8 minute read
Welcome to The Jewish Link Wine Guide
Welcome to the 2022 Jewish Link Wine Guide!
The 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 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.
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
Meet the
JUDGES
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meet the
CONTRIBUTORS
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.
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.
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.
Michal Rosenberg
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.
Special Thanks!
Check out The Jewish Link Wine Guide on Social Media, where we post our wine adventures year round!
@jewishlinkwinemag
@jewishlinkwineguide
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.
