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The People of the Vine: Interview with Winemaker Jeff Morgan (Win!)

by Leah Koenig · October 10th, 2008

Blessings, Cheese, Chocolate, Contest, Food Writing, Interview, Jewish Culture, Kosher, Personal Story, Wine

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.“ - Benjamin Franklin, July 1779

Jeff Morgan is a man with a mission. As if being an author, winemaker and wine educator (not to mention a former professional musician) doesn’t keep him busy enough, he is also on a quest to change the way the Jewish community thinks about – and drinks – wine.

He and his business partner, Leslie Rudd, are the creators of Covenant Wines, a kosher wine company that strives to “harness quality commensurate with the rich and profound story of the Jewish people.” That might sound like a lot to swallow, especially considering that Jews tend to be linked with a legacy of barely drinkable kosher wines (ahem, Manischewitz). But the former West Coast editor of Wine Spectator magazine is on to something sweet.

I spoke with Jeff right before Yom Kippur to hear more about his vino-philosophy. He shared his thoughts on the current state of kosher wine, where it’s headed, and why consumers should think twice before reaching for a Mevushal bottle.

Want to WIN Jeff’s amazing kosher wine? Tell us your favorite wine memory to be entered into a drawing to win two bottles of Covenant’s Red C Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006. This wine is made from grapes grown on a 2-acre parcel of land in Napa Valley and aged for 18 months in French oak barrels. Total retail value, $84. (Only one comment per person will be entered into the drawing – please comment by Sunday, October 19.

How did kosher wine come to have a reputation of being sub-par to other wines?

We need to look back in our illustrious Jewish history to a time when Jewish wine, which was also kosher wine, was very high quality and known in the Middle East to be on par with the wines of other nations.

After the destruction of the Temple, we basically lost our vineyards and then spent an amazing two millennia wandering around the world with only sporadic access to our own grapes. Jews were mostly not allowed to own property – and that included vineyards. Or, they found themselves living in places like the Ukraine or Russia where wine grapes didn’t grow the way they grew in HaAretz, Yisrael. Yet we still had this tradition that we had to make kiddush on wine.

The juice of the grape, fermented, is holy in the Jewish tradition.

So, basically, the Jews made due with what they had – sometimes raisins, sometimes vodka, sometimes whatever. Anywhere Jewish wine makers had access to high quality wine grapes, I’m sure they were making great wine – but that was not regularly the case. In America, Jews landed on the East Coast where they only had access to Concord grapes. And those don’t make good wine – kosher or non kosher. They’re just not the right species. Meanwhile, we lost touch with the tradition of excellence in wine making. You can take your ideas and books with you, but you can’t take your grapes with you.

It seems that the recent attempts by some kosher wine makers to make higher quality wine is parallel to recent Renaissances in kosher cheese and kosher chocolate.

Yes, but there’s one big difference between wine and all other comestibles. Wine is holy. Nothing else is, according to our tradition. We have different rules from a kosher perspective.

So what exactly makes wine kosher?

All wine is kosher without exception. The juice of the grape, fermented, is holy in the Jewish tradition. The juice of the strawberry is not. For whatever reason, because wine is holy, to keep it holy and to maintain its status, it can only be handled by equally “spiritually pure” individuals – aka observant Jews. It’s that simple. But most people don’t understand that.

Wine doesn’t have to be “blessed” to be kosher. The wine’s kashrut is maintained through a constant connection to an observant Jew. That’s halacha. When the wine is altered by a non Jew or a non-observant Jew – it’s spiritual essence, at least in the mind and opinion of many observant Jews, is altered.

What is the deal with mevushal (cooked)/non-mevushal wine?

When a kosher wine is heated to a certain temperature, that spiritual essence is somehow changed in such a way as to make it less susceptible to ritual proscription. But I personally don’t think people should use mevushal wine for [something as holy as] kiddush. In the second temple, only non-mevushal wines (most definitely the best wines in the days when “cooked” really meant “cooked” and not flash pasteurized) were used at the altar. Maimonides, 1000 years later, used this as an argument for only using non-mevushal wines for kiddush. I’ll stick with Maimonidies.

Those who make mevushal wines say it improves the quality. Maybe sometimes it does – in white wines it can enhance certain aromatics. But in general, and especially with reds, that is not the case. At best, it doesn’t diminish quality.A lot of people believe that all kosher wines are heated in some way, and probably 90% of them these days are flash pasteurized. It’s is indeed an improvement over the old days when they boiled the stuff. From a wine makers perspective, my job is to make the best wine I can. Why would I boil or flash pasteurize my wine? It’s insane!

Wine is still an asterisk in American food culture.

I’m not saying that all mevushal wine is bad. There is some good mevushal wine on the market. But there’s only one reason that most kosher wine is mevushal: economics. The lion’s share of kosher wine is sold for holidays and special occasions, or catered events like weddings and bar mitzvahs. And in the US, certified kosher restaurants and catering halls are not allowed to pour non-mevushal wine because they have non-Jewish and non-observant staff. [If this staff pours the wine, then the "constant connection" with an observant Jew is broken.]

In Israel and Europe, they deliver the wine to the table and let the guests decide who is observant enough to pour it. It’s not just a Jewish problem, it’s also an American problem. Wine is still an asterisk in American food culture. My mission is to try to raise the bar for the category and help make wines that honor our tradition. We should find a way in our restaurants to value quality in a way that conforms with halacha.

How did you – a non-kosher Jew – decide to take on kosher winemaking?

Back in 1992, I had been making wine in New York and I had recently become a writer at Wine Spectator. I got an assignment about kosher wine from the magazine. At the time, I knew nothing about kosher anything – I was Jewish, but I hadn’t even been Bar-Mitzvahed. But they insisted I write it anyway.

A couple of the wines I tasted for that article were really good – a few from France and some from Herzog in California. But most of the wines I tasted were undrinkable, and I started to wonder why.

Seven years later, I was relocated to San Francisco with the magazine. By that time, I had determined that there were some really good kosher wines, though most were non-Mevushal. I left the Wine Spectator in 1999 and moved to Napa Valley, where I started making a little bit of non-kosher wine. In 2002, I was pouring that wine at a fundraiser for a local synagogue with a lot of other Jewish winemakers who also made non-kosher wines. One of them, Leslie Rudd (of Rudd Winery), asked me, “Why is kosher wine so terrible?”

So many Jews are disconnected from the essence of yayin.

I started to explain that it doesn’t have to be – and then the light bulb went on. I said, “Why don’t we try to make the best kosher wine in 5,000 years, right here in Napa Valley?” and “How about starting with 10 tons of the best Cabernet grapes from your vineyard?” He, of course, said, “You’re out of your mind. If you screw up, it will be the worst kosher wine in 5,000 years from my vineyard.” After some discussion, we finally agreed that I’d find grapes from another vineyard, and he’d be my partner. So we began our quest!

So how did that first vintage of Covenant turn out?

I think I got lucky! I didn’t really know what I was doing yet, but it’s an amazing wine. The challenge was, I needed a shomer Shabbat crew to make the wine, because I knew I wasn’t going to make my wines mevushal. So I called Nathan Herzog in New York, whom I’d grown to know and was a friend. I made an impassioned request that he allow me to try to make this wine in the Herzog wine cellar. It would be my protocols, my grapes and my barrels with their shomer Shabbat crew. He agreed. I definitely couldn’t have done this without them. We made Covenant and Red C with Herzog, down in California’s central coast through 2007, and just moved operations up to Napa Valley last year.

So it started as a challenge that turned into a quest – and now it is a mission.

Have you had any challenges selling your wine into the kosher market?

So many Jews are disconnected from the essence of yayin (wine). My greatest challenge, particularly among observant Jews, is to help them understand that I am honored to have someone make kiddush with my wine. But I also hope that they will come to appreciate the wine as an essential part of their lifestyle and dining experience. There’s a simple truth here – a great wine, enhances a great meal. This is something that many Jews have forgotten. It’s worth exploring your options.

What does the future of kosher wine hold in store for us?
There’s a currently a revolution in kosher wine making the world over. We will see more and more fine kosher wines from California, France, Spain, Israel, and elsewhere as more Jewish wine makers step up to the plate with the goal of honoring our tradition with top notch wines.

I think Israel has the biggest focus on kosher wine, but I’m not convinced that viticulture (grape growing) in Israel is on par with California and France. I’m not sure the raw materials have yet achieved their potential. But I think there is plenty of good kosher wine coming out of Israel – some of it is great.

Aside from Covenant and Red C, what are some other good kosher wines?

Castel Chardonnay from Israel, Russian River Chardonnay from Herzog Wine Cellars in California, Four Gates Chardonnay from California, Yarden Syrrah from Israel, and also Herzog’s Napa Cabernet and Zinfandel. There aren’t yet a lot of great resources out there for finding good kosher wines, though reading the work of Israel’s premier wine critic, Daniel Rogov, is a start.

What’s important is that consumers buy a bottle – one bottle. If they like it, they should buy more! And remember: dry wine goes with savory food and sweet wine goes with dessert. I have a lot of Orthodox friends who are not used to drinking dry wine – they think it is bitter and astringent.

But there’s hope that, one day, something other than Manischewitz will grace Shabbat and seder tables?

Manischewitz has never been on my Passover table! Our potential is limited only by the lack of passion for great wine that still exists in so many Jewish households. I think all of us, all Jews, need to feel the same passion and enthusiasm for wine that we all feel for our heritage and our people. An observant Jew doesn’t compromise on the quality of Shabbat and kosher wine makers should not compromise on quality in the bottle.

This is an idea that has only recently begun to take root among the wine makers and drinkers both. The good news is we’re thinking about it.

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25 Responses to “The People of the Vine: Interview with Winemaker Jeff Morgan (Win!)”

S Carrico Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
For our first “date-a-versary”, my boyfriend, a former wine steward/buyer, told me my surprise was the bottle I thought he’d never opened… a 1992 Beringer Private Reserve cab. With so much flourish and so much care he opened it, poured me a glass, and let me taste first [he ALWAYS tries first]… I was still a bit of a novice at the time – but the wine was amazing, and he was sickeningly cute, and overwhelmed by the wine, of course. It was simple and awesome, and so sweet…
Jess Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
The best wine memory… probably when I first got used to kosher wine at seder. Sitting there, totally full of food, drinking the wine slowly as we all fell asleep.
chyk Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
My favorite wine memory is making wine with my grandfather in his basement for Passover because where we lived at the time, you couldn’t get kosher for passover wine. I’ll always remember.
Michael Croland Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
My favorite wine memory was when I went to a “blind wine tasting” with my brother at his friend’s house. I was 21 and hadn’t had too much wine besides Manishcewitz! I literally wrote down letters and numbers in order rather than guessing which wine was which. There were nine whites and nine reds; 18 was too many for most people to try so they didn’t put a number down for each, but I put down an answer for each bottle of wine. As such, with three or four right answers, I wound up coming in second place and winning a bottle of wine. My brother’s friends (all in their 30s) couldn’t believe it!
Leah Koenig Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
These are great. My favorite wine memories are linked to the “wine club” my friends and I started last year. None of us know (except one!) anything about wine really, but we sure have fun drinking and talking about it together.

http://jcarrot.org/wine-club-for-dummies/

Looking forward to more wine memories! :)
shayna Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
it was only in israel that i discovered how good wine could be. (as a kosher keeping small time jew, i had no access to good wines.) i had a cooking buddy–each friday we would go to the shuk together, and buy a bottle of wine to drink while we cooked for shabbat. we discovered a lot of wonderful little vineyards and just how wonderful israeli wine is. sometimes, I’m surprised we didn’t cut our hands off the in process, however. =)

-shayna
Tara Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
My favorite wine memory is actually drinking Manishcewitz at the first Seder dinner I hosted. It was the best group of people and my first try for the blackberry instead of the concord. I much prefer the blackberry over the concord and every time I drink it I remember that dinner and how wonderful it was.
Atarah Says:
October 12th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Community seder, in a ‘low Jewish population density’ city. It was ‘kosher style’ dinner – actual kosher being hard to come by. There was a new catering manager at the hotel. The organizers of the seder had met with said manager, and requested Mogen David for the wine. Said manager apparently wrote down “MD”.
Evening of the seder, the wait staff came to pour the first glass. With what did they appear? Horror of horrors, beyond horrors. MD 20/20. Yep, Mad Dog 20/20. So close, as it is made by Mogen David, and yet so very far. It turned out to be a very long seder, as we waited as the hotel staff ran out for (kosher) replacement wine. The hotel gave us a nice discount on the cost of the evening. A night unlike any other night, indeed. :)
Meatloaf Says:
October 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I have made wine for many years. One year I had my little girls go out to pick dandilions (not sprayed in our town). They came back with a large pail filled to the brim with yellow flowers and their fingers stained yellow from the petals. My wife was quite angry with me and accused me of violating child labor laws! The wine was quite delicious but my kids – now much older – still remember picking the flowers and jokingly accuse me of using child labor.
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster Says:
October 13th, 2008 at 11:27 am
My parents had taken me and my twin sister, then toddlers, over to friends for Shabbat dinner. There were several large jugs of wine on the floor. Unfortunately, that night, the synagogue across the street was vandalized. The grownups were understandably distracted by the police arriving across the street. In the meantime, my sister and I managed to uncork the wine jugs and pour them all over ourselves. When our parents finally looked over from the window, there we were, covered in wine and completely happy.
Alix Says:
October 13th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I had just moved back to the Bay Area. The Jewish Bulletin, where I worked at the time, got a call asking if they would place an ad asking for volunteers to help come to Four Gates to pick grapes, because the warm weather was causing them to ripen earlier than usual. Rather than send volunteers, they sent me to cover it. It was my first time back in the Santa Cruz mountains in so long (I went to summer camp and college there but hadn’t been back in years) and it was such a beautiful day. I wandered among the vines, interviewing a bunch of hippies and Chabadniks, helping Binymain, the owner of Four Gates (the only kosher, organic wine) pick his grapes. What a day!
My dinner with Jeff and Jodie Morgan was pretty fun, too. Too bad you’re in NY, Leah…if you are writing about Jeff and his wines, he’ll sometimes invite you to dinner at his house in St. Helena for dinner. Unfortunately he isn’t coming the food conference, but maybe next year, Jeff?
Mama Beckala Says:
October 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
There are so many great ones it’s hard to choose a favorite. I loved my tour of Napa Valley, I loved the Mobile Meals Wine Auction, and I love having wine and cheese with my neighbor on cool winter evenings when the kids and hubby’s have gone to bed!
Nina Says:
October 15th, 2008 at 10:09 am
A wonderful interview. Makes me want to go out to California and pick some grapes! Anyhow, here’s my wine memory: My dad started drinking wine when he was in his twenties, scamming the pourers at tastings. I grew up with wine at every meal, and periodic informative visits to the wine store with a lesson on what riesling is, how to pick a good cheap red, etc. When I got to college my friends were impressed at my modicum of wine knowledge and I became dorm room sommelier. I was honored but embarrassed. I really didn’t know much. When he was sixty-one, my father was terminally ill, and that same year, I invited some friends to the east coast, and volunteered my father to take them to his favorite local wine store. My dad was a big fan of 20-somethings. I remember vividly him telling me that there was no woman who wasn’t beautiful at 20. I also remember driving up to wine store during that vacation, finding my father, sixty, red-faced and mustacheod, and my friends, six gorgeous young co-eds, parked outside it, drinking 2000 bordeaux out of those tiny plastic eye cups, in a state of euphoria. I don’t know how much they learned, but I remember feeling I’d made all of them happy.
Marc Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 9:28 am
My funniest wine memory is from senior year in college, when I brought a lovely bottle of Dalton Unoaked Chardonnay to a Shabbat lunch with friends. After having endured my deriding the blue-bottle Moscato d’Asti as “slightly alcohol Sprite” for months, two of my female friends decided to make their glasses of Dalton more palatable (to them anyway) by adding healthy doses of Sprite, earning them an eternal ban from drinking my wine, but teaching me to be careful what I say about others’ tastes.
Nari Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 10:29 am
My favorite wine memory actually happened in Paris! In Paris you can buy incredible win in the grocery store for just 2-3 euros, so most every day my partner and I would buy a wonderful bottle and have a picnic at a beautiful location. One night we bought a bottle and headed to a local farmers market – we completed the meal with fresh goat cheese, the best red bell pepper we’ve ever had, and a small loaf of wheat country bread. We took everything to a grassy lawn between Napoleon’s Tomb and our favorite bridge (pont des invalides) and watched local Parisians and tourists playing soccer as the sun set.
Mike Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I was stuck in a foreign country with no access to kosher food or wine and my luggage with my bottle of wine was lost by the airline. When it finally arrived, after living on melons and beer, there was nothing like that Friday night kiddush.
Rachel Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
One day, my dad asked me to go pick up some wine for shabbat. I assumed he meant that I should visit the local liquor shop where the owner, Nick (a non-Jew), knows my father and always makes sure to have kosher wines in stock. But we weren’t headed to the liquor store. My father has been a long-time synagogue volunteer and among his many duties, he keeps the shul stocked with liquor. When we arrived at the synagogue, I discovered my dad’s shul stash of cases of wonderful kosher wines- ones I never even knew existed. What a delightful surprise!
Sarah Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
My favorite recent wine memory… that might have to be my son’s bris. Of course, lately he’s gotten a finger of grape juice at kiddish, but good wine is a move we should make….
Cady Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
My favorite wine memory is from my 40th birthday. I’d decided that it was no longer aceptable for me not to understand red wine so I set about learning. I read books. I went online and learned about the rating system. I went to my local fancy wine store and spent hours reading labels. Then, on my birthday, I made 3 choices, all rather expensive: a cabernet, a pinot noir, and merlot. I went home and opened and tasted them all. Just as I was deciding I didn’t like any of them, a friend arrived with a birthday gift of a $5 bottle of Barefoot cabernet. I liked it better than any of the others. She told me I’d learned the most important lesson: A good wine is one you’ll drink. I now also know that it takes time to develop the palate. I like a lot of different ones now. But my favorite memory is of my first time trying them.
Carrie Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I recently took my parents to napa – And I was the designated driver. I learned to spit! I’m pretty good :)
Josh Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
ahh vino – so many memories. I guess I’d have to go with the time we bottled a barrel of Cab we made in ‘04 with a friend. We couldn’t get the filler to be precise enough which caused a lot of “manual adjustments”…. suffice to say we had to rotate that position but eventually everyone got waaaaaay tipsy….

/the labels didn’t end up straight either.
Lois "Macaroni Maniac" Says:
October 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I once gave a paper at a conference in Sardegna – and of course used the trip as an excuse to spend ten days touring the island with my sweetie. Most Sardinians don’t speak English or French – in a couple of northern cities some people speak a little Spanish, but mostly it’s Italian or, among older residents, Sard. Which means we had a week of hilarious interactions, relying on all the Italian I’d managed to learn in one short term of once-a-week Italian class through the evening program at our local community college. Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a small shop to buy some wine for an impromptu picnic. The owner, who seemed to have enjoyed a fair tasting of his own wares, urged a particular bottle on us, describing it as, “ottimo” (ultimo, which sounds similar, could mean either good or bad – imagine drinking the LAST wine you’d want! – so I was proud to notice the distinction). We shlepped that bottle around with us and back home, then stuck it in the back of a cupboard for a couple years. “When are we ever going to drink that thing?” I asked one day, afraid its legend might have grown too big. “When we buy a house, we’ll drink it there,” my sweetie said. And eventually, we did. And it *was* ottimo!
Wine Tasting Guy Says:
October 18th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Wow! Great interview with a GREAT guy. How has it taken me so long to find this blog?!? Carrots – where have you been all my life?

My favorite wine memory is an impossible task. There was a lovely late afternoon/early evening with a winemaker in his Napa, CA backyard ;). There was the first time I opened a bottle I made (it was not especially good – BUT IT WORKED). And of course countless wine tastings with good wine & good people.

But forced to choose one memory, I’d say it was during a day trip to the Southern Judean Hills in Israel. We went to the Yatir winery located in Tel Arad by the Yatir forest. We worked our way back up North via the Dead sea. After floating on the Sea (something everyone must try at least once in their life) we opened a bottle that we drank out of crappy Israeli plastic cups while looking out over the Dead Sea into Jordan…(and imagining PEACE for Israel with its neighbors)…sigh…
Leah Koenig Says:
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Congratulations Tara! You won two bottles of Covenant’s Red C wine.

Thanks to everyone who shared your funny, touching, and delicious-sounding wine stories. Keep your eyes peeled for more chances to win great cookbooks, delicious food products, and other fun prizes on The Jew & The Carrot!