Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [23]
Wherever you stand on kashrut, the rules are, to say the least, interesting. Wine cannot be kosher if it might have been “poured out to an idol.” Wine that has been boiled cannot be used for idolatry, so it remains kosher even if it has been touched by an “idolator.” Wine cannot be kosher if it has been touched by someone who believes in idolatry, or if it has been produced by Gentiles. And there are a number of prohibitions about “mingling”—nothing really to do with wine, but designed to prevent Jews and non-Jews mixing together in, shall we say, too relaxed a fashion, which might lead to intermarriage.
All this is taken very seriously by frum—highly devout, Orthodox—Jews. And it might be said not to have had the best effect on Israeli winemaking. For a start, the mevushal, or boiled, wines really never stood a chance. Cooking the wine ruins it, as anyone who has tried microwaving a bottle and overshot the mark will have discovered. The result is thin, feeble, purplish stuff not really fit for drinking. Some winemakers now use flash pasteurization and assert that this does not harm the wines and may even improve them, but the main reason for doing it is so that your Catholic waiter can draw the cork and pour your wine without it ceasing to be kosher.
The supply of kosher wines was for many years effectively monopolized by the Israeli drinks giant Carmel. As New York Times wine writer Howard G. Goldberg put it: “Its merchandising in the American-Jewish market had long coasted on a mishmash of Zionism, economic and political and social support for Israel, sentimentality, generations of brand familiarity, Passover seder requirements and similarity to sweet Manischewitz. Quality? Forget it.”
But the Six-Day War in 1967, which resulted in Israel capturing the Golan Heights, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which secured its position, marked a change in Israeli winemaking, which moved, figuratively and literally, upward. The Heights proved perfect for viticulture, and the modern Israeli wines started to appear. Now, with the expertise of winemakers who learned their craft in France, Australia, and the United States, the Heights are producing some international-class wines, and the Galil Mountain winery, for example, is producing over a million bottles a year.
Foodways, religions, wars, and wine: once again, we see at least a glimpse of the unexpected interconnectedness of things.
“Wine diamonds”: what are they, and are they dangerous?
IN THE OLDEN DAYS, say forty years ago, most white-wine drinkers expected to find crystals left as a deposit in wine. These crystals (usually potassium hydrogen tartrate) mostly stick to the glass and thus are not swallowed; even if they were swallowed, it would not matter in the least, because they are harmless, if a bit crunchy. However, younger wine drinkers can, naturally, fear that their presence is a fault in the wine. Indeed, many producers nowadays go to considerable lengths, possibly losing quality in other respects, to avoid crystals. Those who do not try to avoid crystals instead have renamed them: as one German label reads, “This wine contains Wine Diamonds, which are an entirely natural deposit.” Another highly respected German producer is more blunt: “Mit zunehmender Flaschenreife kann Weinstein ausgeschieden werden. Es sind Salze der Weinsäure, die in keiner Weise den Geschmack beeinträchtigen. Ein Grund zur Reklamation bzw. Rückgabe des Weines ist somit nicht gegeben.” In English: “With increasing bottle age, potassium hydrogen tartrate can separate out … [which] in no way impairs the taste. This is no reason for complaining or expecting your money back.”
What links Papuan pigs, peacocks, and Pétrus?
THERE IS ALWAYS a vin