A Hedonist in the Cellar (17 page)

My first buzz was strictly kosher, courtesy of a bottle of Manischewitz Concord grape wine, filched from my neighbor Danny Besser’s parents in Chappaqua, New York. It struck me as a wonderful beverage at the time. I fell into a pond but otherwise emerged from the experience unscathed—even exhilarated. Since then I’ve sampled a few more bottles at seders, and it’s one of those guilty pleasures, like Big Macs, that shouldn’t necessarily arouse our grown-up derision. But as a wine drinker I’ve moved on, and so has kosher wine.

Wine has played an important role in Jewish ritual and was produced for thousands of years in Palestine until the Muslim conquest of
A
.
D
. 636. “Wine was the constant thread through Jewish festivals,” according to
The Oxford Companion to Wine
, “since it is sipped as the Sabbath starts (kiddush) and again when it ends (habdalah) with the blessing ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.’”

Of course, other religions used wine in their rituals, so the Jews distinguished theirs by developing the tradition of kosher wine, whereby only observant Orthodox Jews were allowed to be involved in the production and bottling. The hot wrench that got thrown into the winemaking machinery was the
insistence of some rabbinical authorities that kosher wine be boiled, so that heathens wouldn’t recognize it as wine and use it in their own rituals. This boiled, mevushal wine, which has lost most of its winelike qualities and all the nuances we talk about when we talk about wine, has for centuries succeeded in scaring off serious wine drinkers.

The kosher wines that are of interest to readers of this column, whether Jewish or gentile, are those that, one way or another, circumvent the mevushal process. (Nonmevushal wines meet strict kosher guidelines, I’m told, provided they’re not opened or handled by a nonkosher waiter or sommelier.) The best advice I can give you is to look at the label, and if the wine is mevushal, pass it over. Walk on by. Or, better yet, run.

For Passover and other occasions, there are dozens of serious kosher wines to consider, including wines made under Orthodox supervision at estates like Bordeaux’s Léoville-Poyferré and those made at kosher properties in Israel and California.

Yarden, in the Golan Heights, Israel’s coolest growing region (we will pass over disputes about sovereignty here), is producing uncooked kosher wines to tempt the heathen palate. Golan is an agricultural paradise, a beautiful and haunted landscape. Site preparation for Yarden’s El Rom vineyard in the so-called Valley of Tears—the scene of a massive armored battle in the Yom Kippur War—required the removal of the hulks of 250 Syrian tanks.

Since 1992, Yarden wines have been made by California-born Victor Schoenfeld, a cheerful, nebbishy University of
California at Davis graduate who apprenticed at Mondavi and Chateau St. Jean, and whose wife is a major in the Israeli army. Schoenfeld has been fashioning serious ageworthy kosher Cabernet Sauvignons for the past decade (and has recently taken on Sonoma’s Zelma Long as a consultant). At a recent vertical tasting at New York’s Union Pacific restaurant, the 1985 was still showing well, and several of the later vintages were outstanding. I can’t necessarily recommend the Chardonnay, however—tasting the 2000 vintage, I kept checking my tongue for oak splinters. But Yarden makes a very good Blanc de Blancs, a promising Pinot Noir, and an excellent dessert wine—all of them extremely well priced.

Dalton, based in the Galilee region, makes a beautifully balanced Chardonnay, though I find its reds sweet and cloying. A very promising new source of premium kosher wines in Israel is Recanati, in the Hefer Valley. Cofounded by an Israeli of Italian heritage, the winery is named after the owner’s ancestral village. At about twenty dollars, Recanati’s 2003 reserve Cab is a steal.

Some of Bordeaux’s finest wines are available in limited-quantity kosher versions, thanks in part to the influence of the Rothschild family. Probably the best value for the Passover table is the kosher version of Mouton Cadet from the Baron Philippe de Rothschild group; this premium wine is one of the most widely distributed in the world. The 2000 vintage has produced a wine of real distinction and character.

In America, the finest kosher wines of which I’m aware are being produced under the Baron Herzog label. Herzog has adopted a technique of flash-pasteurizing the juice at
165 degrees; this process seems to have very little, if any, deleterious effect on the finished wine and qualifies the wine to bear the mevushal label. The Special Reserve Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley is usually outstanding, and the reds are well made and well priced. Herzog is owned by the Royal Wine Corporation, which also imports a wide range of kosher wines of wildly diverse quality. Some of them will appeal to oenophiles regardless of their heritage; others will undoubtedly please those who look back fondly on the grape syrup of seders past.

The quaint, red-roofed town of Wettolsheim, in Alsace, rolls up its sidewalks at dark. One wonders what a sleepless inhabitant might think, looking out his window at three a.m., to see a light in the vineyards—his neighbor François Buecher moving between the rows of vines with a spray gun. And what would the neighbors think if they saw him burying a cow horn packed with manure in the vineyard? By now, one imagines, Wettolsheimers must be used to the eccentric habits of Buecher, who practices a radical form of organic viticulture known as
biodynamique.

Barmès Buecher is one of dozens of domaines in France that are growing grapes in accordance with the principles of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher and polymath, and the founder of the anthroposophical movement. Biodynamic agricultural theory views the farm as a self-sustaining entity within the surrounding ecosystem. A vineyard’s ecological balance is determined by the vitality of the soil and the diversity of the organisms living in it, and is subject to the influence of the moon and stars. It’s easy to make the theory and some of its practices sound ludicrous, which may explain why many practitioners are reluctant to talk about it. But over the past decade, I’ve noticed that some of the greatest estates in
France have gone biodynamic. In Burgundy, Domaine Leroy, Domaine Leflaive, and Comtes Lafon—names on anyone’s top-ten list—are biodynamic. It makes sense that Burgundy is leading the way in this holistic agricultural approach; in the ′60s and ′70s many of the great vineyards of the region were bombarded with chemicals in a misdirected attempt to increase production. In Alsace, Zind-Humbrecht, Ostertag, Marcel Deiss, Marc Kreydenweiss, and more than a dozen other estates follow the system. In the Loire, devotees include Domaine Huet of Vouvray and Nicolas Joly of Savennières; and in the Rhône, Chapoutier has racked up dozens of 90-point ratings since it went biodynamic.

Long a force in New Zealand and Australia, biodynamic practice is just beginning to exert an influence in California, as many growers seek ways to lessen their dependence on agrochemicals and sustain the fecundity of their soil. While many vineyards follow the Food and Drug Administration guidelines for organic farming, some California winegrowers are turning to the more rigorous ideas of Steiner’s. “Organics is about nonuse of chemicals, while biodynamics is about restoring the soil and putting nutrition back in,” says Rob Sinskey, of Robert Sinskey Vineyards, who has adopted biodynamic practices at his Napa vineyards. The Sinskey operation, the Benziger Family Winery in Sonoma, and Frey Vineyards in Mendocino are among a handful of California winemaking estates certified by the Demeter Association, the international body in charge of Steiner’s legacy.

The basic principles of biodynamics are as commonsensical as some of its practices are arcane. Advocates argue that long-term
use of agrochemicals destroys the microbial and insect life of the soil. When I visited Buecher, he showed me the abundance of earthworms and beetles in his own vineyards, then moved to a neighbor’s heavily sprayed plot, where we were unable to find a single living thing. It’s the life that we can’t see—microorganisms—that is the most important living component of the soil. Proponents like Buecher plausibly claim that biodynamic practices result in better wines that transmit the unique characteristics of the soil and site. “Soil microorganisms bond a plant to the soil,” explains Mike Benziger, who started to make the switch to biodynamic farming five years ago and was recently certified. “Microorganisms are the chefs that take a combination of organic and mineral elements in your soil and offer them to the plant in a form it can absorb.” Fertilizers short-circuit this process—making the vines act like lockjawed diners at a three-star restaurant, attached to IV drips.

In place of chemicals, biodynamics relies heavily on composting and holistic teas made from nettles and horsetail. Advocates say that building soil and vine health can eliminate the need for insecticides. “We had a Chardonnay vineyard that was problematic,” says Rob Sinskey. “We had phylloxera, and we wanted to know why it was spreading so fast. We observed that the soil was dead; there were no earthworms. We started reading up on Steiner, going to Europe.” Following biodynamic viticulture slowed the spread of phylloxera, according to Sinskey, and vastly improved grape quality, to the point where the troubled vines now produce his best Chardonnay.

Vine-munching insects are trapped on sticky paper and cremated, their ashes mixed in a solution that is sprayed in a vineyard to repel their fellows. Another preparation sometimes used, horn silica, a.k.a. quartz, is sprayed on vines between three a.m. and eight a.m. at the equinox. Steiner’s emphasis on lunar and cosmic rhythms can sound flaky to nonbelievers, but Benziger makes an intuitive case: “The moon moves the oceans, and plants are ninety-eight percent water.” Sinskey says that “Steiner refers to the silica spraying as focusing life forces. I see it as refracting light. I don’t know how it works. Using silica spray, we’ve seen sugars leap within twenty-four hours.”

Perhaps the most arcane practice of biodynamic viticulture involves the aforementioned burying of manure in cow horns—which Steiner believed are infused with the life force— during the fall equinox. They are dug up in the spring and mixed into a homeopathic spray. Personally, I’d rather drink a wine nurtured with cow horn and nettles than one raised on phosphates and insecticides. The theory, if correct, suggests that biodynamic wines should taste better, and more site specific, in the long run, in addition to being safer, a conclusion that seems to be borne out by the recent wines of growers like Leroy, Leflaive, Zind-Humbrecht, and Chapoutier. But not all biodynamic wines are excellent: Nicolas Joly, of Coulée de Serrant, seems indifferent to the winemaking, as opposed to the winegrowing, process; his recent wines have often been oxidized and downright weird.

Master of Wine Jancis Robinsion, who recently compared the biodynamic and conventional cuvées of Leflaive’s wines,
says, “I do think that successful biodynamically grown wines do taste different—wilder, more intense, and dangerous— hunting dogs rather than lapdogs, if you like.”

“I’m doing it because I think it produces great wines,” says Benziger, whose Sonoma Mountain estate wines are well worth seeking out. “I don’t want people to buy it because it’s biodynamic. I’m also hoping this property will be taken over by my kids, and I want to be able to hand them over a piece of property that’s increasing in health, not dying.”

Not too long ago, in a faraway place now best known as Middle Earth, a wine was born. New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc appeared suddenly, as if it had sprung fully formed from Zeus’s head, and in the past decade it has taken its place alongside Barossa Shiraz and Napa Cabernet as a kind of instant classic. It was as though the Kiwis figured out how to bottle Kiri Te Kanawa’s voice. From this distance it appears that those few of her compatriots who weren’t employed as extras on
Lord of the Rings
were busy planting vines. That was Act One. Act Two is still getting under way.

For those of you who missed Act One, here is a précis: in 1985 David Hohnen, owner of Cape Mentelle Vineyards in the Margaret River region of Western Australia, flew to New Zealand, convinced that the cool climate of the South Island could produce great Sauvignon Blanc. In fact, Montana, a big company based on the North Island, had already ventured south to plant Sauvignon in Marlborough in ′76, and its early bottlings were promising. Hohnen met winemaker Kevin Judd, hired him on the spot, and bought land in the Marlborough district, on the northeast corner of the island. Within a year the first vintage of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, made from locally purchased grapes, was creating a buzz and winning prizes in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Within a decade Cloudy Bay had spawned numerous imitators and had helped create a new style of wine. For some reason, Sauvignon Blanc grown in cool, sunny Marlborough tastes like nothing else—certainly not like the lean, stony, lemony Sauvignons from Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. These Marlborough Sauvignons are fruit cocktails suggestive of lime, mango, grapefruit, and, especially, for those who have encountered them, gooseberries. Nearly everything on Carmen Miranda’s hat—along with a few renegade vegetables, like asparagus and bell pepper. What holds it all together is a wire-mesh foundation of acidity that comes from the long, cool growing season in this marginal climate.

At this point, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is a category unto itself, so successful that it is inspiring emulation in South Africa and South America. It’s hard to go wrong buying a bottle, most of which fall in the ten- to twenty-dollar range. Brancott, Seresin, Villa Maria, and Thornbury are some of the more reliable producers. Chardonnay also does well in Marlborough, producing lean, racy versions. The most exotic Chardonnay seems to come from the warmer North Island, around Auckland. The Chards from Kumeu River Wines, founded in 1944, have developed a cult following in Great Britain and Australia over the years and are well worth seeking out, as are the big Chardonnays of nearby Matua.

Pinot Noir is supposed to be the great red hope of this cool country. For years we’ve been hearing the buzz about the imminence of great Pinot, particularly from the Martinborough region. More recently, Central Otago has emerged as the great new
terroir
for Pinot. I have tasted some good ones from both regions—Martinborough Vineyard and Felton
Road are worth seeking out—but for now the vines are young and Pinot Noir is, let’s face it, a bitch.

One of the more promising developments in Act Two is taking shape in Hawke’s Bay, under the auspices of a new winery called Craggy Range, founded in 1999, which is producing single-vineyard bottlings of Sauvignon Blanc as well as red grape varietals—a new approach in New Zealand. American-born, Australian-based mogul Terry Peabody traveled the globe for seven years looking for the perfect spot to convert a fortune based on waste management into a world-class wine estate. Peabody settled on Hawke’s Bay, where vines have been grown since the nineteenth century, and hooked up with New Zealand viticulturalist Steve Smith, a cheerful polar bear of a man who, for all his antipodean mateyness, is a Master of Wine and a rabid Francophile.

The first act of the New Zealand wine story relied heavily on technology, but Smith is a
terroir
freak, obsessed with expressing the individual characters of specific vineyard sites. Craggy Range’s first offering was a single-vineyard Sauvignon that was more polished and subtle than the typical Marlborough SB, if still recognizably New Zealand. This past year the winery released a stunning Puligny-like single-vineyard Chardonnay called Les Beaux Cailloux.

Hawke’s Bay’s Bordeaux-like maritime climate had inspired earlier growers to plant Cabernet and Merlot. A warm and rocky district called the Gimblett Gravels winegrowing district is beginning to look ideal for Bordeaux grapes; a ′98 Merlot from the area, from C. J. Pask, won the gold medal in the Bordeaux red class at the 2000 International Wine Challenge.
Craggy Range is about to release several small-production reds from this area, including a rich, silky Cabernet Franc– Merlot blend called Sophia and a blockbuster Syrah. If these wines are any indication, some of the protagonists of New Zealand’s second act will be red.

Talking to some New Zealand winemakers one picks up a certain impatience, even embarrassment, about the spectacular success of Sauvignon Blanc. For some reason I’m reminded of John Grisham’s recent attempt to go upmarket with his “literary” novel,
A Painted House
, and of Paul McCartney’s symphony. I only hope that Kiwi winemakers, as they explore and develop new styles and new grapes, keep playing to their strengths, and our thirst. The late Auberon Waugh, who was pretty stingy with his compliments, once said, “It’s very difficult to be best in the world at anything, but New Zealand has achieved that distinction with Sauvignon Blanc.”