(Cross posted from All Voices.)

Napa Valley has a problem - their grapes are drunk.

Grapes - the region’s cash crop and tourist draw - grow best under a warm summer sun that is tempered by a kiss of cool air at night. When the weather gets too hot for too long, however, the grapes can “cook” on the vine, resulting in an alcohol content more fitting to a firey grappa than the mellow cabernets the region is known for.

Unfortunately, rising temperatures seem to be the norm in Napa these days where, according to the NY Times Magazine: “most Napa winemakers agree that 10-year averages are the hottest in memory.” As a result, Napa grape farmers are being forced to rethink every growing technique they thought they knew to save their crops. The NY Times Magazine reports: Read more »

Until recently, the world of kosher cheese was pretty bleak. On the one hand you had shrink-wrapped, industrial produced (but kosher certified) brands like Miller’s. On the other, you had artisanal, raw-milk and hand-crafted (but not kosher certified) cheeses. These days the tide is turning.

Introducing: The Jew & The Carrot’s Kosher Sustainable Cheese List

The cheese companies on the list allow you to have your kosher cheese and eat ethically too! We think we have enough options represented for a pretty decent cheese plate, but welcome suggestions. Send cheeses you’d like to see added to list (especially mozzerellas, which we had trouble finding!) to: tips @ jcarrot dot org, or leave a comment below. And don’t forget to pair your cheese with a bottle from The Jew & The Carrot’s Kosher Organic Wine List!

Last night, some friends and I met for our somewhat bi-weekly, whenever-we-can-get-a-critical-mass-of-people-together wine club.

We gathered at a friend’s apartment to try out a variety of wines (each club member brings a bottle to share). The evening included a lot of sniffing deeply into wine glasses and swirling the juice of fermented grapes on our tongues to pick out the hidden flavors - a little raspberry or plum here, the scent of hot chocolate and smoke there. Along the way we nibbled on exotic snacks - spanish marcona almonds, a vegetable terrine, and baked camembert cheese with a balsamic reduction - and enjoyed feeling terribly sophisticated on otherwise ordinary Monday night.

The whole thing actually felt like a good Passover seder - it was relaxed and participatory, with people calling out interesting tidbits they found in the various “haggadot” we had available (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and The Oxford Companion to Wine. And, of course, there were four - or maybe a few more - glasses of wine.

A few of the folks in our midst have some wine knowledge - I once worked on an organic vineyard, another couple has traveled in Europe’s wine regions, and a third - our resident expert - works as a sommelier at a kosher restaurant in Brooklyn. But as the hour turned late and the the last drops of deep red liquid pooled in the bottom of our glasses, I realized that it didn’t really matter. We were there to taste wine, sure - but really the whole “wine club” thing is just another excuse to get together and hang out. And I’ll happily raise a glass to that.

Start your Own Wine Night (below the jump)

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Hazon’s Tu Bishvat seder was lots of fun - we sang, we kibbutzed, ate an amazing meal, and listened to some inspiring words by Dr. Eilon Schwartz of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel. *Note our take on sustainable centerpieces - fresh herbs in glass jars surrounded by pecans. It’s low-key, lovely and edible (after the seder you can make parsley pesto and pecan pie!). Who says you need cut flowers?

Despite the exciting abundance available at farmers’ markets all summer, it’s not until the concord grapes arrive in early fall that the true celebration of the New England harvest begins.  Tonight, as I enjoyed my first bunch of the season’s juicy, purple slip-skin bounty, I began to investigate their unique place in my local and cultural foodshed. Love them or hate them, concord grapes are a symbol of New England history and harvest, having been developed in Concord, MA in 1849.

In 1853, the grapes won first place in the Boston Horticultural Society Exhibition, and according to The Forward, that history is tied up with the history of their founder, Ephraim Wales Bull, a nativist and potential anti-semite. Before their use in Kosher wine was adopted by New York’s Sam Schapiro, explains the article, the grapes were championed by Bull as being native-American and superior to their “too tender Syrian brothers,” a potential reference to the Semitic immigrants Bull would have resented as a Nativist. Although we may never know the intention of Bull’s comments, we can savor the fruits of his labor, via wine or straight from the vine.

Any doubts that humane, healthy, organic and local are the dominant food trends? Witness today’s NYTimes dining:

• Prince Charles: Farmer, Cookie Maker, Ecologist and Yes, the Future King
• Foie Gras Makers struggle to Please Critics and Chefs
• When the Wine is Green: an exploration of biodynamic, natural and organic viticulture
• Locavores: Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally
  
• Wonder Bread backlash: Alex Witchel’s voice of benign and boring dissent
• A New Alliance in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity: Rachel Ray and Bill Clinton (!)

Assuming the dining section is one step behind the curve, reporting peaking trends rather than coming ones, what do you think will be next? Where will sustainability take our plates tomorrow?

[NYTimes]

My last omer-centric post celebrated the yeastiness of a sourdough starter. Today I wanted to focus on barley. Let’s not forget that the omer period itself is named after the measure of barley, known as an “omer” that was brought to the Temple on the second day of Pesach, marking the beginning of the transition from the barley harvest of early spring to the later wheat harvest of Shavuot.

Hmmm…yeast, barley….what else might be used to celebrate this period? Some commentators say that the transition from barley to wheat marks the transition of the Israelites from a slave people (who lived like animals, the main consumers of barley) to freedom (since wheat bread marked the culmination of civilization). Not so fast, says professor Charlie Bamfourth in a recent Scientific American article: Read more »

The first seder I ever went to, I hosted. I was deep into conversion classes with my husband-to-be and we had tons of questions. It was the opposite of scripted. We used a Reconstructionist haggadah a friend’s family had put together, and the conversation flowed. The older generations regaled us with their memories. Though it was over 10 years ago I remember it well. There was just one problem. My food was warming on the stove and in the oven, forever. Who knew that you spent so long talking before eating the meal? I ruined my first seder. Everything was dehydrated to shoe leather, the matzoh balls leaden after simmering for so long.

If a recipe ends with “serve immediately,” it is not for Pesach. That was my first huge lesson. I think I’ve hosted almost every first night since then, but I’ve picked up a lot of things on the second nights when we’ve gone to other people’s houses. The whole evening has changed with the advent of our children, as well. Here are some of our evolving traditions:

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Leah’s recent post about organic kosher wine made me think back to my visit to Four Gates Kosher Winery, which was now six and a half years ago.
In July of 2000, I spontaneously left New York City after living there some eight years, to try California (where I grew up) for a year. I immediately went to work at the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California – now called j. weekly.
After three months on the job, we got a call from a guy named Benyamin Cantz; he told my editor that he ran what he believed was the only kosher organic winery in the country, and the recent spell of hot weather was causing his grapes to ripen more quickly than usual. I think he was hoping that we would put a notice in the paper to recruit volunteers to help him pick that Sunday. They did no such thing. They sent me instead.
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Hazon just added a kosher organic wine list to our resources section. Keep an eye out for more resource lists in the next week or two. Here’s a sneak peak:

• Healthy, sustainable Seder ideas
• How to host a sustainable kiddush (or book club, or Hadassah meeting)
• How to get rid of your chametz (and we don’t just mean crumbs!)

Epicurious tells us about the best kosher wines. “Dry, balanced and delicious varietals from around the globe.”

On how they’re kosher:

The law specifies that for a wine to be kosher, it must be made under strict rabbinical supervision and with equipment that is used exclusively for the production of kosher wine. In addition, products used in the winemaking process, such as yeasts, must be certified kosher. The grapes and wine can be handled only by Sabbath-observant Jews — in other words, those who refrain from work of any kind from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

And why they taste funny:

Many kosher wines are also taken one step further. Jewish law states that for wines handled by the general public — for example, poured by waiters who are not Sabbath-observant Jews — to remain kosher, they must be boiled, or mevushal. The “boiling” of these wines is accomplished by flash pasteurization, a sophisticated technical process in which wine is held for a few seconds at an elevated temperature. Some wine experts believe that this procedure helps stabilize colors and tannins and can even enhance aromas. Other experts argue that while this process may not hurt wine in the short term, it does destroy bacteria that contribute to the aging of fine wine.

Shameless plug here: we’re game for a taste test. If you’ve got the samples, we’ve got the palates. Prove to jcarrot that kosher wine can outshine a more heathenly brew.