Kosher Wine for Passover and Beyond
Winemakers around the world are producing high-quality kosher wines for year-round drinking
As Passover approaches, many observant Jews are looking for kosher wines to serve at seder celebrations. Fortunately, many kosher wines now rival their non-kosher peers in style, quality and variety. (For more on how kosher wine is made, see What Makes Wine Kosher?)
Kosher winemakers can be found all over the world these days, so kashrut Jews (those who follow kosher dietary laws) have options from many of the world's major wine regions. "I've been buying kosher wines the last 12 years, and the availability and quality of wine then compared to today is black and white," said Costas Mouzouras, manager of Manhattan's Gotham Wines, which specializes in kosher wines.
One of the fastest-growing kosher wine regions is Israel. "The biggest single movement this year has been to Israeli wine," said Jay Buchsbaum, vice president of marketing for New York-based Royal Wine Corp., the world's largest kosher wine producer, importer and distributor. Mouzouras said his Israeli offerings have even become popular with his non-kosher customers.
New World countries such as Chile, Argentina, South Africa and Australia are also expanding into the kosher market. "Just like the non-kosher wine business, the kosher industry is looking to new appellations," Buchsbaum said. Royal Wine Corp. produces not only simple, sweet wines like Kedem, from New York, but also fine labels like Herzog Special Reserve, which has earned very good and outstanding ratings from Wine Spectator.
Royal Wine Corp. -- owned and operated by the Herzog family, which has been making wine for more than a century -- now produces kosher wine in nine countries. And the company recently broke ground in Oxnard, Calif., on a 77,000-square-foot winery, the largest kosher facility in the country.
Abarbanel Wine Co., which imports and produces wines from around the world, recently released the first kosher wine to be made in Portugal in more than 500 years, since the Jews were expelled from that country at the end of the 1400s. Terras de Belmonte, a light-bodied blend of five grapes including Jaen and Touriga Nacional, was "special to us because our family originated in Portugal and had to leave in the late 15th century," said company president Howard Abarbanel. "Aside from being an excellent bottle of wine, it's really symbolic of the Jewish and Portuguese people coming together after an unfortunate past."
More and more Jews -- especially the younger generations -- are moving away from sweet Concord-based wines to look for more food-friendly vinifera options, and they are willing to pay for higher quality, said Abarbanel. "People put out their best food at Passover," he said, "and the wines should complement and enhance the food."
See our tasting notes on producers of kosher wines (Note: not all their wines are kosher):
Alfasi
Arbarbanel
Roberto Cohen
Gan Eden
Hagafen
Herzog
Recanati
Teal Lake
Tierra Salvaje
Weinstock
Yarden
Israeli wine ratings (Note: Not all Israeli wines are kosher)
