Friday, April 7, 2006

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your story about your Passover preparations.  It inspired me to record a conversation I had this week.  You can read it here http://journals.aol.com/mumugrrl/PracticalMagicofMu/entries/736

Mumugrrl

Anonymous said...

Very good.

I wouldn't know wine if you made me shower in it. When you don't ever drink alcohol, there are things you lose. The movie "Sideaways" wasn't very interesting because of that.

Its nice to see write a bunch. Its nice to see you write something a little more personal (your faith).

My only connection? I once was the treasurer for my church. One of my few tasks? Buying communion wine. You guessed it. Manischewitz Concord Grape in those containers large enough to get a car that has run out of fuel going.

Tricky part? Liquor stores hate seeing a church buying. You pull out that tax exempt status card and they go nuts. By law, you should get the liquor dirt cheap. The task is they have a beejeebers bunch of paperwork to fill out so they get paid. Some even just said pay the tax like a man or get out. Found one liquor store that would, and bought everything they had.

Imagine, a guy that never uses alcohol? Rolling out with a hand truck of 8 cases of Manischewitz Concord Grape . Sheesh.

<B>Gordy
<I>the cycling curmudgeon</I></B>
http://ccurmudgeon.blogspot.com/