Marc:

No need for argumentum ad hominem my friend. If you are so averse to anger that you perceive in Steve’s “tirade,” why don’t you simply accept it for what it is (an astute analysis of the Israeli wine market) instead of dispensing your own veiled contempt and portraying your misunderstanding of his point with such indignation and self-righteousness.

The idea that there are kosher Israeli wines and non-kosher Israeli wines in somehow equal number is simply false. Add up the amount of wine from the kosher and the non-kosher (use Rogov’s numbers for each winery), and one sees that there is approximately FORTY times the amount of israeli wine made that is kosher. Basically, there are ZERO large-sized wineries (above 1,000,000 bottles per year) in Israel which are not kosher. There are ZERO medium-sized (above 100,000 bottles per year). Apart from Latroun (which is made by a monastery and is unlikely to become kosher barring a transfer of ownership such as happened at Mony), there are only nine Israeli non-kosher wineries which even make the minimal amount of 25,000 bottles per year. Per the OK certification’s web site, Tsuba Winery and Karmei Yosef will now be making kosher wine, so that is now two less than nine: Seven. All the rest of the non-kosher wineries are even tinier, and there are dozens of them. Basically, if one is serious about making Israeli wine (Read: If the intention is to actually sell it), then any smart businessperson would become kosher. Anybody foolish enough to thumb his nose at the society from which he comes by making non-kosher wines will find that that same public will ignore said wines.

As for the size of the pie, it would be great if Israeli wines would also be purchased by people unconcerned with kashrut. But to cater to that group (which is small indeed) strikes me as rather foolish. Rather, one can make the pie larger with making Israeli wines more attractive to those who keep kosher AS WELL as attracting those to whom kashrut is not a concern. Anybody who thinks that Israeli wine can be sold in large quantities without attracting both segments is simply wrong and uninformed. As it happens, the biggest proponents of the fantastic idea that non-kosher Israeli wine is going to somehow make a fantastic ‘breakout’ a la New Zealand wine are several immigrants of long ago to Israeli from the U.S. and Canada (see under: Rogov and Saslove). They clearly have not seen the revolution in observant Jewish life which has taken place in the last several decades, nor have they read the latest demographic numbers which show the Orthodox community in the United States become a larger and larger percentage of the whole Jewish community. They have not been present as tens of thousand of foods in American supermarkets have become kosher, and kosher certification has become desirable in the American marketplace.

Steve:

He did say that 2 of his offerings, Tzora and Yaffo, are kosher. So he was really promoting his kosher wines to readers of Kosherblog.net, not his admittedly more numerous nonkosher wines. So I don’t see a problem. As to your opinion that nonkosher Israeli wines cannot sell here, you’re probably correct. Castel, after all, tried to sell nonkosher, and there must be a reaso they are now kosher, probably the reason you state. But that does not mean the future couldn’t look bright to an optimist, and there’s nothing wrong with him being one. The size of the market could indeed be greater as a tiny part of a big pie, rather than a small part of a small pie, at least in the future.

My team is importing 800 cases of Israeli wine within the next week or so from 9 wineries, 2 of which are kosher. Tzora and Yaffo! There has been a quality revolution in the kosher wine scene in Israel – thank goodness – and these wines can compete very well internationally now in many cases.

I wrote my comment, turned off the computeer for shabbos, opened my wine cellar, pulled out a bottle, and . . .

&%$#!!!

I was thinking of The Cave, not The Castle.

Cave, Castle, it’s all ca ca right?

man, I’m an idiot.

sorry