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August 23, 2002/Elul 15 5762, Vol. 54, No. 49
Manischewitz wines still hot in the 'hood'
JUDITH S. HUOBER
The Reporter Group
Central New York is to American seders as the Champagne region of France is to New Year's: without the one we wouldn't know how to celebrate the other.
One hundred percent of all Manischewitz wine, the number one kosher brand in the country, is produced in Naples, N.Y. From Concord Grape to Malaga to Cream White and beyond, American poured more Finger Lakes produced Manischewitz into their four cups than any other kosher-for-Pesach wine. Who knew?
Since 1986, the Manischewitz brand has been owned by Widmer Wine Cellars, a subsidiary of Canandaigua wine, which in turn belongs to a huge, worldwide conglomerate called Constellation Brands. The plant is a curious mix of a premium winery with its homey, back-to-the-earth feel - a high-security kosher operation with zero tolerance for unsupervised intervention and a state-of-the-art high volume industrial production line.
In it up to her taste buds is Bonnie Abrams, assistant winemaker at Widmer and a klezmer musician with Twelve Corners Klezmer out of nearby Rochester. She's heard all the jokes about wine, women and song - but on a tour of the operation she discusses kashrut, taste-tests and science with equal facility. With all her knowledge, not a drop would be fermented, let alone bottled, without men like mashgiach (one who oversees kashrut) David Subar.
As a team, the two detail the procedures they live with every day. Unique among foods, pure wine is restricted by the laws of kashrut to being handled only by Jews. Only after its temperature has been raised just about to the boiling point resulting in so-called yayin mevushel, or "boiled" wine, can non-Jews participate in the process.
That means Subar and his associate OU-certified kosher supervisors are the only ones who can physically be involved with the grapes from the moment they are dropped for pressing into the trough until the flash pasteurization of the juice is complete. A mashgiach is the only one with the keys to the Widmer machinery that is used for Manischewitz wine. One of them must hook up the hoses when a sealed shipment of juice comes in from the Canandaigua plant and only one of them may turn the valves to allow the huge tanks to fill. Only their presence allows the massive production line to run, just in case some situation requiring their interpretation or intervention should arise. Fences, locks and alarm systems ensure adherence to the system.
Like his associates, Subar is a Sabbath-observant and well-educated Jew, the basic requirements of the Orthodox Union which provides the Manischewitz hechsher.
"Wine itself is a symbolic combination of living in the world and living with God," he explains. Since wine is used in Jewish tradition it must be worthy of representing this association of man and God.
According to Subar, the law about boiling probably arose in ancient days, when wine would be used by non-Jews for "licentious purposes," diametrically opposed to the use to which a Jew would put it. Both groups wanted a way to distinguish their wine from that of the other, and the boiling method turned out to be handy.
Abrams's expertise comes into play during the blending, testing and tasting phases of the wine. She helps supervise the high-tech lab, where as many as 30 samples of each batch of wine are subjected to a barrage of tests.
Next door to the tiny office crammed with a motley assortment of bottles Abrams means to investigate "some day" is the so-called library of samples of finished Widmer products: for quality control, a bottle from every single batch is kept on hand for a year or more.
The bottom line during the indispensable blind triangular taste test, however, is Abrams' palate. A hint of a flavor not right, or a sweetness level too low or too high, and the batch needs adjusting: assuming the kosher supervisor is on hand, that is.
Sweet is the adjective that applies to all Manischewitz wines, and sugar is added to most. Sixty percent of the wine Manischewitz produces is kosher for Passover: the difference is primarily that sucrose is used as a sweetener instead of the less expensive fructose that can be used the rest of the year. Some of the blends that sell well year round, like the flavored Cream Peach or Loganberry, just don't pull a market willing to pay the higher price for the Passover version, Abrams says.
Just who comprises the market for millions of cases of sweet kosher wine comes as something of a surprise. It is billed in Canandaigua literature as a good seller for the "fall holiday months (Rosh Hashana, Thanksgiving, Chanukah and Christmas)."
Christmas?
It turns out that the second largest group of consumers for Manischewitz wines is the black community. Abrams hypothesizes that the crossover stems from the close neighborhood spirit shared by Jews and blacks back in Brooklyn's heydey.
The reason given by Jews and blacks alike for returning year after year to the sweet taste and the Manischewitz label?
"My grandmother always had it in the house."
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