Kosher Blog

This is terrible news - I can’t say how much I’ve enjoyed Gan Eden wines over the years compared to many other domestic and imported brands. Especially the Late Harvest Gewurtztraminer and Black Muscat. I think I’ve used a bottle of Gan Eden at my pesach seder for the last 5 years.

Can we set up an education fund for the Winchell kids so they can stay in business?

This is a terrible loss from a gastronomic viewpoint. However, I can’t possibly express my full admiration for Craig and his wife. Wine we can live without, educated Jews is a different story. Kol hakoved from the Ville Craig.

BS”D

Thanks for your kind support, everybody. It’s been a great run, 20 years, but all things eventually come to an end. I’ve had a lot of problems over the years. The medical problems all seem to be solved, B”H. The educational problems are getting worse. When I was first pondering closing shop, around a year ago, I was having tachycardias at the drop of a hat, and could not do work in the winery. I just got that problem solved in early February, with a catheter ablation.

Northern California, for all its beauty and wonder, has never been able to support the Jewish infrastructure required by an observant community as a whole, and remains isolated outposts of observance in a sea of cultural Jewishness. With over 250,000 Jews (not even counting the San Jose/south peninsula area), there’s no day school/yeshiva katana designed to serve observant Jews, no yeshiva gedolah or Beis Yaakov, few mikvaos, 1 mini-kollel (Palo Alto), no reliable kosher butcher (there used to be 2) (although Mollie Stone, a supermarket, sells kosher meat)(Sacramento, however, with a far smaller Jewish population, has a mikva and a reliable kosher butcher). Kosher Albertson’s have closed their kosher operations due to lack of business. Everything is a compromise. People come for work or education, and leave for chinuch. It’s always been that way. Most of our old friends have left, but we were tied to the land, and intent on sticking it out. Alas, tutoring has become a far larger problem in the last 2 years. When the girls’ tutor decided to go back to Yerushalayim (Feb 15– we had expected her to remain in NoCal until Pesach), we had no fall-back position, and finally decided to go with the inevitable.

Believe me, it’s disappointing for me, too, since my health has drastically improved over a very short period of time, and I’m now working 18 hour days again. But such is life. As was said by Jon, wine we can live without, but not educated Jews. However, if we move to SoCal, as is likely (Denver, Cleveland, New Jersey and Baltimore or Silver Spring are also possibilities), I can always, if I have the koach, look for new investors to start a new winery down south. Stranger things have happened.

Kol Tuv,
Craig

This Marylander looks forward to Maryland’s first kosher winery! In the meantime, kol haKavod to Craig, who has done yeoman’s work in producing excellent kosher wine year after year.

North Carolina has some wineries (trief) and we could use a great Kosher winery! The weather is lovely, Charlotte has a terrific Day School, up to 8th grade, then there’s the high school in Greensboro. Visit with us, y’all!

Craig–

Could I encourage you to move to the Silver Spring area? There are a few (too few) wine lovers, but we’d enjoy your company. I live in White Oak, which has a great shul, and there are good Jewish schools nearby! Hope to see you soon.

As a former NorCal resident, I understand his desire to move to a community with better infrastructure. However, it is not true that there does not exist a frum day school - Oakland Hebrew Day School is a MO K-8 day-school. Also, there is still, in Oakland, a relible kosher butcher. That said, there is no decent high school option.

BS”D

Joshua:

Oakland Hebrew Day is not really a modern orthodox school, unless things have changed since Howie Zack left. IT has many modern orthodox kids going to it, but it’s more of a “community school” like South Peninsula, with a mix of orthodox, conservative and even reform kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t even know whether there are mixed gender classes, but there were in the younger grades- not that there’s anything wrong with that up until 3rd grade. Bottom line is that we were certainly looking for more, and no place- not Oakland Hebrew Day, not Hebrew Academy, not South Peninsula- noplace could provide what we needed and wanted.

As to Oakland Kosher, that only recently went under the Vaad. It had been ORC, from which we don’t eat. And it’s true that for a short time, they did have Vaad prepackaged meat for sale,it wasn’t the same. But that’s OK, because we bought meat in LA, or at times got it shipped in from Detroit, and when Willow Glen Meats was around, we shopped there (Dan Keleman, the owner, was a good friend). It wasn’t the meat that was the problem, it was the education.

Craig and Jenny and Family, mazel tov for taking the leap. Infrastructures are not made up of Northern Cal’s “pluralism” or “yichus” connections. Rabbi N. Vogel in San Jose always used to say that HS made the world for us. It is always easy to enjoy the beauty by returning to enjoy the natural wonders.

May your children grow even stronger by knowing you cared enough for them by doing what was right.

BS”D

Well, thank you kindly. Unfortunately, I left without having parnasa set up, and over 2 years later, things are getting tough. I’ve been putting down offers on restaurants, but have unfortunately not been able to come to terms thus far. It’s no wonder so many restaurants go out of business here, with the exhorbitant rents and high purchase prices of restaurants. I’m waiting until my criteria are met, but the best bet may not be in LA proper, in the middle of the Pico restaurant row.