The Kashrut of Whisky
Alan Lazerow offers two great articles on the kashrut issues of whisky. The first, a two-parter, explains whisky production and implications for kashrut in great detail — geared toward those light on whisky knowledge but comfortable with halachic terms. The second is a reformulation for the Scotch Blog, which leaves out the whisky background and uses more accessible Jewish terminology.
- Kosher Whisky, Part I (Production)
- Kosher Whisky, Part II (Aging & Maturation)
- Whisky and Orthodox Jews
UPDATE: Alan also makes the Kosher Blog’s day with his report on Bailey’s Irish Cream:
I, of course, cannot speak for your local rabbinic authority. All I can do is report that the product sold in the UK, which is 100% kosher, is the same product, from the same machinery, as the contents of a bottle that you can find in your local liquor store here in America. Cheers!
“Sherry, a Spanish wine produced in Jerez, Spain, is not kosher. Since sherry is produced by a non-Jew, and there is no rabbinical supervision, the wine cannot be labeled kosher.”
Is this true? Is sherry like dijon and champagne? I know of one kosher sherry. Must it have been produced in Jerez? I never noticed.
From Wikipedia:
There is a good dry kosher sherry from Spain — Tio Pepe. Far better than Kedem’s.
I received a similar comment on my blog, and here was my response: Yes, anon, you are right. There very well may be kosher sherry out there. There’s nothing inherently non-kosher about the ingredients or the production process of sherry, but presumably all of the casks that scotch is aged in once stored non-kosher sherry. Or, at least that is the presumption which we must assume…
Sherry, from my understanding, must be produced in Jerez, Spain. The J is pronounced “SH” and that’s why it’s called sherry. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Alan,
That was me; I just forgot to log in. :-)
Obviously, that’s a logical assumption, but it’s also a logical assumption that truly kosher scotch aged in sherry casks is possible. A producer must seemingly just acquire some of Tio Pepe’s old casks!
Well, that depends on how you look at the status of something that is batul. I guess, in theory, some “kosher” sherried scotch exists, as Tio Pepe’s casks are used somewhere in the scotch industry. But, the amount of casks that are kosher are certainly batul to the amount of casks that aren’t kosher.
The concept of bittul isn’t just saying that “because we don’t know, we’ll assume that they’re all like the majority, but certainly some of them are fine”; rather, it’s fundamentally changing the status of all items involved from one status to another. For example, if one piece of pig gets mixed in with 2 pieces of kosher meat, we don’t say that one of them is treif, but because of bittul we can eat them all; rather, we say that all 3 of them are kosher, as their status has fundamentally changed. If you look at it from this perspective, then truly kosher scotch (ie, aged in kosher sherry casks) isn’t possible.
I understand bittul, but wouldn’t the casks used for kosher sherry be labeled as such? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something about the situation, but let me make what I think is an appropriate analogy.
Most sausage is treyf. Most turkeys are treyf. You can stuff turkeys with sausage. A kosher turkey stuffed with a kosher sausage is still kosher, no? And the sausage would still be kosher too, right?
Shoot me an email at AlanLaz AT gmail DOT com
BS”D
Just wanted to point out to Jabbett that Tio Pepe is imported by Kedem, and quite possibly made for them. That is, the kosher Tio Pepe. Most Tio Pepe is the nonkosher wine, a very different tasting beverage, and to my mind and memory, far superior. Beware, because most of the Tio Pepe which is imported is definitely not kosher. Gonzalez Byas has been making it since long before Kedem began importing a kosher version.
I have told people for many years that the publicized use of Port and Sherry cooperage was a marketing ploy, and that the ideal was simply a neutral barrel. Finally, someone else is saying it as well. Unfortunately, the myth is that the barrels are not cleaned or rinsed prior to placing whisky into them. Of course they are. At the very least, they’re rinsed, and maybe even soda ashed. So the only wine remaining is between the fibers of the wood, unless the barrel was kashered by 3 sequential 24 hour soakings.
When is wine routinely added to whisky? Blending sherry is used to meld the flavors of blended whiskey. Yet even this use would not render the whisky or whiskey nonkosher.
Craig, check out these links:
http://www.thescotchblog.com/2006/09/sherry_sherry_o.html
http://www.thescotchblog.com/2006/09/update_sherry_s.html
And, in your last paragraph, are you suggesting that whisky brands add sherry to blends to meld the flavors together?
BS”D
And? What I’m getting is marketing hype. We’re dealing with a max contribution of 2.6%, not enough to add anything close to significant flavor componentry considering the overpowering contributions of both the malt character and the peat, each one of which is overpowering. No, no matter what these guys might say, it ain’t the wine, it’s the wood, and it’s the neutral wood. Obviously, the Mac likes less neutral wood, because it’s getting the oak after only 3 years of Sherry aging. When you’re dealing with a solera with very, very old cooperage which eventually must be retired, and which is the most likely cooperage to be sold for whisky use, 3 year old cooperage is really quite young, and not totally neutral.
Yes, there is such a thing as blending sherry, used specifically to make the flavors of the individual whiskeys in blended whiskeys come together. I don’t know to what extent it’s used in whisky, but in American, and presumably, Canadian Whiskeys, it’s used quite a bit. I’m not discussing here the blending of individual barrels, but rather Blended American whiskey and Blended Canadians.
Craig Winchell
GAN EDEN Wines
Just to play devil’s advocate, you say that it’s “not enough to add anything close to SIGNIFICANT flavor…”. Who said it has to be significant? Without the chiddush of R’ Moshe, even the tiniest amount of added flavor from the non-kosher Sherry would be problematic…it doesn’t have to be significant taste, regardless of the %.
And, to the best of my knowledge, scotch distilleries do not blend in sherry.