The Herzog Winery’s bottling process
MEVUSHAL WINES, Boiled Down By Joshua E. London
T
he Hebrew term yayin mevushal, literally cooked wine, is the Jewish legal term for kosher wine and grape juice—and these are essentially interchangeable products in this context—that undergo a special thermal processing to a required temperature, specified by kosher food supervision agencies guided by halacha, or Jewish law. In the past, however, the word “mevushal” has had an association with substandard quality wine. “Mevushal wine has gotten a bad rap,” said Dovid Riven, president of Kosherwine.com, the largest kosher wine e-commerce retailer in the United States, “but there are some truly outstanding mevushal wines today.”
“When correctly done,” said Ernie Weir, owner and winemaker of the kosher Hagafen Cellars in Napa, California, “when done at the right stage of the wine’s development, using the right techniques, the mevushal process does not alter the wine at all.” Weir produced his first mevushal wine in 1985, and all Hagafen’s wines have been made mevushal since 1993. “When you know what you’re doing, and you’re doing it right,” added Weir, “the process doesn’t have any negative effect on the wine.” This “heating of wine,” explained Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, senior rabbinic coordinator and wine expert for the Orthodox Union, “is done to relax the handling restrictions
associated with kosher wine.” It basically helps protect and maintain the status of wine that is already kosher, or fit for Jewish religious life. For unlike most other areas of the kosher dietary code, the primary issue with wine is not the ingredients, but the labor involved in its production, and the handling of the wine once the bottle is opened. Kosher wine is essentially just wine made by Sabbath-observant Jews, but keeping it kosher requires strict controls—if the wine is also mevushal, however, many of these handling restrictions can be greatly relaxed. “In Jewish tradition wine is considered a holy beverage,” said Jeff Morgan, the vintner and co-owner of the kosher Covenant Winery, in
MARCH 2021 / NISAN 5781 • JLINK WINE GUIDE
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