2003-04-11 Gan Eden kosher wines
 |
 California Wine
Country Sebastopol
|
|
| . Kosher winemaker smashes grapes—and stereotypes San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, March 11, 2003 |
|
2003-04-11 Gan Eden kosher wines |
|||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
By Donald H. Harrison Kosher winemaker Craig Winchell is all about breaking down stereotypes. Meet his Chinese-American wife Jenny, and him, in his baseball cap, and the description "Orthodox Jews" might not leap to your mind. But that's what Jenny and Craig are. When Jenny decided to convert to Judaism, Craig decided to study with her. Raised in a liberal Jewish tradition and with one cousin a Reform rabbi, he became baal t'shuva. Winchell prefers the phrase "convert" to the more current "Jew-by-choice" to describe his wife because, he asserts, people become Jews not by choice but by compulsion. In essence, he says, it was his wife¹s destiny to become Jewish. Prior to adopting the Orthodox life style, Winchell worked at two nonkosher wineries. His decision to start the Gan Eden Winery nearly 20 years ago was prompted by his realization that at no other winery could he refrain from working on Shabbat and on the Jewish holidays. Ever since, Winchell has been engaged in breaking down another stereotype: that kosher wines can't be as good — or better— than nonkosher wines. He has scores of gold, silver and bronze medals to prove that winetasters across the country agree with him. If a wine is to be kosher, no nonkosher materials, such as certain gelatins, may be used during its production. There are two methods by which kosher wines may be produced. To guard against any laws of kashrut being unintentionally breached, the first method requires a strict chain of custody over the wine. All steps, from the crushing of the grapes through the pouring of the wine from the bottle, are required to be performed by Orthodox Jews. The second method departs from the previous at a point just before bottling. The wine undergoes pasteurization by being brought to a flash boil, and then is cooled down again. The Hebrew word mevushal, meaning "cooked," is used to identify this process and can be found on the labels of most kosher wines. Once a wine becomes mevushal, it is deemed protected from possible nonkosher incursions and thus may be poured from the bottle by any server, not just by observant Jews. For pragmatic reasons, most kosher restaurants prefer to purchase mevushal wines. However, among wine connoiseurs, there is a debate about the effect that the flash-boiling process has on the taste of the wine. Gan Eden Winery produces kosher wines that are mevushal, as well as those that must be supervised right to the point they are poured from the bottle into the glass. After purchasing grapes from outside vineyards, Winchell does "everything" in the process completely by himself in order to maintain the chain of custody required by the laws of kashrut. "I do all the maintenance on the equipment and put all the equipment together in such a way that it will work," Winchell explained. "I put all the hoses together, put the pumps where they are supposed to be. Then I dump the grapes into the hopper, then press the grapes if I am making white wine, or if I am making a red wine, I do the pump-overs, and any additives and acid adjustments." With an oenology degree from UC Davis, Winchell became well aware early in his career that California grapes, while almost always ripening properly, "tend to be acid-deficient." He personally adds acidic agents to the wine, as well as additives for a variety of other purposes. "It's not unusual for me to crack 15-20 eggs to make egg-white additions to red wines to smoothe the wine out and remove the tannin," he said. Other additives he uses in wine production are a "purified clay that removes positively-charged proteins that could cause a haze" and sulfur dioxide, "which inhibits various microbial spoilage organisms and stabilizes color and flavor." Winchell sometimes labors 20 hours a day performing such other tasks as "putting the wine in the barrels, topping the barrels, taking it out of barrels, filtering, doing other chemical adjustments and generally making the wine ready for bottling." Next, he is the only one to handle the bottling equipment, although non-Jewish helpers are permitted to put the bottles onto the line and, after they are filled and corked, to take them off again. A mashgiach from the Orthodox Union supervises the bottling process to make certain the chain of custody is not broken. "We can do 750-1,000 cases (12 bottles per case) per day," Winchell said. "Typically, you will bottle one variety for several days," then move on to another variety. Because most Gan Eden wines are produced without the boiling process, fellow winemakers consider them to be no different than nonkosher wines. "Assuming all is correct," says Winchell, "there is no reason to make a kosher wine differently than a nonkosher wine." Asked if his mevushal wines taste different than those that are not boiled, Winchell responded: "I design wines specifically for mevushal. One can preserve the quality, but in my opinion one cannot preserve the sensory qualities." Boiling is "going to change the nature of the wine. A case in point, my Cuvée Les Tois Canards is a blend of wines. Before I processed it, the dominant taste was Zinfandel. After I processed it, the main flavor component was Grenache, which was only 30 percent. The quality of the wine didn't deteriorate, but the sensory qualities changed." Singlehandedly producing some 40,000 cases of kosher wines per year seems an enormous task. Why not hire some fellow observant Jews? "In 1990, I hired someone, but he was very unhappy," Winchell replied. "He didn¹t have a Jewish life. He wanted to meet a girl, and there was no observant community here. He never would have considered someone who wasn¹t observant to wed, so it was too much for him, and he left. I knew I wouldn¹t be able to find any permanent or semipermanent employees who would want to live in this area." To give an idea of how isolated Sonoma County is from Jewish life, it "just got its first Chabad rabbi, and Chabad rabbis are ubiquitous!" Winchell said. "That is the only other observant family in the county, and he is a 20-minute drive away." Although he sends his children to learn with the Chabad rabbi, Winchell said he is not Chasidic. "We subscribe to right-wing Judaism— the kind you'd find in Lakewood (N.J.) or Skokie (Ill.)." Gan Eden's biggest season is Passover, when Jews traditionally will drink at least four cups of wine during their seders. What kind of wine will Winchell choose for his own Passover seder this year? He replied that he considers the wine choices for a seder to be different than those for a Shabbat dinner. "During Shabbos, we have one wine for everyone, and because the kids like sweet wines, I'll serve either my black muscat or the Gewurztraminer," he said. During the seder, he said, it's not uncommon to serve different wines to different participants. For the first two glasses he plans to enjoy his reserve Cabernet, then switch to sweeter wines for the end of the meal. Currently, his winery has eight wines on the market, a 2000 Cabernet, a 2000 Chardonnay, a 2000 Syrah, a 1997 Limited Reserve Cabernet, a 1996 Cuvée Les Trois Canards, a 1997 Black Muscat and a 2000 Gewurztraminer. He calls an eighth, nonvintage mevushal wine a "Cuvée C'est Bouilli," which means in French, "It's boiled!" |
