Kosher Wine

Ah, Passover is coming up.  My mission, for our family Seder, is to pick up the wine.

Not just any wine.  Kosher for Passover wine.

I stopped at BevMo on my way home today.  (That's "Beverages and More" to the uninitiated.)  I remember last year, asking a BevMo employee to direct me toward the Passover wines when I had been standing right in front of a display of Passover wines.  Not wanting to fall for this again, I checked every display closely, and wandered every aisle.  No dice.  Sure that I must be standing right in front of them again, I asked an employee if they had any Passover wines.

They do.  (But I was not standing in front of them.)

He takes me down an aisle and points to -- I am not making this up -- the bottom shelf, where some Manischewitz Concord Grape is collecting dust behind some boxes.

There has to be something else.  (There is.  Manischewitz Blackberry.)

How to explain Manischewitz Concord Grape.  Think syrup, a little on the runny side, with eleven-percent alcohol.  I grew up not really understanding the whole concept of social drinking (much less drinking to excess) as I'd thought this is what "wine" actually tasted like.  Thick and sweet.  Blech.

Now, in recent years, other wineries have put out Kosher for Passover wines that--while not the sort of thing snooty wine connoisseurs would drink--are actually passable.  The challenge here was to find them, as BevMo had clearly decided to store Passover wines in with the normal stuff, rather than in their own little section.

Somewhere from the depths of memory, I eked out the name "Baron Herzog" as putting out a Passover white zin, and I hunted them down right next to the Berringer white zin.  Hooray!  I got two bottles!

And a bottle of the Manischewitz.  In case anyone wants to kick it old school.