A Flowery Song

The mission: “[F]ind something reputed to be Fine Kosher Wine”

I actually studied up on kosher wines about a year ago, but didn’t write up what I learned at the time.

First things first: what makes a wine kosher? Well, kosher wine will carry a hechsher from an authority certifying that it was produced in accord with kashrus, which is the portion of halakha (Jewish religious law) dealing with dietary concerns. This mark indicates that any additives (such as fining agents) were kosher, production was supervised by the appropriate overseers (called mashgichim), and the wine is either mevushal or every step of the production was done by an observant Jew. This all has to do with the historic use of wine in idolatrous religious practises and the strict prohibition in the Torah of the use of such wine (yayin nesach), as well as a Rabbinical injunction against the use of unsupervised wine (stam yaynom).

Mevushal means “cooked” or “boiled”. Once a wine is mevushal it can be handled by non-Jews without losing its kosher status. Wine can be rendered mevushal at any stage after the press, but in the US most mevushal wine is heated prior to fermentation. Mevushal can broadly be taken as synonymous with pasteurised and follows the same procedure; thus, in modern production flash pasteurisation is seen as a way to reduce or eliminate the deleterious effects of heating the wine. While it definitely will help stability from a microbial standpoint, opinions are divided: some claim that flash heating has a positive effect on the wine’s character, while others claim that it reduces the aging potential and gives the wine a cooked fruit character.

There’s actually another level to kosher certification, which has to do with Passover. At Passover kashrut becomes even more restrictive, so a wine can be kosher for other times but not for Passover. If a wine just says “kosher”, it’s not suitable for use during Pesach; it must specifically say “kosher for Passover”.
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