By COLlive reporter
Rabbi Avrohom Osdoba, Av Bais Din of Crown Heights, recently traveled to supervise the new bottling of Kesser’s new vintage of the Eminent Passover Wine.
The bottle features a newly redesigned label for the year “5780 – תהא שנת פדותינו,” but keeps its renowned specification as a semi-dry low alcohol wine (7% alcohol).
The wine was made with the finest grapes in the beautiful New York State Finger Lakes region, making sure the grapes will attain optimum sugar-acid balance during harvest.
“We carefully fermented the crushed grapes at very cold temperatures using only the natural yeasts on the grapes,” says the winemaker Yossi Zakon.
“As the wine reaches 7% alcohol, the wine goes through several filtrations while all the time kept refrigerated. Then we sterile filter the wine into the bottle, this way we can preserve the original delicate flavors of the grapes.”
Popularly known as Eminent Dry, this wine has become ubiquitous at the Pesach Seder table. Its famous slogan is, “How to keep your KUP (head in Yiddish) after the four CUPS.”
“This wine has allowed one to sit through the Seder all the way to Hallel without the after-effects of too much alcohol consumption,” Zakon says.
“The reason we stop the fermentation at 7% alcohol, is considering the USA government regulations, which do not consider a drink to be actual wine if it has less than 7% alcohol by volume,” he explains.
“I believe that an esteemed wine used for the Pesach Seder should also follow ‘dina demalchuso dina,’ the laws of the land in which we live,” Zakon said.
The new vintage is available at wine shops in New York, or through the distributor Royal Wine Corporation. Orders can be made online at Kosherwine.com. Winemaker and owner Yossi Zakon can be reached at [email protected]
