A Wine Conversation with Joshua E. London

Episode Transcript
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S Simon Jacob (00:09):
Welcome to The Kosher Terroir.
I'm Simon Jacob, your host forthis episode from Jerusalem.
Before we get started, I askthat, wherever you are, please
take a moment and pray for thesafety of our soldiers and the
safe return of all of ourhostages.
Welcome to the Kosher Terroir,the podcast that uncorks the

(00:32):
world of kosher wine, one bottle, one story at a time.
Today, we're joined by JoshuaLondon, a seasoned wine and
writer.
Originally from California,Joshua has written extensively
on wines, spirits, and cocktailsfor top publications, offering
expert insight into what makes agreat kosher vintage.
A deep knowledge of the globalkosher wine scene.
A seasoned wine and spiritswriter with a deep knowledge of
the global kosher wine scene.

(00:57):
In this episode, we explore theevolution of the kosher wine
market, emerging trends and whatsets certain wines apart.
If you love discovering newwines, expanding your palate and
diving deep into thecraftsmanship behind every
bottle, you're in the rightplace.
So pour yourself a glass,settle in, and let's explore the
kosher terroir.
Welcome to The Kosher Terroir,Josh.

(01:20):
It's a pleasure.
It's a real pleasure.
Pleasure's all mine.
Thank you, josh.
It's a pleasure.
It's a real pleasure.
Pleasure is all mine, thank you.
Okay, so tell me a little bitabout how you got into wine and
what you're doing now, but let'sstart from the beginning.

Joshua London (01:36):
How did you get into this, oh gosh, so it feels
like many lifetimes ago now, butso I'm originally from Northern
California from.
Sacramento, I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, small frum community,sure, do you know.

Steve Fishbein.

Yeah, when we first met we did a little bit of
this Jewish geography, but itwas right at the start of the
Rothschild dinner thing in.

New York Right in New York, yeah.

So, steve, in fact even many more moons ago
the fish finds, when they firstmoved to Sacramento.
So my father, Olav Hshalom, whowas the chazan.
It was a small pond, he was abig fish.
He's one of the folks, alongwith the Rav, who helped McCarev

(02:30):
, Steve and Yvette.
Wow, I'll bring them more intothe fold.
Yeah, and I remember all thekids growing up.

Wow, very, very small world.
All right, so tell me a littlebit about your background.
Where did you start, how didyou get into wine and who
decided to sort of?

roll the dice and have been attempted making some
kosher wine.
It was, I can't recall.

(03:10):
Off the top of my head now, Ithink it was Sonoma grapes, but
they were making it in Davis,California.

Yeah, uc Davis yeah.

Yeah, In fact that's where I did my undergrad
was UC Davis, and all of theIsraeli wine folk who would come
through, if any were Dati, theycame to the Sacramento
community.
That time I met ShikiRauschberger.
I've known the Rauschbergerfamily a long time, From his
time there when he was doing theresearch on the Voschel and all

(03:39):
that and anyway.
So friends of the family youmay know, you probably know
Yitzi Applebaum.

Sure.

So Yitzi and a few partners did a kosher wine.
It's now a pretty mediocre,unremarkable Australian wine,
teal Lake, ok, but when TealLake first began it was a
california wine, made it atdavis.
Uh, it was um.

(04:09):
So it was yitzi applebaum.
Yitzi and hilda applebaum.
Um, uh, doctors, uh, isroff andhuntley married, riff isroff
and art huntley.
And there was one other partnerwho was not jewish, whose name
escapes me this moment, and backthen this is before the
industry was as big and beforethe kashas industry was as big

(04:33):
and as professionalized.
And so basically they would,you know, grab the handful of
Shoma Shabbos, folks fromSacramento and sort of push them
into the winery.
My father did, a bunch ofpeople did it.
I was in Yeshiva High School atthe time, but every time I came
back I would be press gangedinto the winery and so I began

(04:56):
as a seller, essentially in acustom crush type facility.
The Rav HaMachshu was a Rav.
Shlomo Rosen was now in Chicago, but he was a long, long time
Rav of Sacramento and I think Ithink it was under the OU,

(05:18):
although I know I have some oldlabels, pictures of old labels.
But anyway, he was the actualRav on the ground and
essentially the one making itand it was Pinot Noir.
It was actually fabulous.
At one point they did a rosé, aPinot Blanc Pinot Rosé, which

(05:38):
was also fabulous.
Distribution was challengingand eventually they sold the
label to Royal, who then keptthe artwork.
I think it was Rivker, I thinkshe actually drew it, so they
kept the name.
They kept a version of theartwork, sold off all the stock,

(05:58):
I think through Trader Joe's,for, you know, two bucks.
It was like a kosher twoher twobuck chuck regionally, very
locally, so everyone bought itup and that was like the wine du
jour till it ran out.
Then I think it was a year ortwo of nothing before they moved
it to, at the time, norman'swines in australia for like bulk

(06:18):
australian wine.
I think they still releasestuff in that category, maybe
even some reserve.
I stopped drinking the, theaustralian teal like, a long
time ago, but the original onewas actually very nice.
So at any rate I caught the bugthen, wow, before I was legal
to drink it and also so growingup in Northern California.

(06:42):
So you know, all the winepersonalities that either were
in kosher or dabbled or weresupportive of kosher were sort
of people I got to know.
You know so Ernie Weir, craigWinchell, craig, even more than
Ernie, only because at somestage Ernie sort of upgraded the

(07:05):
hashkacha.
But there was a brief periodwhere some people drank it, some
people didn't that kind ofthing, but my family, my father
Elvishon, was always verysupportive of all of this stuff.
There was a mainstream wineryin Napa that was owned by the
Jewish Shaskali family out ofLanguedoc and they did a kosher

(07:27):
run for a couple of years MountMaroma and Mount Madrona and we
used to drink that.

I remember seeing bottles of that.

I remember seeing bottles of that.
It was actually excellent aswell, and nothing was that
expensive back when.
And nothing was that expensiveback when.
This was also the days when BobWeinstock, robert Weinstock,
was making Weinstock wineshimself before he sold it to
Royal, and he was actuallymaking fabulous wines.
They used to have this CheninBlanc.

(07:57):
That was really six timesbetter than the price Right.

I remember them being super quality at a very
reasonable price.

Yeah, that's right.
And there was a sort of thing.
You know, folks in the industrywho again either weren't
themselves firm or maybe noteven Jewish, but were highly
supportive, were generallysupportive.
Dan Berger used to write forthe LA Times.

(08:30):
He used to, you know, givepositive reviews.
The Cordy brothers, which weresupportive of kind of ethnic and
other you know sort of more outthere wines and other you know
sort of more out there wines,cordy had a big influence on a

(08:51):
lot of the kosher producers justby being supportive, helping to
open doors, helping to makeconnections.
You know it was a smaller world, less corporate in many, many
respects.
Some of it still is that way inNapa, but anyhow.
So I kind of grew up with allthat and it wasn't until a

(09:11):
little bit later that I kind ofrealized, um, how uh, how rich
the experiences were, um and uh.
And it was many years laterthat I started writing
professionally about it.
So I went from California toswell for a bit and then back to

(09:33):
California, then graduateschool, I went to University of
Chicago and it was while in gradschool that I started writing
professionally, writingprofessionally, and basically I
just sort of realized I had afacility for writing that was
just slightly better than mypeers, but enough.

(09:54):
And initially I was doingmostly politics and stuff like
that.
But so I had a whole like atthe time my writing was more
politics and kind of culturalcommentary and that kind of,
even though I was a kid At thetime.
My writing was more politicsand kind of cultural commentary,
even though I was a kid.
But I come from the AmericanJewish school of thought where,
you know, everyone in the worldis entitled to my opinion.
I love it.

(10:17):
I'm tempered a bit now, andeven more so by politics.
It's a blood sport of adifferent nature than it was
when I was growing up, um, butat any rate so, uh, um.
So I became sort of aprofessional writer, um, as a
sideline I was always doingother stuff too.

(10:37):
And then, um, once I moved toWashington DC after graduate
school, uh, and after I wasmarried.
I was married.
I married my wife in 2002.
So it was around 2000.
I think three or four that Ifirst started writing about wine
, kosher wine and spirits, andthere was a local.

(11:04):
It became a national thing butthere's a local paper called the
Washington examiner.
And now it became a big chainwith examiners all over the
place, and but at the, at thatexact moment, it was basically
just a local paper and the thewine guy for it, who's you know
Jewish, never wanted to touchanything kosher whatever.

(11:27):
I had met him through someoneelse and I asked him oh, what
are you going to be reviewingfor Passover, right?
So it's the one time of year.
And he says nothing.
And I'm like, oh, that's notgood.
So I contacted the editor and Isaid, look, I, you know, I
nominally know the wine guy.
I know he's not going to touchit for Passover.

(11:49):
I said you have a sizableJewish community.
Can I write the piece forPassover?
Sure, so I did.
They loved it Because they hada regular wine writer and at the
end of the day, there wasn'tthe market for a regular kosher
wine column.
I ended up doing a cocktailcolumn Cocktails, spirits, food,

(12:12):
occasionally for the weekendsection.
I ended up with a weekly columnwhere I was basically doing
like storytelling aboutcocktails, the background, the
history, different recipesthere's a handful of cocktails
that have their history in DC,and so I would go, you know,
sort of like the Army Navy Club,and the photographer would come

(12:34):
and so I was having fun with it.
I was a very tiny, minor, noteven celebrity, but a minor
figure in the drinks world in DC.
Very tiny, I mean, you know, mystature is almost infinitesimal
, but amongst them they knew me.
Um and uh, and then from that,let's see around.

(12:57):
The same time, um,kosherwinecom, which back then
was, uh, hungarian kosher foodsin Chicago, uh, they had just
started uh, sort of revampingthe website and getting people
to uh do reviews of the winesand I, and and my friend Gamli

(13:18):
O'Connor is also a wine writerUm, uh, we started just
uploading our notes, you know ofthe wines Because, like, it was
an easy way to keep track ofour notes, you know, without
having to be too pretentiousabout having you know notebooks
or this or that.
You know it was early days.
Well, so, in short order, I'm abit of an insomniac, so when I

(13:43):
would have dead time I wouldjust start uploading these
things.
All of a sudden, I hadsomething like 500 wines
reviewed across the pricespectrum, and so suddenly my
name was like people all overthe place would email me out of
the blue and say are you thesame one who does this?
What would you recommend?
Et cetera, et cetera.
Same one.

(14:07):
Who does this?
What would you recommend, etc.
Etc.
And um, dan kush uh, who at thetime the kush family owned
hungarian kosher foods.
He ran, um, a wine of the monthclub through hungarian, through
kosherwinescom, uh, and he hada newsletter and he needed
someone to write the newsletterat some point.
And I and here I don't rememberthe history, if, uh, if david
rocker was doing it first or ifrocker took it over from me, I

(14:29):
just don't remember, um, and Imaybe rocker knows, or but um,
but at some point I startedwriting the newsletter, not
under my name, just, you know,just writing it for them.
And for that I needed toresearch, I needed to know
information about the wineriesand at this stage of the game,

(14:59):
the only way there was anyinformation was whether or not
the individual winery doingGokosh Uran had a marketing
department and decided to doanything.
Royal wasn't on top of itoutside of the Herzog label,
maybe a couple of Israeli onestop of it outside of the Herzog
label, maybe a couple of Israeliones.
And I was pushing a lot ofstuff that I found interesting
and that reached my price pointfor Kirsch and that he could get
enough supply and through thatI became very friendly with the
Royal Wine Corp marketing people.

(15:20):
At some stage I moved on.
I can't remember exactly why Ileft the newsletter.
At some stage it was, I think,partly maybe we were running out
of information on the wines.
I had sort of tapped theinteresting ones and then Royal
didn't have any information andthe wineries.
This was early days.

(15:41):
The websites weren't soinformation heavy.
So at some point and certainlyno internet.
Yeah, I mean this was.

The internet was really low.

It was low.
It just wasn't as user friendly, certainly as now, and
everyone's computers were likedial up or whatever, you know,
like everything was slower, butand then.
So let's see, this is probablyI'm making up the times, but
it's something like maybe 2009,2008, 2009, something along

(16:16):
those lines.
At some stage my cocktailcolumn came to an end because
the editors changed, theexaminer got bought out, became
a much larger national thingthing and essentially I was
dropped.
I had a bunch of other people,um and one fell swoop and uh,
then I started, uh, doing somefreelance writing.

(16:37):
Uh, and at some stage I becamethe weekly columnist for the
Washington Jewish Week, a mantlethat our friend you know, jules
Polonetsky.
Sure, jules now has that column.
He's doing a great job.
Jules is an older neighbor ofmine from Potomac.

(16:58):
He's a good friend.
That's one of his columns.
I had that column and then myfriend, gamliel Kronemer, had a
regular gig with the Jewish Weekin New York in the print
edition and they were justlaunching their website like a
food and wine website, and so Istarted writing heavily for the
website Again, sort of ended upwith a weekly column and

(17:23):
periodically also for the printedition, and this was I don't
remember the exact year, but atsome stage they began an annual
wine magazine, the Krippesachthing, and so I became very
involved in that.
I became a judge a little bitlater in the process.
The whole competition wasbasically Yossi Horowitz I don't

(17:43):
know if it was an invention.
I think it was an inventionEither he, the whole competition
was basically Yossi Horowitz.
I don't know if it was invention.
I think it was invention.
Either he came up with the ideaor he professionalized it for
them.
I don't remember, he'll tellyou.
He remembers, but he and CityWanderer guys, steve Dorff and
folks like that, they began it,gamliel.

(18:07):
My memory of this is he becamea judge maybe the second or
third year in and they keptinviting me but you know, it
just wasn't practical.
And then by the fourth or fifthyear the publisher said we'll
pay for you to come up and stayin a hotel.
I said okay, and then I becamea judge, but the whole time I
was writing for them.
So you know, by the time that,just before COVID rolled around,

(18:29):
when we finally met in personat that Rothschild dinner in New
York, that was probably theheight of my very relative name
recognition in this niche.
And then COVID blew the wholething up.

Well, it did in some ways and didn't in others.

It evolved.

It totally evolved.

But for me, my column in the Jewish Week in New
York folded it's sort of backas an online thing but all
different people but they neverdid reach out to me and I think
I never heard of it.
I tried emailing the new crewand never heard of this thing.
So, like my regular writing,gigs evaporated.

What about the link?
What?

about the link, so the moment the Jewish Link
started up.
So Elizabeth Kratz is alongtime friend.
I knew her.
Actually, I first met herbrother, who sadly passed a few
years ago.
He was finishing his PhD atUniversity of Chicago, just as I
was entering University ofChicago, and he and his family

(19:44):
were friends with my brother wholives in Chicago.
And through Robert the brother,I met Elizabeth.
She was working on Capitol Hillat the time.
I think it was Pombo,congressman Pombo, and she was
like had a whole career on inpolitics and you know um and uh,

(20:05):
when I, when, when Ireconnected with her in dc, uh,
I and gamley, all a coupleothers, um, helped sort of
cultivate for her a set, a loveof wine.
I won't take credit beyond thespark, it's all the rest of it's
, all her talents, but we usedto have very fun wine tastings

(20:27):
and stuff in DC with a nicelittle heva for this, for this
shtick.
So yes, I've known Elizabeth along, long time.
So when she, when, when theJewish link took over
effectively from the Jewish week, she also always invites me to
come up and be a judge.
It's just again, it's just notpractical in terms of the

(20:47):
distance, but I've been writingfor them from day one, just
basically just a magazine.
I think she's encouraged me towrite much more off and on.
I think now she probably has anembarrassment of riches of
people who write, which is nice.
So I've reached that stagewhere my name seems to be

(21:07):
recognized by some.
By others it's more of a soundsfamiliar, and there's plenty of
people who have no idea who Iam, which is perfectly fine too.

So what prompted the move to the UK, to the UK.

So COVID.
Covid was an interesting timeperiod In Washington.
So I was living in Potomac,maryland, sort of a Washington
suburb, lovely community, verynice area just outside of DC.
Well, when COVID struck, thepolitics of COVID, particularly

(21:53):
in DC, was even more toxic thancoronavirus and a lot of
different people handled it inmany different ways.
A handful of people remainedlevel headed and and good, and
many, many, many panicked and itbrought out, shall we say,
their worst traits, including,you know, in some cases, people

(22:14):
of either nominal or officialleadership capacities.
I kept saying to Anna like, look, our jobs are now remote, we
can do this from anywhere in theworld.
Why don't we find some placewhere, a there's family a little
bit closer and B, maybe we canfind Jewish schooling?
That's not online, you know, myson was essentially eating

(22:35):
crayon stage, so to do thatremotely is silly.
And at that time the school,because of the politics of
corona they were talking aboutin the of Corona they were
talking about in the earlystages they were talking about.
You know, if they ever reopento you know, and then
kindergarten would be six feetapart, then you'd have like a
little, not quite a cage, butyou know.

A plexiglass box.

Yeah, it's like I'm going to pay, you know,
close to $30,000 a head for this.
This is ridiculous.

Right.

So and it wasn't until I want to say it was maybe
Shavuos, it was the basic, itwas the ha-game of like no
guests, no, nothing that helpedconvince my wife that we did
need to move on.
And I think it waspost-Shavuost that she finally

(23:26):
said you know what?
This is ridiculous.
Also, you know, we didn't knowwhen we'd ever see my in-laws
again.
Thank God they're in goodhealth, but they're older.
And you know, it was like itjust didn't make sense for our
kids.
It was just it was too, youknow, sterile an environment.
So finally we decided toexplore the options.

(23:49):
We came to England thinking toget to London, thinking this
would be, you know, maybe asix-month experience.
Like you know, wait out COVID,essentially Long story shorter.
Now, basically, we stayed,we're still here and it's been a
great move for the family.

(24:10):
My kids, who don't reallyremember America, pine for it,
but you know, just because it'sother.
But the only thing that amongstthe things that transitioned was
professionally, that amongstthe things that transitioned was
professionally.
Until that time, my day job wasI was a lobbyist for various

(24:30):
Jewish groups Israel lobbyingbasically and once remote work
was no longer the method of theday, that was untenable to
maintain that kind of position.
I would jump back and forth alittle bit and the the January
6th stuff in DC and the politicsaround that kept the Capitol

(24:54):
shut for even longer than Corona.
So that allowed me to hang onto that job for a bit.
But at some stage you knowenough.
So I let my boss know I wasn'tcoming back and now we moved on.
We've sort of been involved alittle bit in the local scene
with Kedem Europe, which is likethe royal family here, and a

(25:19):
couple of the other.
You know folks.
It's a much, much, much smallermarket but it's a vibrant
community.

Well, they seem to you know.
I'll tell you something.
The Ketam team that has thewine club in the UK and Europe,
the refined wine club that isreally incredibly well run.
They always have the bestproduct of any club, any wine

(25:56):
club anywhere in the world.
I'm always super impressed withthem.

Well, they have a fabulous portfolio, as you know
, for every iteration of theRoyal Kedem Herzog family.
You know they have, bar none,the largest kosher portfolio of
any one you know group and withtremendous variety and some

(26:26):
amazing quality.
I don't know who invented theclub, I don't know which of them
came up with it.
I believe it's currently run byJahnke Herzog, the son of Shia
Morris, who's the head of KedemEurope.
His son currently runs it.
I don't know if he came up withit or Shia or somebody else,
but they they run it very, verywell.

(26:49):
And because of the funny bitsyou know related to the
three-tier system in America,they have a lot of American
members Cause I guess I don'tknow if they ship it I mean, I
know they ship it there.
I don't know if most of themembers I mean I know they ship
it there.
I don't know if most of themembers get it shipped or if
they pick it up as they passthrough London for business, but

(27:10):
apparently they have a verylarge subscription base in
America and I guess it's justeasier.
So, like the Herzog Winery inCalifornia has a wine club, but
because of the distributionnetworks it only makes sense for
people who are within certainstates or whatever, and so
Refined Club is like, I think,is the club du jour, so it's

(27:36):
multiple countries and you know,and they seem to be very good
about just giving people varietyand quality.
Yeah, it's a good operation andthey seem to be very good about
just giving people, variety andquality and, yeah, it's a good
operation.
Have you ever tasted non-kosherwine?
Yes, okay.
So some years ago when I wasfirst sort of becoming

(27:57):
professional about it, when Iwas still in Chicago, I had
extensive conversations withDayan there passed away, but he
and this was an area ofexpertise so wines and related
issues and actually from him Igot a Heter to taste and spit.

(28:17):
The person who gave me theHeter was Rolf Gedalia Dov
Schwartz, is that so?
And so in the early days I dida lot of educational tasting in
educational settings.
You know I would go to a tradeshow and a lot less these days.
I feel like at this stage Ihave a pretty well-educated

(28:40):
palate in many respects.
I still sometimes will tastethe spit if it's truly.
I mean taste and spit Sam Yenam.
If it's something I've neverhad and I just read about it, I
want a sense of really what itis, but very sparingly, no.

I'm curious because that really frames
questions that I have for you asfar as that's concerned.
We've just gone through anumber of trade shows,
specifically in London KFWELondon and also… the Kosher Wine
Show.
The Kosher Wine Show, okay, soanything interesting.

Lots of great and interesting new stuff.
Just to take it first with KFWE, which I think this was like
the 19th show, maybe or 20,something like that.
I don't remember off the top ofmy head but it was.
This was like the third orfourth one I've been to in
London and it was phenomenal andit was a packed house I think

(29:47):
it was over 1,000 people, butit's hard to tell a little bit
but really, really packed.
And so it's all the Keddenportfolio.
But they have some astoundingwines coming through.
I don't know if you've yettasted the new winemaker, david
Galgazan.
So he's only a couple of yearsin winemaker.
David Galgazan, so he's only acouple of years in, I mean.

(30:11):
So he's new in the sense that Ithink this is the first
iteration of wines where he'sbeen more in control in terms of
his style, you know, breakingfree of the formula stuff a bit.
So Joe Herleman, you know, wasan unbelievably talented
winemaker and a great guy, supermensch, and David had big yeah,
real mensch.

(30:32):
So David had big shoes to filland he's filled them well, he's
I.
So you're talking about theEsaud.
So actually across the board.
So Yassod is like Nunu, but allof the wines that he makes,

(30:53):
which is basically the wholelineup, many of them he's begun
to sort of tinker with and makechanges, some of them subtle,
some of them a little more so,but they're all a step up in
quality and distinct.
You can taste them.
Two of the wines in particularthat so not as high as the

(31:17):
Yersodan price-wise, but thethey have a new sort of reserve
Chenin Blanc Unbelievable David.
He had a vision to take theChenin that they grow there and

(31:38):
just kind of take it to adifferent place.
So it's still distinctly a NewWorld wine.
But he had in mind essentiallyto go to the Loire, to
Sauvignier, which is aparticular region that makes a
very particular style of Chenin,and he's basically channeled it

(32:01):
in ways that are justastounding.
The wine is really good.
I had previously Joseph Herzogor Mati Herzog from the winery
had come through London and theydid a tasting.
So I had sort of tasted all theAçodes and the Schennen and the
Reserve Pinot, which are alsoincredibly good, and a handful

(32:22):
of others.
But to taste them again at KFWEand in some instances, like
with the Schennen, they do boththe Mavushal and non-Mavushal,
and I was able to kind of tastethem back to back.
Just an amazing wine, I really.
I think.
I think if people give it achance they'll fall in love with

(32:44):
it.
It's just, it's.
It's a there's a complexity, aweight in the mouth, a just so
unbelievably food friendly, andit's just, it's a different.
It's again, it's stilldistinctly California, but very

(33:04):
much channeling the soul ofLoire, of Sauvignier, and I
think it'll become.
It's a little bit pricey, but Ithink it'll probably become my
house white because it's just tome it's really astoundingly
good.
The Esodes are amazing, butthey're so young, I mean,
frankly, it'll be several years.
Yeah, right now they're just abit too inky.

(33:27):
The Pino, the Sonoma Pino theyhad the reserve Excellent.
The Sonoma Pino, they had thereserve Excellent.
Their sort of champagne methodBubbly is even better now than

(33:49):
the previous.
So, like across the board,herzog, they get better every
year generally, but they're evenbetter.
I think it's a real qualitativestep up, and so all those were
good.
There was a whole variety ofupscale French and mid-level

(34:12):
French that were excellent.
Probably the one that got themost attention is the Philip
LaHardy line of Burgundies.

People are hot on Burgundies right now because we
haven't.
We've been Burgundy, starvedfor so long.

Yes, and now there's an embarrassment of
riches and the LaHardy wines areexcellent, really outstanding.
They had a close of Vujo, whichis super, super expensive but
drinking incredibly well now butwill get much better.
But to me, the Alos Corton thatthey had exceptional right now,

(34:52):
again a bit pricey, but if youcan afford it, really fab.
The base level Burgundy Ithought was excellent For the
money.
I actually prefer that to thePremier Crew version of it.
With a little bit of time inbottle that'll reverse and the

(35:16):
Premier Cru will become better.
But in terms of drinking rightnow, the quote-unquote bog
standard one fab, really reallygood.
Really exciting Drapierchampagne they released a
vintage champagne Really reallynice.
It's a bit different from ifyou're into that Champagne house

(35:41):
, which I love, but I do loveDrapier and Michel Real Mench,
san Hugo it's a really goodfamily.
In general, they've been goingfor low dosage drier, drier,
drier.
And this 20, I think it was2018 vintage is a bit higher

(36:10):
dosage than we've seen from themof late.
So, depending on your palate,it may come across as a little
bit sweeter than you've seenfrom them of late.
So, depending on your palate,it may come across as a little
bit sweeter than you've come toexpect from them, which some
people like.
Some people tasted it at KFWEand were like sweet.
It's not a sweet wine, but it'sa very relative thing.
But I think that that'llactually sell better.

to be quite honest, I think there's a group
of people who are really adverseto any type of sweetness coming
across the palate.
But in the general public, Ithink the general public it will
move much better than the aciddrug.

And you know it's funny.
Just as an aside.
If I'm boring, you let me know.
Just as an aside.
So there's a.
This is not just kosher.
Right Across the wine worldthere is a strong bias by

(37:12):
aficionado types.
You know, wine mavens againstsweetness in wine unless it's.
You know, dafka, a dessert winelike a sauterelle or whatever.
And you know it's just, it'snot right and it's not fair.
I say not right because that'snot to me.

(37:34):
That's not how you approachwine.
That's not what it's not fair.
I say not right because that'snot to me.
That's not how you approachwine.
That's not what it's about.
It's about the grapes givingyou the best that they can give
you.
In some cases you do want tosee it across the style range
Riesling it's a shame thatincreasingly nobody wants any

(37:54):
sweet Riesling.
I mean, I love dry Riesling.
It's a shame that increasinglynobody wants any sweet Riesling.
I mean, I love dry Riesling.
Don't get me wrong.
I love a sweet Riesling and Ilove every gradation of the
Riesling.
And Chenin Blanc is the same.
I love every gradation.
And so there some wines where acertain natural sweetness is

(38:17):
not just acceptable.
It's proper, right and toconvince people that, if they
like sweet, that they'reunsophisticated.
It's just not fair To me.
It's just not and it's becauseit has nothing to do.
It's nothing to do withsophistication or lack of
sophistication.
It's a preference, it's a tastepreference.

It's a subjective preference.

It's very subjective and not that long ago
, in the big scheme of things,even the top wines of the world,
even recognized names that arenow, nobody would ever think
like Cheval Blanc, nobody wouldever think of as a sweet wine.
Not that long ago, highresidual sweetness was the, was

(39:04):
the fashion Right.
And so across Burgundy,bordeaux, the Rhine, you had,
you had many more wines that hadthat to modern palates would be
too sweet, and they were thewines.
They were.
You know the fashion right.
So, like anything, there's um,there's the storytelling version

(39:30):
of the product, and thenthere's the actual history and
and you know, and all commercialwines, you know they want to
appeal to the market.
And then there's the actualhistory and all commercial wines
.
They want to appeal to themarket and the market wants more
dry, they go more dry.
So all of that said, sweetnessin wine is part of the human
condition.
It's right and proper at times.

I always wonder whether the people who are you
know, it's the people with thevoice like the squeaky wheel
gets, you know, gets the oil.
I wonder whether the squeakywheels within the wine industry
who have the ear of the wineries, are the people who are saying,

(40:14):
you know, oh, I don't want anysweetness, or I want a lot of
acidity, and the trouble is thenthe market is really not
attuned to that.
You know, I kind of wonder withconsumers.
A little bit of residualsweetness goes a long way to

(40:39):
convince people that wine issomething that's reasonable for
them.
Where I'm hearing like a lot ofpeople will say to me oh, I
don't drink wine, I don't drinkwine.
I have a cocktail but I don'tdrink wine.
And it's totally because ofthis, because I think of wine as

(40:59):
being some acidy, non-sweet.

Well, I think it's a mix.
Some of it is because the winesthat they're told they're
supposed to love they don't love.
It doesn't fit their flavor.
And I think a lot of it also isthe sense that to be into wine

(41:24):
requires sort of an intellectualcommitment.
At the end of the day, it's abeverage, you know, like Coke, a
hundred percent.
At the end of the day, it's abeverage you know like.

Coke.

A hundred percent , and particularly wine
professionals lose sight of thisall the time, and it's I get it
and I'm not blaming anyone.
You know, a wine geek shouldn'tfeel bad about being a wine
geek either.

A hundred percent .

But the pretentiousness factor keeps a
lot of people away.
Um, again, it's across the wineworld in in uh, in the firm
world, uh, perhaps even more so.
Right, there's plenty of peoplewhen, uh, when they're done
either with their professionaljobs or yeshiva, you know
whatever like they don't nowneed they don't, they don't want
another graduate-level course,just to be able to have wine

(42:18):
with their meal and whiskey, infact, all the spirits are so
much more approachable in thatsense, because you don't I've
tried to explain this to peoplein slightly different contexts,
mostly my wine geek friends whenthey say, in wine, speak.

(42:38):
When you say, oh, it's veryapproachable.
So to a non-wine person,they'll look at you funny, like,
like, what does that?

mean it's a liquid.
You drink it.
What do you mean?
It's got to melt Like what arewe talking about?

It doesn't mean approachable you pour it.
What does that mean?
Approachable?
You pour it, you drink it, andsometimes wine geeks when you
ask them about it like they, youknow, they kind of go into this
reverie of you know and all thekind of nomenclature pops up
and it comes out as gobbledygookto the uninitiated.
And I always try to explainthat.
Look the uninitiated, that'sthe market.

(43:13):
Right, you want to sell, not towine geeks, you want to sell to
people, normal human beings.
Wine it's just like food.
Because it's food, it'ssupposed to be part of everyday
life.
To me, a successful wine when Isay it's approachable, it means

(43:33):
you don't have to have evertasted anything like it before
to enjoy it.
You don't have to.
It doesn't have to age for 20years in a cellar before it's
just coming into it.
It's a good wine that fits allthe different categories.
It's refreshing, the alcohol isjust enough to make you happy,
not enough to where it's burningor or you know where it feels

(43:57):
hot remarkable.
Ultimately, you want a wine thatisn't with no one element is
remarkable.
You just want it where you go.
Oh, that's nice or yummy orwhatever.
That's really what you want ina wine.
The wine geeks will like me.
I mean, I'm a self-confessedwine geek of the highest order.
I'll sit there and ooh and ahfor 20 minutes over this element

(44:18):
of that, but I'm not going tobore anyone else with it, unless
they're into it.
For anyone else I'll just say,oh, it's really nice and so
approachable wine means it'sgood drinking right now.
Pop and pour.
If it's not pop and pour, thenit's not yet approachable.
It's as simple as that.
And so the one thing about theKFWE style tastings and again,

(44:42):
this is as true in the Travemarket.
I was going to ask you ifthere's a difference.

Is there a notable difference between the
kosher market and the Travemarket?
With return to how they'reapproached, but also consumer
behavior price points, trends.

Yeah, there's a whole variety of differences.
So just to finish the thread ofthe KFWE-style tastings, so the
two things that I find, or thethree things I find that sort of
annoying about tasting in thatcontext is many wines,

(45:20):
particularly as you go higher upthe quality spectrum, they're
released to market early becausethey need a return on the
investment but the wines in manyrespects do need time and
bottle before they're reallyready to drink.
So that style tastingtraditionally is a trade tasting

(45:43):
, not a public tasting, becausethe trade understands that, oh
right, we lay down stocks ofthis and in four years time you
know we'll sell that or you knowwhatever.
Two years depends on exactlywhat you're tasting.
But there'll be some wines thatyou bring to market and
instantly move off the shelf andothers that are for the people
who are building their cellarsout and need a little bit more

(46:04):
of this or that region.
And it's the understanding that, oh, lay it down for three
years, two years, five years,ten years, because right now
it's not pleasurable.
Years, 10 years, because rightnow it's not pleasurable when
punters you know, when consumerscome in, they're expecting, I
think quite rightly from theirvantage point right, they just
spent X amount, $100, 100 pounds, whatever.

(46:25):
Like I want to taste the bestof what you got right now.
And usually they're verydisappointed because the most
expensive wines aren't ready todrink right now, even though
it's being offered right now onthe table.
A, b, at home, people will bedrinking it with food and

(46:46):
friends, as part of a meal.
All good wine fits into a meal.
It's part of cuisine at table,it's part of everything.
And to just taste, you know,walk around and go oh, we get a
taste of that.
It's ink or it's or it's not.
You know it needs more time,it's not yet totally together,

(47:07):
and so even if a consumer caninstantly recognize, oh, it's a,
it's a quality wine, it caninstantly recognize oh, it's a
quality wine, it's all thedifferent elements, it's just
enough to recognize that.
But at the end of the day it'snot ready to drink now.
So it's still an unsatisfyingexperience for a lot of people.
In the kosher market it's alittle bit worse only because,

(47:30):
depending on the level ofThrimkite, a lot of people are
coming in and they're thinkingkiddish.
You know, can I glug back, youknow, four ounces in one sitting
of this right?
Will this give me pleasure whenI consume Arbor Coises and I'm
just downing it out of a SilverBecher, even if they upscale,

(47:53):
use a glass becher.
Well, a lot of wines don't workat that level.
You know, try chugging a Coke,a whole can of Coke in 30
seconds.
It's not so pleasurable either.
There are wines that do thatand that do it very well, but
it's just that it's a slightlydifferent context.

(48:14):
And it's one of the things aboutthe kosher market that people
outside the kosher market don'tget professionally and I think
people within the marketsometimes lose sight of and
consumers often feel kosherconsumers often feel like
they're being like cheated is alittle bit strong, but feel like

(48:35):
it's at their expense.
They sort of recognize thatit's their captive audience.
Right, they need kosher, theycan't drink not kosher.
So there's always a sense.
Same in restaurants and other,where people are like well,
there's no competition.
That's why we're stuck withthis.
That's why the pricing is thisthere's a lot of silly notions

(49:13):
that people have in their headsabout what things ought to cost
At the end.
With the pricing, you knowthey're trying to figure out A
how to make a profit, but B howto not lose their shirt.
So you know there's a littlebit of guesswork but at the end
of the day it's all still marketforces.
That part's no different.
That part's no different.

(49:37):
More competition would helpimprove the dynamics of the
price structure, but the basicdynamic is the same.
But so a lot of people come inand think, oh, I'm stuck, you
know, having to pay four timesthe price of the non kosher
version of this wine.
And it's just because I'mtrapped, because I keep kosher,
and I'm like no, that's in mostinstances.
The markup is a reasonablemaybe 40 percent because it

(50:01):
costs more to do.
It costs more for the winery todo a lot more in some instances
it's just as a quick aside wementioned earlier, drop a
champagne.
I uh had a nice conversationagain with michelle with an
article I was doing uh on onchampagne.
So I asked them um, you know?

(50:23):
So what are some of the, thetechnical, technical differences
in?
Because they've been doing itnow for you know however long a
decade plus 20 years, somethinglike they've doing it a long
time already and it's a regularthing.
So I said, like, how muchkosher do you produce relative
to your non-kosher?
So he says, you know, it'sdifferent every year depending

(50:43):
on quality, depending on themarket.
You know demand or whatever hesays.
So at any given vintage theycould be doing zero kosher
bottles to up to 30,000.

I said okay.
So let's say how is 30,000compared to the rest of what
they make, though?

So that's what I asked him.
So he said like on average inany year they're non-kosher,
they do 1.5 million.

Wow.

So 30,000 with a tremendous, he said, like all
the economy of scale is lost,all the efficiency is lost.
So a winery that normallyproduces 1.5 million, the exact
same infrastructure, has toseparately, fully separate.

(51:29):
You know, independent is nowdoing a tiny run of 30,000.
So you can imagine what thecosts are.
So you know, and for a qualityproducer.
They demand that the mashkichimhave to be on hand.
You know, ideally as readilyavailable as they're not, and so

(51:51):
you know you can't always.
There's only so many peopledoing it, so there's always well
, not always All the time delaythe seamlessness or distance the

(52:15):
seamlessness potentialseamlessness of the kosher run
from the non-kosher run.
But you know, if the guy, ifyou're, say, in Champagne and
the guy's coming up from, Idon't know, strasbourg or Lyon
or wherever, you got to wait forhim to show up before you can
pull the sample, before you canadjust this, before you can
adjust that, and you know, ifyou've ever driven around France

(52:38):
, you know you get stuck intraffic and that's another delay
.
So people have to.
It's one of those areas where anall-kosher winery has it all
over a non-kosher winery interms of the process and the
efficiency and scale.
And scale the downside is it'soften the best.

(53:01):
Terroir is, you know,multi-generational, you know
established, which means notkosher, it means not Jewish, it
means, you know, so often thenon-kosher wineries have better
fruit at their disposal, butit's offset by the fact that the
economics of it are upside down, whereas an all-kosher place,

(53:23):
the economics of the productionare in line with the industry.
But if they're an estate winery, it's just what they own, and
if they're not estate or if theyalso buy, it's what the know,
what they can afford to get andwhat they're able to get, even
in Israel.
You know it's not unusual, ifyou're not in a state winery,
for your long-term contracts tobe underwhelming.

(53:45):
You know where the grower goes,even though we signed for this.
You know they won't tell you Icut a deal with somebody else
for cash.
They'll tell you oh, yieldswere low this year.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is what it is, and we should actually
because yields were low.

you should actually pay me more because
it's a more concentrated product.
Yeah, that's right, but yeah,it's really.

Everyone's trying to make a living, but anyway so
in the kosher market.
So there's all those aspects toit and consumer behavior is
different.
Now the other thing about thekosher market at the end of the
day, you didn't need wine,halakhically, wine meaning grape

(54:27):
juice too, but something thatis yayan.
They need yayan, they need itevery single week At a minimum.
They need it for kiddushabdallah.
So for some, grape juice isfine, either because they like
the taste.
They don't want the alcohol,for health reasons, for

(54:48):
lifestyle reasons.
You know, young kids, whateverit is, although I give my young
kids wine, but whatever.
But Jews need the product andI've often said, at the end of
the day, in the mainstream world, wine is a luxury item, in the

(55:10):
Jewish world, wine is anecessity.
Good wine is a luxury item andit makes a big difference.
So it means that you know ifsomebody is budget constrained
and most Jews are you know lotsof God willing, many, many
children, and that costs moneyto raise and educate and so on.

(55:32):
All the different competingelements of a family budget.
Um, you know, unless uh, both,uh, both, all the elements that
control the budget, the husband,wife and anything else, unless
they're on the same page, uh,and or the disposable income
allows whoever's making thepurchases to quietly bump it up

(55:52):
anyway.
But but otherwise, you know, ithas to be sort of a family
decision that we're going todrink at this level, not that
level.
You know so there's plenty ofpeople who, as much as they
would love to drink, you know, afew hundred-dollar bottles of
wine on a Shabbos, that's justnot an option, it's just not
realistic.
And so everyone is alwayslooking for the cheapest

(56:16):
possible wine that they'll enjoy.
So, depending on their palates,that means that they have to
spend over, say, I don't know,20 bucks, 25 bucks just to get
something that they can drink,$25 just to get something that
they can drink.
You know, in the trade world,you know there used to be $2

(56:38):
Chuck, but it was not all winesthat were competitive at that
price level were any good.
$2 Chuck was considered justdrinkable enough.
Closer, there's no such thingas a $2 Chuck.
The closest thing would be $5.
There's not a lot of that atthat price point either.
But Trader Joe's in America youcan start to get for under $10,

(57:02):
you can find things.
Most kosher wines under $10 areat the quality level of the
competitors of two-buck chuck,so not very good.
There are some exceptions.
Buck chuck, uh, so not verygood.
There are some exceptions.
But so when you're at thatprice point, you know to drink a
cabernet that retails in thekosher market for 9.99, um, may

(57:28):
or may not give you the samepleasure as bartender moscato.
You know which, depending onyour exact market.
You're either gettingdiscounted at $10 or you're
spending maybe $14.
Again, it depends on the exactmarket.
So you're comparing somethingthat you can absolutely drink
not remarkable, necessarilydepending on your taste

(57:49):
preferences, but everyone will.
It's not like Manischewitz wine, they'll get something out of
it Versus a dry red that at thatquality level maybe isn't
really what you want.
So so the price sensitivity isis high and it leads to big gaps

(58:11):
between people who aren'twilling to spend more than their
usual budget because it'sunfamiliar territory, and
they're not.
You know, if they're buyingwines at that price point, it's
usually for a reason, right, whyconvincing the average drinker

(58:40):
to spend more than twentydollars or twenty quid in
Britain is a huge jump, right?
Most of the wine that gets soldis at the is at the cheaper end
.
Twenty is considered sort ofpremium, right, and certainly in
the UK, but even in America.
Mainstream 2025 is the firstjump to premium In the kosher
market.
That's like nobody thinks of itas premium because you think,
oh, that's where it becomesdrinkable Again.

(59:05):
Partly it's just because koshercosts a little bit more to
produce.
Israeli wines have to beexported out of Israel, brought
into America.
There's costs involved in that.
All Israeli wines have to beexported out of Israel, brought
into America.
There's costs involved in that.
So all Israeli wines are thatmuch more expensive in America
or in the UK, often justremoving whatever competitive

(59:29):
advantage in terms of pricestructure domestically in Israel
.
That evaporates the moment, youknow, because import-export
it's just there's more costsinvolved Not fully evaporates,
but you know that cuts into themargins of how people think of
these wines.
The Mavushel aspect alsochanges, particularly for

(59:53):
Israeli production.
There's often the stuff thatthey make Mavushel for export a
little bit different becausethey're a little bit further
removed from the chain ofcustomers being able to, you
know, relate back this didn'ttaste right or this wasn't, you
know.
So sometimes the Mavushelquality coming out of some of

(01:00:16):
the larger wineries in Israelisn't quite as good as the same
version that you can get locally.

S Simon Jacob (01:00:24):
You mentioned, though, that some of the French
ones have a Mavushel and anon-Mavushel, and you've tasted
those.
What do they taste like?
What's difference?
Is there a difference?

Joshua London (01:00:33):
so it varies a little bit.
Um, some of them, some of thewineries have uh, so I've come
to understand this is like atechnical issue but, um, many of
these wineries, it's smallproduction, they uh so that even
even within their own, you know, like thermal processing of

(01:00:54):
wine is a longstanding thing.
Almost all commercial wineriesof any proper size have had
experience with it.
Not movuscial temperaturesright, that's a whole, nother
kettle of fish, but just theidea of using heat in judicious,
technical ways to deal with adifficult vintage.

(01:01:16):
Not all of them are familiar,but many, many, many are
familiar.
They all kind of hate the ideajust because it's, you know,
heat.
It's not what they're.
It certainly doesn't keep withthe narrative.
They tell customers but they'refamiliar with the narrative.
They tell customers but they'refamiliar.

(01:01:37):
But to do it at a scale andwith the rigorous protocol
involved in Koshers is kind of adifferent order.
Some wineries, you can't get theequipment easily.
Sometimes you can't even get itto the facility easily.
In some cases you have to truckthe liquid just a little bit.

(01:01:58):
You know it just depends onwhere things are set up.
When mashkiach is beingmavashul, the wines, you know a
heavier touch versus a lightertouch.
You know so that even thoughthere's a particular temperature
you need to get at for you know, halacha um, it doesn't mean

(01:02:20):
that you're not getting wellover that at times because you
know oops, you know I'm notregulating it for the way I
should.
Obviously no one's going toshare that with anybody.
You know the, the I mean thepeople producing it know what's
going on, but they're not goingto share that with customers and
say, oh well, the first 20,000liters went about 10 degrees

(01:02:41):
hotter than we wanted.
So there's some things, it justis what it is and they have to
make the best of it and sothey'll try to blend it out.
You know things.
So some wineries, theircontroversial versions, really
aren't the same quality level.
In some cases they will beright.
It means, like the first timethat Capsanus in Spain did some

(01:03:04):
Mavushal wines, I thinkvirtually everyone agreed they
weren't as good.
There was a real qualitativedifference.
You can taste them back to backand it was like something in
the wine had changed and not forthe good.
And that's a learning curve.
You know a couple of vintagesin.
They get it usually so.

(01:03:27):
So there's that aspect to itand again from a it's it's all
very technical from a consumerperspective.
At the end of the day, all youknow is you drink it and it
tastes good or it doesn't tastegood.
It tastes like you expect or itdoesn't taste like you expect.

I have a question the global markets between
having France and having the USand having Israel and some of
the other outlying producers.
Is there currently a leader inthe kosher wine industry?

(01:04:06):
You know, is it Israel, is itthe US, is it Europe, is it
another?

region.
It's a good question, so itdepends a little bit on what the
focal point is.
So, in terms of sheer numbers,the largest number of all kosher
wineries is Eretz, israel,which, frankly, I find

(01:04:33):
appropriate.
I think that's the way itshould be.
As a quick aside, when the lateDaniel Rogoff, in one of the
iterations of his book on hisfirst one, that was just kosher
wines, not Israeli wines, kosherwines I wrote a review for the

(01:04:58):
LA Jewish Journal in which I wasa bit critical, I mean, you
know he's a good guy, it's agood book.
But I said, like you know, thepercentage of Israeli wines
isn't as high as it ought to befor the market in a book that's
about global kosher wine and youknow there's many more kosher

(01:05:18):
wines from Israel than wasreflected in the book.
And he said, well, I alreadyhave a book on Israeli wines.
And I said, but you're missingthe point To a kosher consumer.
Right, they want to know aboutkosher wines as a whole and so
it should be better represented.
So that is, just as a quickside note, one of the things

(01:05:41):
that I feel very strongly.
I think a lot of people don'tgrasp about kosher wine.
A lot of Jews don't grasp.
You know we speak of kosherwine in terms of kosherists
because within the trade it's,you know, kosherist supervisors
who are doing it right, who areinvolved in it.

(01:06:02):
Logically, you know it's MakhleAsura.
So we think in terms ofkosherists and it is
conceptually at that, that level, at the technical level, but
really it's not cautious in inthe way that, um, you know uh,
ingredients into uh this or thatprocessed food or kosher.

(01:06:25):
It's not quite the same, right,it's not, it's not manufactured
in quite the same way.
It's much more of a naturalproduct.
You know additives and you knowmake sure the yeast if you're
using commercial yeast.
There's a handful of things,but ultimately it's an
agricultural product.
Really, what kosher?
The difference between kosherwine and stamien, right?

(01:06:46):
General wine, non-kosher wineisn't really Kashrus, it's
really Yiddishkeit, it's Jewishidentity.
What is kosher wine?
It's Jewish wine, right?
Historically, what was thereason for, you know, the Gezer
of Stam Yenom?
It's not Yayin Nassar, that'sdistinct.
Hashem doesn't want us to havewine that's been used for Avodah

(01:07:09):
Zarah.
That's its own isser, it's anisser der eisr.
The reason why stam yenam wine,about which we don't know if it
was used for Nesach, why it'sforbidden, is because chasunists
they don't want the sagesdidn't want Jews in that social
situation with non-Jews.

(01:07:30):
It's about separation, it's usand them.
So kosher wine is really Jewishwine, right, that's the
distinction.
So you know, in terms of therules of, you know the technical
rules of kashers.
You know we live in an age inwhich most Jews aren't Shomer
Shabbos, they're not ShomerMitzvahs in the way that used to

(01:07:54):
be.
Certainly in the biblicalperiod, but certainly in the
Talmudic period, you were eitherJewish, which meant you were of
the community, regardless ofyour exact level of religiosity.
You were Jewish.
There was only one definition.
It was before.
There was the different.
You know reform and centuriesor millennia before all that,

(01:08:17):
millennia plus.
So it was identity Jewish, notJewish.
And to be a Jew who's outsideJewish was a whole different
thing.
So wine was Jewish wine.
So it's different from shchita,it from.

(01:08:39):
You know modern food processing.
So you know, in an era nowwhere many jews can't make, you
can't make jewish wine in ahalachic sense.
Right, they need, they need tohire workers who are shomer
shabbos.
But before, the cautiousindustry had certifications that
you know, for which you rightlyneed to pay, because it's a job
, someone has to do it.
How do you know something waskashar?

(01:09:01):
Because you know Yossala thebutcher.
He lives there, he's part ofthe community.
He's kashar, the meat's kashar,because he's a trustworthy yid.
How do you know you?
You know this wine was kosherBecause he's in the community.
It's Jewish wine, he's makingJewish wine.
So before Kostras became anindustry and again, this is all

(01:09:24):
a proper natural evolution.
It's a progression and it isright and proper.
I know people complain all thetime about it.
It's a job and it's aprogression and it is right and
proper.
I know people complain all thetime about it.
It's a job and it's a difficultjob.
Dealing with Yidden is always adifficult job but ultimately
right.
So kosher wine is really muchmore about the identity of

(01:09:46):
Jewish wine and it's just as atechnical matter.
L'halacha, that means Shabbos,that means you know folks of the
community, and then there's apolitics Haimish versus Liz
versus that, etc.
But so Israel, by rights,should all be Jewish wine.
I mean all the Israeli wine,right, I mean again Palestinian

(01:10:11):
wine, if you're there, whatever.
But commercially it's allJewish wine.
It's not all kosher because ofthe technicalities of you know
what constitutes koshercertification and I understand
many Israelis.
This isn't what they want tohear and it's not their approach

(01:10:32):
.
Conceptually, that's fine, noone has to agree with me.
I'm just saying, historicallythat's what kosher wine is.
So it therefore becomes a bitweird at times when the best
kosher wines are coming fromnon-Jewish wineries.
It's the nature of the marketthat somebody swooped in and

(01:10:55):
convinced them to do Jewish wine.
But you know a ninth generationFrench winemaker who you know
historically, if they had anyinteraction with Jews before the
modern era was not positive,even if, you know, certainly
post, either during the war orpost-war.
Maybe it's very positive butyeah, historically probably

(01:11:18):
wasn't great.
So on the one hand, it's a it'sit's a Kiddush Hashem that now
you can go and get the highestlevels of Koshers from you know
people who wouldn't know, youknow, don't know from Jews
otherwise.
And in many respects that's aKiddush Hashem and it's a
wonderful thing.
You're being Mekadesh,something, you're bringing it

(01:11:39):
into the fold.
On the other hand, it's notJewish wine.
You're creating Jewish wine ina totally non-Jewish environment
and there's a cost right.
There's a greater cost.
Non-jewish environment andthere's a cost right, there's a
greater cost.
So in terms of leadership inthe wine world, so it depends on

(01:12:00):
sort of what you're looking for.
As I say, the most number ofkosher wineries is in Israel,
which I think is appropriate,and so there's a leadership
sense of when Israel isexploring new varieties.
That's, I think, exciting.

(01:12:21):
You know the indigenous varietyNot that all are equally good,
but it's an exciting development.
Certainly, at the wine geeklevel, even non-Jews get very
excited about indigenousvarieties in israel or cyprus or
greece, or because it'sdifferent from cabernet and
merlot, and as much as they loveall wine, when it's different

(01:12:41):
and it's a foreign soundinggrape to them, that's just
exciting.
You know full stop.
Whether it's any good is thenext step, is the next question.
So that's an excitingdevelopment.
Wine geeks who are moreacademic are especially excited
by.
You know some of thearchaeological wine research

(01:13:01):
about.
You know how Vitis Viniferacame onto the scene and you know
it turns out the Levant is alsonot just.
Georgia Depending on one's levelof geekery.
This is brilliant stuff.
There's all that.
There's lots of unbelievabletalent in Israel, but what

(01:13:22):
Israel lacks is, as you knowbetter than I even, I'm sure, is
the traditions, Because outsideof a couple of families before
Bedinat Yisrael, there was nowine in any traditional sense.
It's not like in France, wherethere's nine generations, you

(01:13:44):
know, cultivating the exact samegrape and the exact same plot,
and so they, you know.
It's not like that right.

It's a little different, though.
Wait, I want to correct you.
It's not like there wasn't2,000 years ago.
There were gods all over theplace, you almost can't throw a
stone in the Judean hillswithout hitting a god.

But there haven't been Jews here.

for that there's a big space where we were pulled
out.

So Dulles brought to an end a terrific amount of
the continuity of Jewish life,that's the nature of it.
So that's what I mean bytradition.
Recent tradition, right whereyou've got a grandfather and a
great-grandfather, and what haveyou?

I mean the Herzogs have this living
tradition that's like 12generations and it's amazing.
I mean it's very rare, but theydo.
I mean we've got some familieshere that are, you know, two and
three generations into it inIsrael, but it's not like we've

(01:15:01):
been living on the same landwith the same vines for the last
you know, 900 years.
Yeah, 900 years.

Yeah, now.
Now, all of that said, there'salso.
This is where the sort of the,the stories wine people like to
tell themselves.
There's a disjuncture, right.
The, uh, a lot of the greatwines of the world, um, went
through a terrifically longperiods of mediocrity, um, uh,

(01:15:32):
in some cases unbelievablemediocrity, and even
unbelievable vineyards.
You know Chateau Aubrion, right?
Samuel Pepys mentions it in hisdiary in the 1600s.
So, for sure, that plot ofearth has always been, you know,
special.
But the wines coming from thatplot of earth have not always

(01:15:52):
been special.
But the wines coming from thatplot of earth have not always
been correct.
Because until the modern era inwhich wineries, estate, bottled,
it was negotiations, buyingbarrels and bottling it
themselves, and often they weredoctoring it because it was a
regulation, they did what theywanted.
So in France, famously, there'slots of these you know stories

(01:16:17):
of.
You know fraud and legal andillegal right, because, again,
it was pre-regulation in somerespects, certainly before the
AOCs.
That's why a lot of this stuffcame about was to protect these
things.
So the, also the, the, the, the, the science of wine pre Louis
Pasteur and post Louis Pasteuris, you know, like a Copernican

(01:16:43):
revolution.
And since Pasteur, the, thescience and understanding is
just leaps and bounds.
So in in, in that you can nowthe science and understanding is
just leaps and bounds, so inthat you can now make

(01:17:03):
technically brilliant winevirtually anywhere in the world.
So, yes, it may be a place thatdidn't know viticulture until
you know yesterday, so to speak,in relative terms.
You know Japan, you knowpre-1950s I don't think there
was a lot of wine but you knowthey're exploring and doing
interesting things.
China there's plenty of placesthat don't have any natural long

(01:17:24):
history of wine but can bedoing excellent things.
So does it mean that, therefore, therefore, a wine that you
know in historical terms wascreated yesterday versus the
12th generation, or whatever?
Does it mean that they'requalitatively better, worse?
That's a it's a subjectivejudgment, but in many respects

(01:17:46):
no, it's.
It's the, the person who hasbeen farming the same plot of
land for generations.
They make better wine now thanthey ever made before Because
the kids you know the peopledoing it are educated in
scientific terms.
So Israel has an edge that waywhere, on the one hand, yeah,

(01:18:06):
there's a break in thecontinuity of tradition and so a
lot of indigenous and all thatkind of stuff is gone.
We don't really know whatstyles and whatever, but ancient
wine tended to be, bycontemporary standards, dreck
right Too sweet.
New Res and all the stuff theywould use to doctor it.

(01:18:27):
So different kettle of fish.
I think there's a degree towhich it's an unnecessary story,
but it's a trapping because thewine world, the mainstream wine
world, likes to tell thesemulti-generational stories.
So again, in terms ofleadership.

(01:18:48):
So Israel, I think, is wheresome of the most exciting stuff
is happening.
B'chol, the Herzog family wementioned it a few times.
It's not appreciated by somebecause you know it's commercial
, it's.
You know people are alwayscomplaining about pricing and
whatever.
The Herzog family has done morethan any other commercial

(01:19:11):
enterprise, commercial group, topush the quality of kosher
wines in the right direction.
They're doing it for commercialreasons, right and proper.
Right, but it's hands down.
But for them the industry wouldbe nowhere near as advanced as
it is.
They're not the only ones, butthey're by far the market

(01:19:35):
leaders in this, and so it'sleaps and bounds.
We would be so far removed fromquality wines.
But for them, and even thepeople who, independent of them,
are pioneers the Ernie Weir'sand people who, independent of
them, are pioneers, the ErnieWeirs, people who are really

(01:19:55):
unbelievable dignitaries.
If the wine is excellent butnobody can get it, the impact
will be minimal.
Distribution is an importantpart of all this.
Again, in storied parts ofFrance people don't think of the
commerce side of it.
Why did one region do betterthan another?

(01:20:17):
Because the trade route or thetrain or things that allowed
them to get to market.
So if the greatest product inthe world doesn't have an
audience, for distributionreasons, the actual impact on
the market will be next tonothing.
So that can be a tremendousdrawback reasons the actual
impact on the market will benext to nothing.
That can be a tremendousdrawback.
Right now, in terms of sheerquality, probably the absolute

(01:20:42):
top of the market me personallyI think is Domaine de Monti.
Etienne de Monti and his wines,exceptional, the terroir he's
working with, unbelievable.
The market, you know, thedistribution of the wines is

(01:21:08):
pretty minimal.
The market exposure is prettyminimal.
So the market exposure ispretty minimal.
But there's this terrificimporter in Israel.
They're just kind ofreconfiguring their setup in
America.
Honest Grapes, you've hadNathan on.

Nathan's amazing.

And Nathan, he and his partners.
It was their pet project to getthe thing going.
I think the Monty came to him,but they're the ones who made it
.
They already had a longstandingrelationship with the Monty.
I've had long conversations nowwith the Monty where, you know,
over the years he was approachedabout kosher and his Israeli

(01:21:52):
importer of his non-kosher toldhim don't do it, it'll ruin the
brand.
And 20 years later it's adifferent story and so he's
finally dipped his toes and it'sjust unbelievable quality and
complexity and just amazingwines.
His approach to how he wants,how he insists on doing his

(01:22:13):
kosher, is the right approach.
But it's expensive.
But that's, you know, like, ifyou can't have the mashkiach
exactly when you need them, youknow only accepting only Shabbos
and Yom Kippur, otherwiseyou're not doing it right.
I'm not waiting a week for theguy to show up Like that's not
going to happen.
That's the correct approach.
You pay for that fair price.

(01:22:33):
So there's a whole variety.
So again, if the wines don'tsucceed commercially, the Monty
will stop doing them and theimpact on the market will be
minimal.
So there's success.
There's many ways to chalk itup.

The market controls it, but the talent.

Yeah, we've never had such great talent in the
modern era.
The guys in Israel, across theboard, some amazing stuff Ernie
Weir, jeff Morgan, jonathanHaydu, david Gazzagnato and the
whole Herzog operation,california.
And then what they're doing,menachem Izraelovich in Royal

(01:23:14):
Wines Europe, pierre, you know,I think, still does a couple of
French wines.

He does, he does a bunch actually, he actually
got back into it, bringing winesto Israel during the Shemitah
year.
He made some interesting winesin France and brought them back
to Israel so that they werenon-Shemitah.
Are there any Israeli winesthat really stand out in your

(01:23:41):
mind?

So I find across the board the Reconati wines.
I think I've always likedReconati from Louis Pascoe's
days forward, but I feel likethey get better all the time.
Like Reconati from LouisPascoe's days forward, but I
feel like they get better allthe time.
And they were great to beginwith and they get better all the
time.

By the way, there's a new Odom it's called
Odom Merlot from Reconati.
It's from their Odom vineyardand it's awesome and it's a
Meryard, and it's awesome andit's a Merlot, and it's just an
awesome.

Merlot coming out of Israel.

So I'm just telling you it's an interesting
product.

There's some people who are doing amazing
things.
So Dalton I've always been afan of Dalton, I think they do.
I mean A you know the pioneers.
They helped dramaticallytransform, you know, the region
into tourism and wine.
They're true trailblazers.
As it happens, they've had aterrible war no one has a good

(01:24:45):
war, but they've had a terriblewar.
But they, I think they havesome amazing wines the Asufa
series, which is, you know, theplay thing it's so much fun.

I love it there's some of us in the us I'm
including myself, with somestellar people but there are a
number of people who have likeput themselves in a box that
they almost don't like anythingexcept this specific product.

(01:25:20):
I've tried to keep my mind alittle bit more open and I try
to taste things.
I don't always love some ofthem, but I can see how the
market would react positivelytowards it and how it could be
an entry drug to the wineindustry.

(01:25:43):
Where to expect somebody who'sgoing to pick up a bottle of
Smith-Hodler feed that's 2020 ofSmith-Hotel-A-Fete that's 2020,
and you're selling it atwhatever price and these people
pick it up and they taste it andthey go.
Oh, you know what Wine's notfor me.
I'm going to go back tococktails.

So it goes back to the premiumization, the
categories, price categories.
You know, as Louis Pascoe oncetold me for an article I did, he
said at the end of the day likeyou know, very few people go
into wine to be rich.
That's not why they went intoit.
And he's 100% correct.
And you know, it doesn't meanthat there aren't rich people

(01:26:30):
who get into wine and it doesn'tmean there aren't people who
got rich through wine.
But that's not the norm, right.

It's not the wine that did it, that's right.

So again for Smith or Lafitte or some of
these, these are, in relativeterms, the playthings of the
rich Right.
Bordeaux has always had thisBurgundy.
That's more recent, but itcertainly has it now.
It's important to ensure thatyou have correct or correct is

(01:27:04):
not a strong phrase that youhave adjusted expectations for
human nature.
In theory, it'd be great forevery wine lover to be enamored
with Smith Holofit.
I'm sure Smith Holofit wouldlove it if every wine sold out

(01:27:25):
in seconds, but that's notpractical.
Four gates everything sells outmore or less in an hour, but
there's not much of it.
It's not practical.
Four gates everything sells outmore or less in an hour, but
there's not much of it.

It's not for all days.

Some of the larger wineries, particularly
some of the middling pricepoints, get a bad rap.
Because if you're a Smith orLafitte drinker and that's your
budget, those are the types ofwines you drink.
A Barcon Classic is not goingto rock.
You Make it for you, Right?
It's just not going to work foryou.
That doesn't mean that it's nota good wine.

(01:28:02):
It's not being made for you inthat sense, Right.

Yeah, 100%.

Right, and so there has to be an adjustment to
how people speak about this.
The wine world is co-opted.
The wine literature, shall wesay, the wine buzz, is co-opted
by the people who have the timeand interest, people like me

(01:28:28):
although hopefully I'm a forcefor good to the degree that I
have any impact at all just tiny, tiny, tiny.
But I'm bored, senseless, whenpeople only want to discuss sort
of the super expensive snobappeal things, even though if I

(01:28:49):
have the budget, those are mywines.

But the reality is You're an honest man, you're
an honest man.

It's good but you know, if I'm trying to convince
people to incorporate wine intotheir lives, what kind of a
schmuck would I be if I sayhere's a wine you'll never
afford, you'll never want tohave, but taste it, you'll love
it.
Great, now, everything doesn'ttaste great Like.

(01:29:18):
Why would I do that?
Why would I take away someone'spleasure?
I think it's a silly thing todo.
The trophy wine, the playthingsof the middle class and upper
class, aren't going to rock theworld of the people.
You know, just because it's toodifferent.

(01:29:41):
If you're a fast food burgerkind of guy, you know the very
delicate entrecote steakprobably isn't as satisfying If
you had it.
You know, once a week the verydelicate entrecote steak
probably isn't as satisfying Ifyou had it once a week.
You'll develop a taste for itand suddenly you'll, like
everyone else, go oh, they don'tcook it as well as these guys.

(01:30:01):
But if you're a fast food kindof eater, which just by the
economics a lot of people are,you have to develop a taste for
things that are outside of that.

So thank you.
Thank you for being on TheKosher Terroir and I look
forward to talking to you againvery soon.

Thank, you for having me.
This was my great pleasure andI hope this will be even
remotely satisfying to otherpeople, but I had a great time.

I think it will be.
It's fun.
If you have fun, itcommunicates.
This is Simon Jacob, again yourhost of today's episode of The
Kosher Terroir.
I have a personal request nomatter where you are or where

(01:30:51):
you live, please take a momentto pray for our soldiers' safety
and the safe and rapid returnof our hostages.
Please subscribe via yourpodcast provider to be informed
of our new episodes as they arereleased.
If you're new to The KosherTerroir, please check out our
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