KOSHER WINE: A DISTILLATE OF JUDAISM’S COMING OUT PARTY (1/2/04)

Folks in these parts who tire of my liberal pinko bluster tend to call me a “whiner,” but I do not claim to be an oenophile. In a much earlier life, I had a friend who boasted about being an oenophile. But, all I remember of his predilection toward wine was his poster of Bordeaux and once dining with him at the Atlanta Hilton when he loudly dismissed a bottle of Chateau Whatchamacallit with, “I wouldn’t serve that swill to pigs!” as I slid under the table. Then again, he wore black socks and oxfords with his Bermuda shorts. Sic semper Mogen Davidius.

Once upon a time, I would occasionally enjoy a bottle of fine wine. But, would you call yourself an oenophile if you still had to point to the wine list and grunt at the sommelier, “that one”? Besides, I blew out my pancreas a couple of years ago, as I nearly died. Thus, at the tender age of 54, the best I get is to savor the memory of a good Cabernet with a good meal and good friends, or at least not being called a “whiner.”

Looping elliptically in-and-out of Jewish orthodoxy has also taken its toll on my pretensions of oenophilia. Talk to an orthodox – or even right-leaning conservative – Jew and s/he will tell you that wine, too, must be kosher. And you think, even ask, “Where’s the cheeseburger? Where’s the pork?”

Fact is that if you want to be “strictly strictly,” as my former secretary put it, wine must pass through the hands only of orthodox Jews, from juicing the grapes to double-sealing the bottles (or heating the wine to 165-190°, I know, picky-picky). This all has to do with wine’s potential for idolatrous libation or promoting unnecessary conviviality between Jews and their gentile neighbors. We are all well aware of the conviviality sparked by a shared bottle of Manischewitz: crusades, inquisitions, ghettos, pogroms, ah, blood libels, yes, especially blood libels . . . but hey, I am just reporting the news.

All this to say that my theological bipolarity has rapidly cycled me through repetitive phases of Chateauneuf du Pape and Pouilly-Fuse counterpointed by bouts with Schapiro’s Extra-Heavy and Kedem Bananarama.

I know what you of a more upscale kosher palate would say: “That is all yesterday’s news.” You would be right, I guess. Every Upper West Side Metrodox (thanks to my friend Binyomin Cohen for that term) and Jewish gastro-journalist celebrates that one can now procure kosher dry wine with a cork (!) in the bottle, as though it were, pardon the mixed metaphor, the Second Coming.

It is true. It is true. Chateau de Fesles Bonnezeaux, Chateau Fonbadet Pauillac, Chateau Giscours Margaux, Chateau Leoville Poyferre Saint Julien ($134.99), Chateau Patris Filius (Isn’t that two-thirds of the Holy Trinity?). All kosher. All to be swirled and swizzled at equally trendy-dox kosher establishments: sushi at Estihana, faux-filet at Le Marais, primavera at Va Bene.

Not only do they come bearing corks and un-sugar-encrusted bottlenecks, but tales of international awards, too. Another friend, an honest-to-goodness, no-oxfords-with-Bermudas oenophile avers that most of this is hyperbolic hokum. And, I have to wonder what toll this cooking to 165-190° that so many kosher wines go through does to a their basic integrity . . . as if I could tell.

I will stop being such a crab. I, too, am damned proud that observant Jews have access to, and have developed a palate for, the subtleties of a finer wine’s bouquet and finish, as much as for the extravagance of its price. It is indeed a prism through which we may view the coming of age of American Jewry. We could not say that as recently as my own young adulthood; it has been just that recent, thus just that paradigmatic. Then one day in 1973, I stumbled on a bottle of Yago Sangria certified kosher by the Chief Rabbi of some Iberian shtetl. It was not a fine wine, but a “different” wine, and I knew that the cultural mainstream was winking at me like Lady Marmalade. And it just got better and better.

Being part of that schizoid bridge-generation, I do, however, owe a love song – part serenade, part lament – to those goopy, syrupy wines that were so long synonymous with kosher, so long the butt of Borscht Belt tummlers’ jokes. I tell you, they have taken a bum rap, because when the final chapter is written, they were us, and we were just fine with them.

Those were the wines that had an indelible influence on my earliest infancy. Dr. Freud helped me regress to the age of eight days, when the mohel administered my pre-circumcision anesthesia, gauze soaked not in Bonny Doon, but in Schapiro’s Extra-Heavy Malaga. Primal nursing instinct and Chateau Schapiro soothed my castration trauma then, and I have owed it a debt of gratitude ever since.

Maybe we Jews were simply prescient about soon-to-become-toney full-bodied dessert wines. We, however, were so delighted by our sweet Malaga, Concord, Tokay and Muscat that they were never secreted away for dinner’s end. No, they were pre-prandial and post-prandial. They sanctified the Holy Days and consecrated the marriage vows. They were sipped at the Seder to coax down the bolus of matzo stuck at the back of your throat and chugalugged on an empty stomach at Yom Kippur’s end.

Fond memories of childhood include eating brisket and kishke (stuffed derma) at Siegel’s, under the Lake Street El tracks in Chicago, and Mr. Siegel furtively bringing over shot glasses of Mogen David to the men of the party, a lagniappe to his “preferred” customers. I likewise remember my own rite of passage, the evening that I joined my folks at Siegel’s, and Mr. Siegel included me among the “preferred.” What then, if not Mogen David, would be the proper wine to accompany kishke glistening with schmaltz? Garrison Keillor could write a better coming-of-age story, but no one could have felt it more sweetly consummated than I did over that nectar we now deride as “cough syrup.”

“Are you sure it was Mogen David?” you ask me. Nah. I will get complaints about this from the true get-yourself-a-life aficionados, but basically they were all interchangeable: Manischewitz, Kedem, Lipschutz, Mogen David, Schapiro’s, and a myriad other local and regional offerings. Each had a little edge of its own identity, to be sure. Manischewitz was first with the fruity, soda-poppy varieties – peach, strawberry, mango – quite a buzz, and cheap, too. The old Mogen David label had that loopy little picture of the Seder table, prompting the winos of bygone days to ask for “Morgan Davis, you know, the one with the guys playing poker on the label.”

The warmest spot in my heart, though, is left for Schapiro’s. There was an honest, proud wine, no apologies, no secrets. You want sweet or extra-sweet? They boldly led with their “so thick you can almost cut it with a knife” tag-line. Norman to this day boasts that Schapiro’s is “aged for over six months” as though it were a century-old Balsamico di Modena.

The taproot of its integrity, though, is in the musty, musky subterranean labyrinth, the cellars of Schapiro’s, a full square block right underneath the schmootz of the Lower East Side. Yes, the operation has moved Upstate, but on a Sunday, you can still meet one of the Schapiro’s at the ancestral entrance on Essex Street, enjoy a free tasting tour, and walk, and inhale, the catacombs for yourself. Amazing, is it not, that as everything gentrifies, even as the Lower East Side gentrifies, the taproot keeps bearing its luscious fruit?

Now, our Jewish palates are more finely attuned. Our noses are better sensitized to inhale the bouquet. We know, and own, the right crystal for each Bordeaux and Merlot. We debate how “chilled” chilled should be, with Talmudic acuity. We Jews have arrived, and remarkably, our yarmulkes are still clipped to our heads. We are deservedly proud, as we have lived to witness “synthesis” become reality.

Sorry, though. I also pine for the other days. We were not so smug, nor so self-satisfied, nor so damned sure of ourselves. But, one thing was for sure: When someone raised a thimbleful of Mogen David at Siegel’s and bellowed “L’chayim!” we all knew what to answer . . . and we meant it.