Cult Journalist Alice Feiring Gives Some Passover Wine Tips
Alice Feiring is tackling the difficult question of finding good Kosher wines for Passover in her latest contribution to her excellent blog.
First of all, I'd like to wish all our Jewish friends out there (which includes Alice Feiring) a merry Passover and I hope they get to share alot of kremeslach and choretses with all their loved ones on these two holy Jewish nights. The young ones always love spinning their Passover dreidls and this is a beautiful event which even Jesus Christ used to enjoy, although his last Seder didn't turn out too well for him.
Alice Feiring Winning a James Beard Award for Wine Journalism
My view has always been that the expression good Kosher wine is an oxymoron. I once told this to my former cardiologist, who is a Talmud scholar, when he noticed I was a wine importer on one of the rare occasions he actually looked at my chart. The Doctor immediately told me how there was so much great Kosher wine being made these days. When I informed him that this phrase was an oxymoron, he told me that I was going to need four heart bypasses.
Wine is an important part of the Jewish and Catholic traditions, although forbidden in Muslim and Protestant societies. I've never understood why Jews who are not Kosher feel a compulsion to drink Kosher wine on Passover, but for those of them who do feel this strange compulsion, my recommendation has always been to go with the Manischevitz Heavy Malaga. You can add some ice cubes and Kosher for Passover Seltzer to calm down the drink and reduce the cloying sweetness. And you have the advantage of not having any bad surprises -- the Heavy Malaga makes no pretense to be a Great Kosher Wine, you know how it is going to taste and it tastes reliably terrible. You won't be disappointed, you'll have no regrets. It is the oenological equivalent of eating at MacDonalds. Plus, it is cheap.
Alice Feiring touring the Clos Roche Blanche with Catherine Roussel and Didier Barouillet
Why is there no great Kosher wine? Because the very process of making Kosher wine excludes the possibility that it will be great wine. Only Sabbath observing Jews can make the wine, and not only does this notion smack of some sort of racism, it also eliminates so many of the world's great winemakers. On what basis -- their mother's weren't of Jewish origin! Additionally, to be a kosher wine, no one involved in the harvest or vinification can do anything on Friday after sundown or on Saturday during the day. What can possibly be the sense in all this arcane ritual other than religious extremism? All the great vignerons I know work like lunatics during the harvest, often around the clock, and it would be inconceivable to take off in the midst of the vendange.
Unfortunately, the harvest doesn't wait and the vinification is not sabbath observant. Making good wine is horribly complicated and requires rigor in so many little details. To reduce everything to the primacy of having guys who hang about in synagogues on Saturday brings up the more basic question: why bother drinking wine in the first place? There are lots of other beverages out there which can be easily made without any non-Jew touching the liquid. This sort of sectarian notion of the vine might have appeal during these times of sectarian and religious strife, but I'll be drinking something else. If the religious identity of who makes the wine is more important that what's in the bottle, it is impossible to create a culture of great wine.
There is a second category of Kosher wine which is even more extreme. In this case, the wine must be brought to a boiling point to cleanse the wine, a process guaranteed to destroy anything interesting in the bottle. Basically, you have to kill off all the living material in the wine to spill it on your Passover plate when you recite the 10 plagues. What's the sense in all this?
If people want to drink kosher wine out of religious superstition than it is their business. I have no objection, much as I don't care what they are serving in a Catholic Church when the Priest drinks the communion wine. What I don't understand is the compulsion to argue that these wines are world class or great. Some are better than others, but the key thing is that they are made to observe the kosher process.
I am Jewish and I am proud of being raised in the great traditions of Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Karl. I love great wine and see no reason why I have to celebrate my Passover or any other holiday drinking wine approved by a Rabbi. I would rather drink a wine that is in tune with nature, which to me is a far more spiritual notion of the world than drinking wine because it has a Rabinical seal. Radikon's Oslave 2002 went fabulously last year with gefilte fish -- it was a sublime, almost religious experience!
Please note I have revised this page after some kind soul sent me an e-mail on November 30th, 2007, pointing out that I was mistakenly lumping together the two different types of Kosher wine. The first category does not require boiling the wine, only the second more extreme category requires boiling. I didn't realize that there were two classifications of kosher wine, but it was intellectually sloppy on my part to not do further research and I would like to apologize to my readers. Blogs don't have fact checkers, but that is no excuse for writing factually misleading and wrong material. My apologies.
I have corrected the above text but my sentiment about kosher wines, boiled or unboiled, remain the same.
Anyhow, please take a look at Alice's piece on Passover by going over to her excellent blog:
Cult Wine Writer Alice Feiring on Kosher Wine
good pesach. the sheriff.
Great photos of Alice!
It's the wrong holiday. Looking at this version of Alice, I'd have to say, "A great miracle happened here."
--A blogger on E. 54th St., who is not worthy to attend your ferkakte tasting
actually, when a wine is made by only shabbat observant jews, you do not have to boil it...and I actually have liked some kosher wines lately, that in a blind tasting we didnt know were kosher....that being said....you are 99% correct...
actually, when a wine is made by only shabbat observant jews, you do not have to boil it...and I actually have liked some kosher wines lately, that in a blind tasting we didnt know were kosher....that being said....you are 99% correct...