This Ol’ Life
Often, the wittiest anecdotes to Modern Orthodox life come when we attempt merging those two seemingly discordant modes that define us: the “modern” and the “Orthodox.”
A lawyer friend invited me to a firm reception, hosted in a posh East Village club. Never one to turn down cheap eats I happily accepted. And, so, our heroine found herself spending yesterday evening with the cr譥 of America’s fledgling legal elite–shaking a few hands, sharing a few ambulance jokes, and wholly indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd except for her rather apparent lack of exposed cleavage (which I’m convinced at least one partner picked up on) and the blue kippah srugya perched neatly atop her friend’s head.
Then came dinner. Prime rib for one hundred and fifty and shrink-wrapped Abigael’s for two. After freeing the pre-packaged food from its cellophane prison, with more than a little help from a handily toiveled Swiss Army knife, our heroine committed, for her companion’s amusement, the supposedly grievous sin of consuming sushi and chicken in the same forkful. When he ran off promptly thereafter, I figured that witnessing my brazen lack of chumra?dik-ness had sent his nerves into a tail dive.
Lo and behold, he reemerged moments later with the greatest find I’ve ever seen in a treyf joint, an unopened, yes, unopened
bottle of kosher wine. (Perhaps he hoped that liquoring me up might prevent future violations of presumed halakhah.) Only problem was, his trusty Swiss Army knife didn?t have a corkscrew.
I made for the bar, hoping to swipe one off a waiter. The ensuing dialogue:
Waiter: “Why do you need it?”
Heroine: “To open our wine.” (points to table and thinks “duh”)
Waiter: “Yeah, I offered to open it but the guy flat-out refused.”
Heroine: “Well, you know, we wanted to do it ourselves. The thrill of the hunt.”
I smiled a secret smile to myself as I went back to our table, where I proceeded to get horrifically tipsy on the finest Rashi’s got to offer.
… but this trumps: http://www.jpost.com/servle...
http://www.jpost.com/servle...
Rashi makes a non-mevushal wine?
Given the fuss my friend made over not having the bartender open our bottle, I presumed that it wasnt mevushal. However, one of Kosherblogs merry band of misfits (you know who you are, wink-wink nudge-nudge) informed me last night that the entire Herzog line is, he believes, mevushal. Its only Rashis high-high end stuff that isnt.So now I, myself, am a little confused as to the entire proceeding. If the wine *was* mevushal, why bring it back to the bottle to open ourselves? Particularly since neither of us knew how to work a corkscrew.
While it is true that most of the Rashi line is mevushal (and is what I tend to call soda-wine), there is one fine wine that is not mevusal: Rashi Barolo 1999. It retails for about $30/bottle and here is a description from one of the kosher wine web sites:Barolo, the most aristocratic of the great red wines of Piedmont, is intense and full-bodied. Made from 100% Nebbiolo grapes, cultivated in the Langhe hills surrounding the town of Barolo, this wine only comes to its full completion after two years of aging in Slavonian oak casks and a third year in the bottle. For complete truthfullness, there is a second - the Rashi Asti Sparkling Wine at a mere $10/bottle. However, the rest of the Rashi wines (typically at $3.50 to about $8 per bottle) are Mevushal.
As to the comment about Herzog (I am assuming you mean the Baron Herzog line, as opposed to the Herzog Selection line), while it is correct that the majority of their wines are mevushal, the Napa Valley, Alexander Valley and Chalk Hill Cabernet’s are not mevushal (although kosherwine.com lists the Alexander Valley 2000 as mevushal. I am not at home now, so cannot check what vintages I have laid down to see). The Syrah Reserve is also not mevushal, although the Russian River Chardonney is listed as mevushal.
Concerns about mevushal wines: this is the kind of stuff that "Modern Orthodox" scholars should be wiping off the halachic map. What an outdated embarrassment, based on a concern that was questionable at the start (that wine "blessed"/handled by xtians/heretics/"non-observant"-Jews somehow becomes an "issue")…!
Ben Noach, To avoid a repeat of a discussion that we’ve already hashed out on this blog, I direct you to the "Kosher Wine in the ‘Mainstream’" thread under the Kosher Wine category. This isn’t to say that I don’t sympathize (and largely agree) with your position, but I’m not sure that it’s worth the blog space.
I wish the intermarriage issue was outdated…unfortunately it’s more an issue now than it was then