What is Kosher Wine?

The French may think they own the bragging rights to wine history, but Jewish winemakers were making wine over 5,000 years ago when the ancient Gauls drank only water with dinner. In fact, the Jews may have the oldest codified relationship to wine of any people on earth.

In Jewish culture and custom, wine holds a very special position. It is considered to have spiritual significance and the blessing over a glass of wine—called Kiddush—regularly marks the beginning of religious ritual.

Jewish winemakers have struggled to overcome enormous challenges during the last two thousand years. Prior to that time, they lived in Israel, where vineyards and winemaking were common practice. But the Roman conquest of Jerusalem changed all that, and most Jews embarked upon the Diaspora, a period of exile that frequently brought them to lands not particularly suited to grape growing. However, tradition mandated the drinking of wine, and vintners would do their best with the means they had at their disposition, even if it meant using dried raisins instead of grapes!

A century ago, Jewish immigrants to America found local Concord grapes to be plentiful. However, these native American grapes produced wine with a so-called "foxy" character. Keeping the wines sweet made them more palatable, and this sweet style became synonymous with kosher wine, even though thousands of years of Jewish winemaking had produced wines that were dry more often that not.

In recent history, kosher wines have improved dramatically as winemakers have increasingly used vinifera grapes-the Mediterranean species that includes Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. It is now not uncommon to find dry, varietal kosher wines that can also measure up to today's secular qualitative standards. These wines come from both the New World and the Old World. Many of the best come from California, France, Spain and Italy in the northern hemisphere, and Australia, Chile and South Africa in the southern hemisphere. A new generation of Israeli winemakers is also raising the bar for kosher wine quality in the land of the earliest Jewish winemakers.

What makes a wine kosher? Because wine is used to welcome the Sabbath, kosher wine can be handled only by Sabbath-observant Jews—those individuals who strictly observe kosher dietary laws. In addition, kosher winemakers are forbidden to use any products, such as unauthorized yeasts or animal-based fining agents that might fall outside the parameters of kosher convention and thus compromise the ritual essence of the wine.

That’s it! There is no difference between the techniques used to make a fine kosher wine or a fine non-kosher wine.

For more information on kosher wine please don’t hesitate to contact us at the winery.