What’s wrong with this picture?
25 Jun2009
Living in Israel and not having been abroad for two years gave me a warped perspective on Israeli wine. Not bad, of course, but I separate the world of Israel and the world of Jewish and kosher wine. In Israel, you can go in the finest wine shops and see a bottle of the now-kosher Yarden HeightsWine, Domaine du Castel ‘C’, and Tzora Blanc next to to the not-kosher Pelter, Clos du Gat, and Tulip wineries. Go to the finest non-kosher restaurant in Tel Aviv and, along with a full array of shrimp and shellfish, you will see Castel and Yatir and Carmel Single Vineyard on the wine menu.
But, as I recently discovered on a visit to a wine shop in Maryland, that’s not the case abroad. There, below the Yarden Sauvignon Blanc, will be some Herzog Zinfandel not near the rest of the Zin, and below that will be half a row of the atrocious thing called Manishewitz (I was seriously tempted to yell at the store owner for even stocking that and calling it wine!), made in New York. They have nothing to do with each other and, as I’ve often said, where is the Israeli section? Kosher is not a country!
Can you tell me how to change this?
- In: Wine industry
- Tags: kosher, kosher wine, Maryland, Wines, Yarden
View Comments to What’s wrong with this picture?
WTG
June 25th, 2009 at 7:10 PM
Good luck Avi. I could not agree with your sentiments any more, yet changing the perception and decades of wine shop organization has proven to be quite challenging.
Sign me up for the rally, but as far as “how to change this?”, it seems I haven’t clue.
Rafi Schutzer
July 7th, 2009 at 3:07 AM
Hey Avi,
I like your blog. But then I like anything having to do with wine. I even enjoy staining my Shabbos shirt with red wine whenever I can (usually Friday nights).
To facilitate selling kosher wine in stores where 99.99% of the wine is non-kosher the custom has been to segregate the kosher wine to its own small section because the kosher wine customers are usually looking for kosher and nothing else.
This doesn’t mean that the store can’t also simultaneously shelve the kosher wines “anonymously” among the other varietal categories for other people to buy them “by accident.”
As far as the Manishewitz being shelved in the kosher wine section, most kosher wines sold in supermarkets (where the Manishewitz usually lives) is, let’s face it, not much better than Manishewitz anyway. If they are going to sell it they might as well put it in the kosher section and simultaneously in the kosher food section with the kosher grape juice.
All the best,
Rafi Schutzer
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