Napa Valley, CA – Seder Wines Get Serious With Super-Premium Kosher Bottles

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    This undated publicity product photo provided by courtesy of Covenant Wines shows a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Covenant Wines vineyard in Napa Valley, Calif. Photo: Courtesy Covenant WinesNapa Valley, CA – If you remember when kosher wine meant mostly cheap and sweet, you probably also know that the second part is no longer true. Today, there are plenty of quality kosher wines being made around the world.

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    But did you also know that kosher wine has come so far there now are even super-premium bottles that go for more than $100 a bottle?

    “It’s absolutely amazing how it’s evolved,” says Michael K. Bernstein, owner of The Cask in Los Angeles, which stocks and sells exclusively kosher wines and spirits. “It’s mind-boggling how many different kosher wines there are.”

    The syrupy kosher wines of the past stemmed mainly from economics. Jewish immigrants to America needed wine, a crucial part of their religious traditions, but didn’t have access to high-quality grapes. So they used the Concord grapes that grow in the Northeast, producing wines with an unpleasant character, usually describe as “foxy,” which was masked by adding sugar.

    But in recent years, a number of producers have begun making classic red and white kosher wines. A pioneer was Herzog Wine Cellars in Southern California, and there also is a growing wine industry in Israel.

    Making wine kosher isn’t particularly hard, says Jeff Morgan, winemaker at Covenant, a winery in the Napa Valley that makes a kosher cabernet sauvignon that goes for $90 a bottle. The ingredients in wine are kosher; the trick is to keep things that way.

    The basic requirement for doing that is to make sure that the grape juice and fermented wine is only touched or handled by Sabbath-observant Jews, which is what happens at Covenant, where associate winemaker Jonathan Hajdu is a Sabbath-observant Jew.

    Covenant is co-owned by Morgan, his wife Jodie Morgan, and Leslie Rudd, owner of Rudd Vineyards & Winery, also in the Napa Valley, and chairman of the Dean & Deluca upscale delicatessen chain. Morgan and Rudd are Jewish, though neither considered themselves particularly religious when they started the project. Interestingly, making the wines has brought both of them more in touch with their heritage “and that has been a wonderful surprise,” Morgan says.

    Covenant wines are not “mevushal,” a term that means the finished wines have been heated, making it possible for them to be handled by non-observant Jews and remain kosher. In the old days, that used to mean boiled, which is ruinous to wine. These days, winemakers use flash pasteurization. There’s debate over whether this does or doesn’t affect the quality of a wine, but Morgan is on the side of the doubters and doesn’t do it.

    Other than that, Covenant wines, consistently praised by critics, are made like other premium wines — with high quality grapes, natural yeast fermentation, no filtration and French oak aging. Production is about 3,000 cases a year and the wines are sold in at least 20 states and several countries, including Canada, Israel, England, France and China. In addition to the flagship Covenant and Solomon wines, Covenant makes a few other wines, including the cleverly named Red C, a red blend with a big red “C” on the label, which goes for around $45.

    Even that’s a big leap from the old-school kosher wines that go for under $7 a bottle.

    When he started making Covenant wines a decade ago, Morgan was confident he could make great wine that was kosher, “but I didn’t know that our wines would be so well received in both the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world. That has been very gratifying because it’s nice to know that the whole world realizes that kosher wine can also just be great wine.”

    Morgan didn’t just have to win over outsiders. Even though Rudd was a huge supporter of the project, it took six years before he began putting grapes from his very high-end Rudd vineyards into the wines. Those grapes now go into Covenant’s Solomon Lot 70 cabernet, which refers to Rudd’s Hebrew name. The wine is made in very limited quantities and costs $150 a bottle.

    Other premium kosher wines include Herzog, which in addition to a wide line of affordable bottles has a limited edition Generation VIII Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa’s famous To Kalon vineyard that goes for close to $200 a bottle.

    Bernstein has one wine, the 2003 Chateau de Valandraud kosher wine from the Bordeaux region of France that fetches as much as $500 a bottle.

    Passover begins at sundown March 25 this year and for the four cups of wine served at the Passover seder (the special dinner that begins the holiday), Morgan will be serving different vintages of Covenant wine. His family also will be enjoying other kosher wines.

    Bernstein, who remembers a lot of seders where the wine was sweet and bubbly and just something you drank to be done with, has introduced his family to premium kosher wines. And that has changed their approach to it. “They’re not just looking to get by with four cups of wine, they’re looking to get good wine for those four cups.”

    For more kosher wine options, master sommelier Richard Betts has these suggestions:

    FROM FRANCE:

    — Chateau Giraud Sauternes, Kosher Edition

    — Chateau Pontet-Canet, Pauillac, Kosher Edition

    — Laurent-Perrier, Champagne Brut NV Kosher Version

    FROM ISRAEL:

    — Castel, Grand Vin Castel

    — Recanati Wild Carignan Reserve

    — Yarden Merlot

    FROM THE U.S.:

    — Prix Vineyards Reserve Syrah

    FROM SPAIN:

    — Elvi Wines EL26 Priorat


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    21 Comments
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    11 years ago

    And and the owners:
    “making the wines has brought both of them more in touch with their heritage “and that has been a wonderful surprise,” Morgan says.”

    CountryYossi
    CountryYossi
    11 years ago

    Its just so unbelievable when i go Friday to buy a wine for Shabbos and i see the young generation buying the most expensive wine for Shabbos…I buy a cream concord for $6.00 and the buy a bottle of Cave for $85.00 and other expensive wines.
    I am sure a nice portion of their weeks salary is spent on alcohol…Then comes the expensive Liquor in the morning for after davening….The world is changing….

    posaikacharon
    posaikacharon
    11 years ago

    Make sure you don’t get addicted, it’s an expensive habit. Been there done that!!!

    georgewashingtonbridge
    georgewashingtonbridge
    11 years ago

    The cost of Pesach wine has almost caught up with the cost of shmurah matzah.

    admin
    Admin
    Member
    11 years ago

    BTW the Covenant is one of the best wines out there.

    Thanks

    Haimov
    Haimov
    11 years ago

    Excellent. Mevashal ruin the industry.Terrible wine but rich jews are buying it as their servants and maids can serve mevashal.

    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    11 years ago

    Barbera or Riesling made by Bartenura is just as good and most of you would not know the difference except show off for a pricey bottle of wine better give more for moaz chittin so those who cannot afford have matzos and meat for pessach, greater mitzvah

    Norden
    Norden
    11 years ago

    “But did you also know that kosher wine has come so far there now are even super-premium bottles that go for more than $100 a bottle?”

    Big deal. The true value of an object being offered for sale is the sum that potential buyers are prepared to offer. The vendor can put whatever price he/she likes on the item for sale; the question is whether people are ready to pay the sum demanded.

    If not, then the vendor must either reduce the price or be stuck with an unsaleable object. If he/she has too many of those then bankruptcy will surely follow.

    On the other hand, there are always total fools who will be only too pleased to crow over how much they had to pay for a relatively worthless purchase. If they had used just a small amount of their native seichel they could have paid far, far less.