he never worked in kosher restaurants or made kosher wines prior to making kosher runs in his own winery. “My dad had been bugging me to make kosher wine starting in 2010. I finally connected with a Chabad rabbi in SLO (San Luis Obispo) named Chaim Hilel, and made our first kosher wines in 2011,” he said. Since 2011, the Weiss brothers, of Shirah Winery, have also made their wines in Klapper’s facility (though they moved to Oxnard this year). Today, kosher wines constitute about 10% of Klapper’s annual production.

Timbre first made kosher wine as a special order every year for a connoisseur who lives in New York.

“It was a private label, so I would make 100 cases for him, and keep 25 for myself. At some point I had a lot of wine built up and I just didn’t have a market for it. Somehow Andrew Breskin found me. If he wasn’t a pleasure to work with, I am not sure I would do it, because if I did not make kosher wine it would not severely affect my business.

“What I especially like about making kosher wine is that it connects me to my personal history.

My dad lives in New York, so when I visit him, I really like that on Shabbat we are making kiddush and drinking the wine I made,” said Klapper.

Going forward, Breskin is looking to distribute more California wines under the Timbre label to the kosher consumer, including a 2021 Paso Robles zinfandel with grapes from a heritage vineyard.

Breskin believes his niche is specific enough and that there is enough kosher wine business for everyone who wants to take part; he’s specifically not interested in labels getting passed between importers. “I don’t have any kosher wine baggage. I am just a guy in San Diego. I want to sell good wine.”

FEATURES Vini Rossi d’Italia CONTINUED FROM PAGE 69

and blackberries. Look for flavors of cherries and blackberries at the front of the palate, moving toward a nice hint of carob mid-palate, notes of espresso and vanilla on the finish, all on an oaky background.

Well-structured, with an abundance of wellintegrated tannins, this wine is ready to drink now and for the next three years, and perhaps longer. Score A-/ B+.

Terra di Seta, Chianti Classico, Reserva, Tuscany, 2016: Aged for 18 months in French oak, this garnetcolored, medium- to full-bodied wine was made from 100% handharvested sangiovese.

The nose is redolent of cherries, strawberries and brier, with just a whiff of herbs in the background.

The flavor has elements of cherries, cranberries and toasty oak, with a long note of espresso on the finish. Structured with an abundance of supple and well-integrated tannins, this wine is ready to drink now and for the next four years. Score B+.

Viniferia, Castel Luciano, Super Tuscan, Tuscany, 2018: This medium- to full-bodied Super Tuscan is composed of 50% merlot, 28% syrah and 22% cabernet sauvignon.

Look for a nose of cherries, cassis, and baking spices, with a floral whiff and an intriguing note of huckleberries. The flavor is fruit forward, with the tastes of tart cherries, raspberries and orange zest, with an oaky, earthy finish.

With lots of silky tannins, the wine is ready to drink. Best now-2025.

Score B+ (Only available from Cellar Lakewood.)

Cantina Giuliano, Chianti, Primize, Tuscany 2019: This garnet-colored Chanti is composed of a blend of sangiovese, merlot and two lesser known Tuscan grapes, canaiolo and ciliegiolo. Aged for a year in a mixture of 75% stainless and 25% oak, this fruit-forward wine has flavors and aromas of cherries, cranberries and orange zest, with a whiff of wildflowers in the background. With a medium-to-full body and soft, wellintegrated tannins, this wine is ready to drink now and for the next two or three years. B+/B. Terra di Seta, Chianti Classico, Tuscany, 2019: A cuvée of 95% sangiovese and 5% cabernet sauvignon, this medium- to fullbodied, garnet-colored wine has a floral nose with whiffs of violets, cherries, oak and dark chocolate. The flavor moves from cherries in the front of the palate, to a touch of oak mid-palate, to a lightly herbal note on the finish. Drink within the next three years. Score B+/B. Bartenura, Ovadia, Chianti, Colli Senesi, 2019: Made in the Colli Senesi appellation of southern Tuscany, this medium-bodied, garnetcolored wine has a bouquet redolent of cherries, fennel, and mint, with a whiff of the forest in summer. Look for flavors of cherry, currents and dark chocolate, with herbal hints towards the back of the palate. Rustic yet charming and imbued with powdery tannins, this wine should drink well from now until 2025. Score B. Cantina Giuliano, Merlot, In Campagna, Tuscany, 2019: This is Cantina Guiliano’s entry-level red. Ruby- to garnet-colored and medium-bodied, this easy drinking, lively merlot has a nose dominated by violets with hints of brier cassis and oak. Look for flavors of plum and cassis, with a light, earthy background and an unctuous note on the finish.

Drink within the next two years.

Score B. Cantine del Borgo Reale, Maturo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Puglia, 2017: Aged seven months in French oak this easy-to-drink, fruit-forward, medium-bodied cabernet has flavors and aromas of cherries, cranberries, plums and cassis, with a vegetal note, on a light oaky background. While enjoyable, this wine has a tad too much residual sugar. Drink within the next two years. Score B. Bartenura, Vino Rosso d’Italia, Non-Vintage: The name of the rubycolored, light-bodied wine means “red wine of Italy,” and when I reached out to the importer for more information, they would not tell me anything— not what grapes it is made from, not where in Italy the grapes were grown, nor how it is made. While I have made some guesses about this mystery wine, I think I shall refrain from printing them. Regardless, this rather simple but lively wine has flavors and aromas of cherries, strawberries and boysenberries, with the slightest hint of mocha on the finish. This would be a good wine for a picnic on a summer’s day. Score B. Bartenura, Ovadia, Rosso di Montepulciano, 2019: This sangiovese-heavy blend is made from grapes grown in Montepulciano in southern Tuscany.

Light garnet in color and medium-bodied, this wine is redolent of cherries and herbs de Provence. Look for flavors of cherries and coffee, with a hint of chocolate and a woodsy note. Drink within the next two years. Score B. Cantine del Borgo Reale, Pinot Noir, Puglia, 2019: This rubycolored, light-bodied, easy-drinking pinot noir has flavors and aromas of cherries, cassis and eucalyptus. Drink until 2023. Score B/B-.

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FEATURES The Benefits of Rising Prices CONTINUED FROM PAGE 73

While red wines tend to garner more attention and higher price tags due to their popularity and increased costs to produce, the long-neglected (among kosher consumers) white wine genre is also finally starting to get some serious love at the higher end. It wasn’t long ago that an excellent bottle of viognier from Israel’s Yatir Winery languished on the shelves due to its $40 price tag, a hard-to-believe occurrence given the excellent white wines being purchased in droves these days by discerning customers. Some of these wines include the newly available white blend from Chateau So, You Want to Build a Home Wine Cellar?

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consideration in building a cellar. It is best to make a cellar a windowless room, because sunlight produces two things that are bad for wine: heat and light. Exposure to light—and in particular ultraviolet light—has been shown to have a deleterious effect on wine, similar to that caused by excessive heat.

Thankfully, the now ubiquitous LED lights are a good choice for cellars as they produce only a modicum of either heat and ultraviolet light. For my cellar I used two recessed LED canister lights ($50 each) with a ($25) dimmer switch (so I could leave a dim cellar light on over Shabbat and Yom Tov without worrying much about light damage to the wine).

The Door The door to the cellar must be an exterior-grade door (for insulation), and while many build cellars with glass doors for aesthetic reasons, glass panels let in heat (requiring more cooling) and light. I went with a solid metal door (which cost me $350 for the door and $375 for installation).

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Malartic (arguably the best kosher white wine produced this year), along with two uber-premium sauvignon blanc wines—one from Covenant Winery under their flagship Solomon label and the other from Marciano Winery under their flagship Marciano Estate Label. We have also been blessed this year with two Meursault wines (one from Liquid Kosher’s Andrew Breskin and the one from Ralph Madeb of M&M Imports) returning to a well-missed genre which hasn’t been around since the 2004 vintages. So where does all that leave the regular folks who

prize high quality wine, are upset by the continued proliferation of maddingly mediocre overpriced wines, but are unable to drink Marciano Estate or Pontet Canet on anything like a remotely regular basis (or ever)?

Thankfully some countries are holding the line, and while we have seen some supremely pricey reds coming from Italy and Spain, those two countries continue to be the standard bearers for wines providing supreme QPR (quality price ratio). And for that, dear reader, please read my accompanying article beginning on page 70, “Better Wines for Less.”

Jessica, who assumed that our cellar would be like a miniature version of those cellars seen in magazines, with a fancy wood and glass door, sighs every time she walks past the plain, white, metal door to our cellar.

I was ready to buy in May, due to the lumber shortage, the price of racks had all but doubled, and would continue to climb. The shelving cost had also increased. At that point, believing the price increases to be transitory, I decided to wait to see if prices would come down before ordering. At time of writing, I am still keeping my wine in boxes on the cellar floor.

Electrical My cooling unit required creating a dedicated 15-amp circuit plus wiring for the outlet, and installation of the cooling unit, as well as of the lighting.

All in, this cost me $1,100.

Bottle Racking There are numerous choices when it comes to wine storage racks—wood, metal, even acrylic—and for the most part it comes down simply to aesthetics. Just keep in mind it should be a storage unit intended for use in a refrigerated environment (and able to handle a bit of moisture).

I had planned to start out small with racking. I was going to buy two 6’ tall redwood wine racks, each of which would hold 100 bottles, along with an epoxy-coated metal shelving unit, which should be able to hold about 50 cases of wine in boxes. In early March 2021, the racks cost about $200 each and the shelving was an additional $180. By the time APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782

The Real Cost When I add everything up, I find that instead of $4,000 to $5,000 my cellar cost me $7,457 plus what will likely be another $1,400-$1,600 for shelves, racks and their installation (when I finally buy them). Let’s call it $9,000 in total. Had I known the real price for the cellar beforehand, would I have built it? Probably not—but in retrospect I am glad that I did.

While the final price certainly did hurt our renovation budget it was not so disastrous a calamity as befell the “Mr. Blandings” author.

Now that I have finished telling you about my dream cellar, I am going to step into the cellar, pull out a bottle of Champagne, and drink a toast to the memory of Eric Hodgins and his dream house. L’chaim.

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kosher wine consumers. All agreed it was having a positive impact on the kosher wine industry, but not all agreed on the nature of the impact.

According to Weir, as wine consumers become more educated, they stop buying wines because of what some critic wrote. “They taste and buy what they like themselves. … and at least those who visit Hagafen … are drawn to drier, bigger, bolder wines.”

Gabriel Geller, of Royal Wine Corp., sees a somewhat different trend: “People are really starting to open their minds. It is no longer ‘Give me the cab, give me the cab, give me the cab.’ People, when they come to wine from whisky and other hard liquor, are drawn at first towards those big, bold, fruit-forward wines.

However, those who really get into it, they eventually try other stuff and can be drawn to more elegant wines.

I know a lot of people who focused on big, bold Israeli and Californian wines, and are now much more diverse in their tastes.”

Before the WSET/KosherWine. com course, said Kellman, “all I knew was Israeli wine. It made up my entire collection … and I discovered that I really have a taste for Spanish wines.

That is where I am going to see my biggest area of growth.”

Polonetsky said that as a result of the WSET course, “I started buying every wine book I could get my hands on, from halacha [ Jewish law] to [wine] encyclopedias, to wine follies. I really started realizing that if I understood the difference between a Tempranillo and a Montepulciano, grapes that I never

would have ventured to try before; without some understanding of the nuances, I probably would never have appreciated them. The education has opened me up to a much broader diversity of wines … and it has broadened my palate.”

Polonetsky made one final point in summing up the value of wine education. “Wine is maybe unfairly kept from the layman. If you walk into a wine store and you don’t have an education, you are just picking names and brands.”

It was a point that reminded me of a conversation I had with a kosher wine industry executive several years ago. I asked him if kosher consumers were becoming more educated, and he said, “I hope so. To quote Sy Syms, ‘An educated consumer is our best customer.’”

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