For many years kosher wine was identified with cheap low quality mainly sweet wines like the infamous Manischewitz. It is now clear that kosher wine can be of high and even very high quality, and the many medals, prizes and commendations granted worldwide to Israeli wines serve as proof.
What is kosher wine? Is it only a matter of production or do rules of kashrut ("kosherness") apply also to the vineyard? What are the origins of these rules? Does kashrut correlate with modern wine making? What's between kosher and mevushal? The following guide shall provide guidelines to the basics of kashrut and answers to all of those questions and more.
The kosher vineyard
There are two basic ingredients to kosher wine, as there is to wine as such: grape growing and wine production. First, the grapes must be grown according to the Jewish tradition, which holds within it agricultural insights accumulated over thousands of years with one goal set into the mind: constant enhancement of the land and its produce.
The laws of Shmita for example, the seventh year in a seven-year cycle during which land in Israel must lie fallow, are meant to allow rest for the land so that it can renew its nutrients, as well as allow rest for the farmer. Similarly, grapes are allowed for wine only on the fourth year after planting (normally grapes from the first three years of the vine are of lesser quality). It is interesting to note that somewhat similar practices are adopted by followers of biodynamics, one of the keys of which is considering the soil as an organism in its own right. All off these rules however are religiously binding only for the Promised Land, so it actually may be easier to produce kosher wine abroad.
The kosher winery
The second aspect of kosher wine deals with the person coming in contact with the wine from the moment that it's regarded as wine by Jewish belief and until bottling. The Halacha (Jewish law) determines down that whoever touches the wine must be a Sabbath observing Jew. The outset of this quite ancient rule lies in the sanctity of wine to Jews and its centrality in Jewish religious rituals. The logic lies in the importance of separation between God's work and the worshiping of idols, idol worshipping being a prohibition of Self-sacrifice in Jewish law, meaning rather die than commit.
The prohibition of "Nesech" wine (wine poured out for the purpose of non-Jewish religious rituals) was formed as part of an ensemble of rules intended to distance the Jews from idol worship and to withhold any fruit or pleasure to Jews from wine used for such worship. Over the years further rules were added, including the rule that a wine produced by gentiles shall be banned from Jews, due to the possibility that it was or shall be used for gentile worship. Another concern was that drinking wine with gentiles may lead to mingling, which in its turn may lead to mixed marriage.
This generated a much disputed provision stating that to be on the safe side, only Sabbath observing Jews should be involved in the preparation of wine. Thus, to this day non-religious winemakers of kosher wines cannot be in any contact with their wines, samples are presented to them by religious workers, and they are even not allowed to hold the keys to the production rooms and cellars. Another derivative from these rules is that wine making, including harvesting, is prohibited on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. There is also an obligation for "Terumah" - priestly tithe on produce.
Further provisions ban the use of suspected non-kosher ingredients in the winery, i.e. ox blood or egg whites, which may often be used in the fining process. Bentonite is thus the preferred fining agent.
A trick used in order to bypass these laws is boiling the wine (in fact pasteurizing it), thus actually "un-wining" it, and deeming it unfit for non-Jewish religious purposes. This enables observant Jews to drink boiled wine in any occasion and with non-Jewish drinking partners. The downside is of course a negative effect on quality. The Hebrew word for boiled is "Mevushal". Nowadays Mevushal wines are less and less produced in Israel and they are seldom quality wines; however there are more than a few Mevushal wines of high quality produced around the world.
Finally, a tip for visits to kosher wineries: since work is prohibited for Sabbath observers on the Sabbath and on religious holidays, kosher wineries will usually be closed on these days, by order of the Chief Rabbinate. On Fridays and holiday eves, closing hours will usually be around 14:00 at winter time and 16:00 on summer.
