02-24-2010 STAR-K Discusses Purim 2010 - Wine And Shaloch Manos

hello and welcome to our kosher classes monthly teleconference i'm rabbi steve goldberg and this is dr aubam pollak star case president uh as usual we're here in baltimore the star k offices and this is our monthly teleconference the last wednesday of every month today we're going to discuss purim wine on purim or the rest of the year and shalochmanos which is sending gifts on purim from one one person to the other i want to make a change now to our next conference which would be in the last wednesday of the next month would fall out on passover and the second day of passover so being that we can't have a class then we're going to pull it forward uh two weeks to march 17th which the topic then will be all about passover so march 17th wednesday we're going to have a class on the laws of passover but before we get to passover we have to get through purim which is coming up in a couple of days and we asked dr pollock to take out time from his schedule to come and speak to us about purim and wine and what's the word for a person who's an expert in wine connoisseur uh i believe that the word would be an innofiled which means enough referring to wine and file means love of something okay he might be called us that was drunk if he if he's too much if he loves it too much a true enophile believes in moderation okay and uh all right and uh just on that mo on that note we want to i want to make a um a disclaimer that uh the discussion about wine is uh for those who drink responsibly we're not advocating getting drunk or uh such things uh everything as dr pollock said it has to be done in moderation with the proper proper attitude and uh for those young people who are drinking uh that that that's something that their parents need to be aware of and be very careful about i just got an email this morning from the national council of young israel who we have an affiliation with about that very topic about drinking responsibly so everybody is uh hopefully aware of those of those issues so let's start with uh with a uh a question i want to ask you dr pollock is that when uh especially when i was growing up when you had kosher wine it was the sweet uh maybe sticky thick you know passover wine that you had the four nights the four cups and that's what i think a lot of people have in their mind that's what they view as as kosher wine i mean is is that was that true and is it true today actually it is true particularly in this country going back to when jewish immigrants first came late 1800s mid to late 1800s and certainly through the first half of the 1900s there were no wine grapes available on the east coast that were being grown and it was not possible to make wine from anything but table grapes and in new york state upstate new york there were many vineyards growing concord grapes and the kind of wine that you one could possibly make from these grapes technically this is called wine and certainly one can fulfill the obligation from the grape juice that the jewish law it qualifies certainly as wine but the wine that one produced from such grapes is so acidic that it is basically not drinkable in order to overcome this uh they figured out that if you lace the wine with sugar uh it would be somewhat uh drinkable and that's where this kosher sacramento wine uh became the norm and simply because there was uh no other alternatives so they took the new york state grapes is that right and they which wouldn't taste good if you don't add sugar and they add sugar to it well these these grapes would be excellent table grapes for eating oh for eating but not not from walking wine okay so if you're trying to make wine from those you have to add a lot of sugar right and even then uh even adding sugar the result is this sweet syrupy sticky concoction that some people refer to as wine but you have to remember that going back to before the immigrants came to america many of them came from wine growing areas certainly the italian jews the spanish jews the french jews all through western europe where wines were traditionally made the kosher wines were pretty much identical to the non-kosher wines as we find today where kosher wines are being made literally all over the world in all the well-known wine growing regions so now it rivals the uh the non-kosher the quality uh that's difficult to say uh there they're i don't know that a kosher wine without having tasted the non-kosher wines how can we really uh compare them we can't compare them if one's only experiences with kosher wine but certainly we can gather information from people who drink kosher wines who also drink the non-kosher wines kosher wines have won many uh medals and awards uh within their uh range price range and the type of grape varietal that one may make a wine from but generally you don't find the really high-end wines in the kosher market there are some few and far between but there is not that much of a market for them that would lead producers to want to go out and invest in making a very high end kosher wine because the cost would be uh more than the cost of wine even in the non-kosher it's a very interesting thing how a wines are priced uh if you pay a hundred dollar hundred dollars for a bottle of wine that certainly does not mean that wine is twice as good as a bottle costing fifty dollars or four times as good as a wine costing twenty five dollars one can get an excellent wine for twenty five dollars uh that is very drinkable and uh quite satisfying the price of a more expensive wine is generally due to the fact that it is a rare commodity and it becomes a collector's item and people a vineyard that has an excellent wine may only make 100 cases of this wine so because of supply and demand the price goes up or the reputation of the the manufacturer of the wine with kosher wines you really don't have that yet you don't have people collecting and uh and looking out for a specific year or vintage there are there are some people who do uh go out of their way what's the most kosher wines what's the most expensive bottle of wine that you know of kosher wine uh probably in the two to three hundred dollar range so every glass is like forty dollars well uh you're not talking about the average uh wine drinker who's sitting down for a dinner one night and is going to open a 300 bottle of wine unless they're this among the super wealthy generally people who do spend so much for a bottle of wine are going to save it for a special occasion an anniversary especially a wedding perhaps a a particular festive holiday meal that type of thing i see i just want to interrupt a second and um mention that we're here at the starkey offices with uh dr avram pollock my name is rabbi sv goldberg if you'd like to chat with us you have a question about wine or purim in general if you're online with us at dimdhim.com which the password there is kosher you can chat with us on the right side if you are joining us by telephone we'll give you a chance in a couple minutes to uh to be able to uh to ask a question to to us um okay so let's get back to the uh to the the differences a little bit between the kosher and the non-kosher wines what is in a nutshell what what makes a wine uh kosher let me just set up the question a little bit uh i mean grapes are kosher and wine is just grapes and maybe some sugar as we discussed so what's non-kosher about wine okay that's an excellent question particularly if one considers that produce that both fruits and vegetables are typically kosher unless they have grown in the land of israel where there are special agricultural laws which one needs to consider the tithing and etc however we have to keep in mind that wine was not always a popular beverage as it is today it was used uh going back perhaps thousands of years wine was certainly known but it was used mostly for sacramental purposes and very often these uh religious rights contained pagan practices and as a result the rabbis at that time decreed that only wine actually prepared by individuals observant can produce the wine so uh and since this was considered such an important um restriction in the kosher dietary laws it even came that the mere touching of a individual who is not observant can render that wine undrinkable by a per individual who is observing now that certainly does not mean to say that a large wine manufacturer today has any intention of using that wine for sacramental for any religious purposes he's simply making a beverage and he's interested in selling his product the best product he possibly can make to the customers however we still are bound by that restriction so what happens today is that when one wants to make a kosher wine they will generally go to a uh if it's in france they'll go to a well-known chateau or one that is not so well known chateau was saying she's my french uh he's my friend wine manufacturer sometimes they have their own vineyard and they will have is that the name of a particular place or no no chateau is a general a generic term for a uh winery and they will contract the person who wants to sell kosher wine or manufacture kosher wine will contract with them generally they stipulate that the wine has to be made from the identical grapes and uh the identical quality the same way as the nun kosher the way they know what the difference will be is that at the time when the grapes are pressed and or crushed at the early stages of making the wine there are super manic supervisors themselves that are there and they are the ones that start the pumps of start the crushers and anything that requires movement of the wine from one vessel to another is actually done by the person personally observant at subsequent stage if they pasteurize the wine that he heat it to a certain degree it no longer will have that restriction that becomes undrinkable if uh touched or somehow moved by a person who is not observant so that's the wine exactly cooked one word bushel the animal translation means cooked and it now can be served by non-jewish waiters or anybody or for that particular for that matter and even a jewish person who is not personally observant uh can now handle that wine pour the wine for you and uh it is perfectly acceptable right that's all m-e-v-u-s-h-a-a-a-a-l-a-l that's usually the word you'll see on the uh on the bible so this group or team of rabbis goes to this chateau okay how many are you talking about uh depending on the uh how they make money uh actually another one be a team of eight players depending on how complicated it is how a larger production it is how many different activities in the making of the wine need to be performed now even after the wine is going after the wine is crushed and the it's in a tank fermenting uh very often they will take samples from this wine or they will uh take wine from the bottom of a large tank and pump it to the top and this uh does make for a better quality uh wine this will have to be done by that same individual or an observant person uh it's most of the better wines i would say most but certainly not all are actually non-devotional and it is for that reason why restaurants and caterers um find it difficult to be able to use those type of wines and most of them the better non-virtual wines are used by individuals for their own enjoyment i want to tell you one interesting story which was told to be told to me by a uh well-known winemaker he's actually a personal friend of mine and he was making wine in some french chateau and they then submitted the wine that was mavushal they went through this pasteurization and it was submitted at a local wine fair in france in the bordeaux area and it was very interesting because the kosher wine which was identical in every respect to the non-kosher actually at that fear won a gold medal while the one non-koch wine submitted by the chateau itself won a silver medal so go know even though most people uh are of the opinion that the the bushel process somewhat does make the wine it deteriorates the quality uh of the wine maybe with the holiness of the wine that convinced the judges well blind test it might be blind certainly uh neutrality well uh you might say that but i think that the it's not a science and tasting wine and the kinds of scores that a wine get can certainly vary a great deal from one expert may rate a wine very high and another expert may say the identical wine poured from the same bottle is awful right it could also be that there were differences a little bit in the grapes and where they made it and even though it was oh well it kind of grapes supposedly came from the same vineyard harvested on the same day soil conditions were identical the moisture the the season that it grew in everything identical the same type of tanks the winemaker is generally from the chateau it's they are the people who control and they determine when uh fermentation should stop uh well all the uh important everything details are identical but just uh i guess one can conclude from this that sometimes uh the judges who award make awards four wines are somewhat fickle and uh it's but that's to be expected it's like anything else right it's not uh something done in the chemistry yes it's not an exact science jeff should we can we give a chance to anybody who's joining us by phone if they want to ask a question if you have a question you can immune yourself and ask uh if you have any comments and you're with us by uh by the dim dim please feel free to chat and we'll be happy to uh to respond okay so i mean that's uh what else is there interesting about about the wines uh um as you may have been able to tell i don't drink uh much wine even on friday night on uh at the kiddush i'm i'm a grape juice man okay so um you know i i but i do i mean i recognize that there is you see in the torah that many things are compared to wine and and and even the words of the are compared to a good wine so there is i recognize that i'm a little bit you know maybe i should learn to appreciate it a little more uh and i think that's the key word you need to learn to appreciate somebody who has never who's always had grape juice friday night or the four cups on passover and drinks their first glass of a dry red wine uh is not going to appreciate it right away are there just so many nuances and uh various things that one can enjoy and appreciate the aroma of the wine the fr uh it's people have a great deal of fun uh comparing the wine to uh tastes that they've experienced and that's why you'll find these descriptions uh it has an earthly uh an earth type of taste tobacco uh the various spicy taste and so on um i once tasted a wine uh the winemaker had actually sent me a bottle and i was having a little fun with him and he said what do i think and i said well i detect some notes of pickle juice and he was highly offended okay so so getting back to the the point you made about the grape juice so the difference between um making tell me if i'm correct the difference in making grape juice and wine is that by the grape juice they just basically crush the grapes and maybe they filter it and then they they bottle it right away they don't let it sit and ferment to become wine is that is that right that's correct uh the fermented wine is fermented grape juice and basically the chemistry is as follows there are there are sugars in the grape juice and grapes naturally have certain yeasts growing on them uh but it's just uh the old-time wines that were made relied on the natural yeasts and therefore every batch of wine literally uh had was unique in many ways today they try to control it and they actually will add yeasts but how do they know that the yeast that's natural doesn't because they add so much more that the preponderance is what they're going to be adding the yeasts in with and this is what's called an aerobic process it requires oxygen will ferment that um sugar present in the grape juice into alcohol it's a simple chemical reaction and requires the enzymes produced by the yeast for this to happen once the wine is made and you have a certain you reach a certain level of alcohol it becomes self-inhibitory which means that the yeast no longer can do that because once the alcohol content then this will depend on the strain of yeast the kind of various other factors but typically anywhere between 12 to maybe 15 16 it the yeasts will no longer be able to produce any more alcohol even if there is sugar uh a port wine which has a higher alcoholic content is one where they actually add alcohol to the wine to boost the uh strength of or the the alcohol content of the wine so you're saying naturally you can only get to about fifteen percent uh yeah so so if you have let's say a four percent low a low alcohol wine so are they stopping they're stopping the process early normally the way they would do that is uh stop the fermentation and they can do that by controlling the temperature refrigerating it or add various things to it which will stop the fermentation and generally uh if the wine if there's residual sugar left that's going to give you uh make sure that the grape juice or the wine of this four percent wine is going to be much sweeter than and when we talk about dry we're talking about very literal residual sugar left over but many of the table wines actually are sweet where there is a great deal of residual sugar left over so dark wines and uh so the lower alcohol wines would tend to be sweeter than the than the higher alcohol generally it depends again what the content the sugar content uh when you're starting off any wine maker before they even start the crushing process they go out to the field every morning and uh they try to pick the grapes uh at the peak ripeness and so on meaning when there is the most sugar and they have a little um refractometer where they crush the they'll pick a grape off the vine uh put it into this refractometer and they can act very accurately measure the sugar content of the grapes so that will give them a higher alcohol uh generally the fermentation to proceed uh eat more easily one other interesting thing about wine making is that once the alcohol is formed if bacteria should happen to get into the wine then they will they can convert the alcohol that has been produced by the yeast uh into vinegar and when wine goes bad it turns vinegar now i i think i've made a mistake before i said that the original process of making wine requires oxygen just the opposite it's an anaerobic process which is in the uh wax oxygen the airtight yes okay yes uh no no oxygen present the conversion of the alcohol to vinegar that will require uh oxygen and that's why when you open a barrel of wine it can go back very easily or you open the bottle of wine and let it sit around it can very easily uh turn vinegary or just uh deteriorate quite fast i wanted to point out that moshe heinemann our rabbinic administrator he says that the four percent wines can be used on pets overnight at the seder and that's considered to be wine less than that if you had a wine that had i don't even know if they sell it but let's say you had a wine with two percent that would be considered grape juice which you could also use but it doesn't fulfill that extra additional requirement for wine on the sale tonight so i actually use four percent on the saturday night because i don't want i i don't i want to be awake and i don't want to get drunk okay and now what many people will also do is dilute their wine not only can you dilute it with water to up to a certain extent you have to know if there's any some of the cheaper wines that are sold and the traditional wines already are diluted with water and one would need to know to what extent it's been diluted to know if you can add any more water to it but certainly the wines which are one hundred percent grape juice uh one can dilute those to a certain extent and uh dilute any wine with grape juice or with water and uh that cuts down the uh alcoholic content as well of course it's not the same wine right well if you're uh if you're a uh what was the word you used a uh in your eat you know five you know file you're probably not going to be diluting your wine with grape juice uh that's true but don't uh just remember that on passover uh when we've been drinking wines you're drinking four cups and uh you're trying to stay alert uh generally wine is when you're drinking it for pleasure it's enjoyed with food and the four cups of wine the two are as we know the first two cups are um before the meal and uh one can certainly drink more wine during the meal and but that does not count as the four cup to fulfill the requirement of four cups and the last two cups are after the meal and by that time even a true wine lover uh doesn't really uh drink wine for the pleasure he's not doing it to fulfill the mitzvah requirements the uh of drinking four wines now we should point out that it's not only a wine uh you know if the bible says wine that needs to be kosher but there are other drinks as well that are wine based that also need uh to be special kosher like some brandies right well particularly cognac which is made from wine it's basically a distilled wine a particular type of grape which is grown only in that region in france in the cognac region you cannot use that name for grapes even if it's the same variety of grapes you cannot use that in any other area but many brandies are wine based as well and uh they could only be kosher if you start off with a kosher wine right we also have we're talking about kosher we have the issue of the uh shimita the sabbatical year that we are still seeing wines with the statement that they are harvested from grapes uh that were grown in israel during the sabbatical year and that's a whole another uh story a whole another schmooze another discussion of how to deal with those but one should be aware that if it says on it that it has kedusha's chavis the sanctity of the the year of of the of the sabbatical year that one has to know how to uh how to properly drink that and to deal with it we get we get a lot of questions about those that's correct and i believe the last uh two schmitta cycles were 2001 and 2008 and there were still wines available from those vintage years and those were shmita years rick is saying that carmel makes a brandy called 777 yes which is made from grapes i see you're familiar with that yes yes yes i think you're gonna have a hard time finding something that dr pollock is not uh has not heard of what's the 777 stand for what is that just just a uh i'm not sure but i'm sure there was some significance to it okay and uh the question here is is willem william grant's scotch blended i guess that's a wis blended yeah is that kosher william grantis okay i'm not familiar with that particular uh brand name but uh let me just say very quickly something in general about uh scotch whiskies or for that matter any other whiskey if it has wine added to it uh rabbi moshe feinstein who was considered the most authoritative jewish expert in jewish law has a ruling on this topic and he basically states that even if wine had been added to whiskey but if it was in small amounts less than 1 6 it still is technically permitted now this um today we have many of this particularly the single malt scotches where they proudly display on the uh bottle and on their advertising that they're aged in sherry casks and so on and uh so technically according to this same ruling of rabbi feinstein uh these single malt scotches would be uh permitted however it has come commonly accepted this is the starkey policy what the whiskies that we allow our caterer is if they advertise the fact that they use a sherry cask we say that they are very uh this is provides character to this particular single malt scotch and therefore it's something which is added for the taste uh in a sense the sherry and we don't allow the caterers to serve that single malt scotch and but there are many many excellent single malt scotches which don't mention the fact that they're ancient sherry casks some of them specifically say on the oak casks or only casks used from bourbon uh whiskey that's another type of whiskey made from mostly corn and those would not be a problem and i believe it is the starkey policy to recommend such single malt scotches even without any kosher certification okay we do have the liquor list online at dash k.o.r.g you click on kosher consumer and then latest lists and you can see all the different uh liquors and occurs that we that are acceptable according to the star k opinion i know that's a very popular uh list that people people take uh take off our site uh here's a question you have time for a question yes okay um for pesach how much can one dilute the cup of wine okay so we touched on that before um well if you're diluting it with grape juice and you still wanted to be considered right wine so you could dilute it down to the four percent so if you had an eight percent alcoholic wine and you added half grape juice it would be now four percent and still be considered okay one technically uh what you're saying oh it's actually diluted with water diluted with water i believe it is still cold wine uh even if you dilute it up to uh six times with with water i believe that that's the technical um limit but it still has to taste but it would have to taste like wine that could look like wine and uh if one wants to also have this added uh aspect which is that it has an alcoholic content of four percent uh and that's to symbolize the heiress component of the wine we drink it to say the jairus means freedom and because we were freed from from as slaves from egypt that is the symbolism behind the four cups of wine so people want to drink real wine but certainly if somebody is ill a child or for whatever reason uh drinking water alcohol is going to put them to sleep but to say they're they can drink grape juice and drink full grapes or you can drink wine which is diluted i believe up to six times with water it's three percent cow wine kosher for the fucosas so there's a wine that has only three percent alcohol can you use it for the four cups on uh on passover well based on what we're saying yes you can use it but it doesn't have that yeah and it could be and it could be you know this four percent alcohol is not a magical number it's not carved in stone and uh it could uh that may be rabbi heinemann then certainly the policy of the star k that is the number but it's possible that other halachic authorities have ruled that even a three percent would technically qualify as an alcoholic beverage and to satisfy that component but we certainly follow our rabbinic administrator and therefore we tell people the four percent limit i i thought that that four percent was also the uh legal uh bottom where you could call something wine so i'm interested to hear that there is a three percent wine is that is it really cold what maybe it's called like a wine cooler or something i think it may have a different name so if if uh we have here someone uh title bound he's saying there's a three he says it's called kedam cow but i'd be curious whether or not it's called a wine or it's just a wine cooler it could be that the uh certificate certifying authorities at of kedem wine right uh doof and it would probably say on the bottom right if it's acceptable for four cut for the four cups but uh i'm not familiar with that he said someone else says it's 3.5 okay so we're getting there maybe it's really maybe really is a a wine okay is there anything else that we didn't really get a chance to talk too much about uh about the mishloch manos issue i guess we tried to bite off more than we could chew excuse the pun uh but uh but that's coming up on on on paste on purim on sunday and people do also give wine it is a relevant topic because people give wine many times as a uh one of the two food items that they give to their friends one many times it's it's it's a bottle of wine of course if you're going to give dr then you want to make sure that you you call me before to make sure whether or not it's something that he would approve or appreciate i certainly think that the whole concept of mislovemanos is to gladden the hearts of the recipients and therefore one should tailor their manas to who it is if you're giving something to children you know certainly one should give them uh what they consider a treat you know uh if one gives an adult you know a couple of jelly beans uh or uh a bag of potato chips i don't know that that's necessarily in the spirit of uh real chocolates uh so certainly between one uh it means somebody who appreciates wine uh don't give it to children don't give it to somebody who doesn't appreciate it or if they do really like wine you might want to find out uh something about their preferences most people uh even if they don't really like wine will find a white wine very uh acceptable and it's something that uh good white wine can almost all people uh enjoy and that's simply because it's not as dry uh doesn't have this why is tannins why is white wine not as dry as the as as typically because of the way that white wine uh not necessarily no there are many many uh totally dry white wines as well but uh one of the big differences between a white wine uh is is the way they control the fermentation the amount of tannins tannins are when you have a a red wine which makes your mouth pucker and you feel it that's usually due to the tannins uh certainly the amount of acid in the wine and the amount of tannins this is what all combine in varying different subtle ways to give the individual quality to a particular wine i just want to ask we do have some we do have star k wines this is not an advertisement but just to let everybody know there are star k wines you're familiar with those brands we have some wines that are available with the star case certification uh some of these wines are under the mayor halpern uh name and there's about seven or eight different wines i believe they have a champagne as well uh do they have to uh get your taste approval before they get the star cake no they have to be kosher have to be kosher okay and uh so we take care of that but we know we we don't uh look into the taste as we don't with any of our food products i'm just kidding you are you now permitted well here one second here's the question is there a mitzvah to drink wine by the skin is there a a uh a requirement to drink wine on purim day at the meal yesterday question for mutants and uh later today obviously a question the sizes of jewish law discuss and uh it does say the famous uh talmud saying that a person should drink to this state of intoxication where he no longer is aware of the difference between blessed be mordecai and curse be uh haman what does that mean there's certainly uh i don't believe that any halachic authority is recommending that people get drunk uh that's certainly not in the spirit of purim or and certainly uh in recent years there have been so many tragic incidents uh particularly among our youth where people have gotten drunk on purim and uh perhaps then when it drove a car and uh just terrible terrible tragedies uh it's becoming more and more popular in the yeshivas today where they uh just banning the drinking of wine i have a grandson who's in yeshiva in boston and uh i was just speaking to him the other night and he told me that uh you know they were boys were told absolutely no alcohol is going to be permitted and uh certainly commend the yeshivas for taking this but getting back to the question of what degree one needs to drink uh i think that one should consult their own rabbi because there are so many different ways that this question can be answered one can drink wine and perhaps it will make them a little drowsy and then they take a nap i believe most posts can certainly uh feel that this is more in the spirit of um uh fulfilling that obligation right certainly there's really no obligation to but remember wine is typically the type of drink and throughout the our literature our literature our gothic literature it's even a pussup that wine gladdens the heart of man and the real reason for drinking wine is this is what gives us that simcha which we are we are required to have on the day of purim okay on that note dr pogba i think we will call it the end of this program i want to thank everyone for joining us here at kosherclasses.org and as a reminder the next session will not be on the last wednesday of the of the month as it usually is because that falls out on passover but it will be march 17th uh about two weeks before passover on wednesday at noon and we'll discuss passover issues and give you a chance to ask your questions over here directly to prepare for for passover these sessions are recorded and they are available at kosherclasses.org.org under podcast so you can see uh this this this show in a couple days and the previous uh zev is laughing because it all depends on when he is able to get around to putting it up but it usually is within a couple days and then uh the last show is up there in the previous ones uh if you have any questions during the the uh during the year you can call us at 410-484-4110 again i want to thank everyone for joining us and have a very very happy porn thank you take care goldberg thank you dr pablo for coming have a good day