Wine Of The Week
Wine Of The Week
Kosher with some serious quality.
The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is at an end, but not before Team Daily Sip spent eight days being asked if we know of any good kosher wines. It's as tough a question to answer as, "Do you know any good Pinots?" Here's why:
Kosher wine isn't simply limited to Israel, and the best ones are certainly nothing like the sweet, syrupy Manishewitz we all know and regularly mock. In fact, some of the world's best kosher wines come from traditional winemaking regions such as Bordeaux, California and even New Zealand. With modern winemaking techniques, a kosher wine can taste more or less the same as any other. It's mostly how they're handled that makes them kosher--little else.
With that, we recently tasted several non-Israeli kosher wines. Our two favorites were Ramon Cardova Rioja 2007 ($14), made of 100% Tempranillo, and Borgo Reale Sangiovese di Puglia 2008 ($12) from Italy. Both wines were varietally true, well balanced with tannin and acidity, and had plenty of dark and red fruit flavors. You can't go wrong with either wine at any time of year, much less an occasion that calls for kosher.
These two wines therefore share our honor as Wine of the Week.
Have you had a great kosher wine recently? Tell us about it below.
