Wines and SpiritsKosher Wine in the Jewish Tradition
Wine drinking is the elixir in many peoples lives especially in Jewish lives. What does Jewish and Kosher Wines have to do with each other? Everything.
When a Jewish boy is born the first thing he drinks other than his mothers milk is wine. Thats right, immediately after his circumcision the Mohel ( the ritual circumciser ) gives him some wine after the operation to ease the pain. Right after that happens someone picks up a goblet of wine blesses it and drinks it. The Jewish wine festival was just beginning. The Jewish life cycle revolves around wine Every holiday, every Sabbath there is wine and more wine. The famous Jewish holiday of Passover requires celebrants to drink 4 full cups of wine at the beginning of the holiday. There is even a giant goblet of wine on the table filled to the brim with wine that no one drinks. Jews are obsessed with wine it seems. Even the most famous Anti-Semitic lible was partially based on the Jewish almost obsession with wine. The Libel said Jews kidnapped Christian children and used blood to bake the unleavened bread for Passover. Because of this libel Jews for centuries did not use red wine on Passover. It got to such an extreme that a Jewish Frankenstein was created to save Jewish communities from this libel. He was called the Golem of Prague .
A Jewish wedding starts with drinking wine and ends with breaking a wine glass with a lot of drinking in the middle. Why then have Jewish kosher wines been ridiculed as inferior undrinkable wines? Because for the longest time they were. The Jews among us remember the Super Sweet Super thick concord wine that everybody tried to drink at Passover and other times. That was Kosher wine forever, or so everyone thought.
Times have changed.
There are over 50 wineries that are producing quality Israeli wines. Some of the big names are Carmel Wines, Recanati, Teperberg, Yarden and Golan to name a few. The Famous wine taster Mark Squires a world famous wine expert Robert Parke will be in Israel to taste some of these Kosher wines. He is first league and when he says a wine is of high quality everyone goes out and buys it. When squires rated a wine from a small winery in Southern Israel called Yatir very high it sold out all its stock almost overnight. There are also other very high quality wines at a Israeli wine expo that is happening between the 26-28 of Febuary. This 2003 red and other Kosher Israeli wines are some of the best in the world and they are as Jewish as Matzo ball soup.
The israwinexpo 2008 will have everyone who is anyone in the Jewish wine business present. There wont be any Sweet wine.
Times have really changed.