Given the abuse to which most kosher wine is subjected, I never imagined I might ever seriously be tasting premium high-quality Cape wines that also happened to be compliant with the requirements of the Beth Din. I was therefore a little surprised to receive an invitation from Josh Rynderman to include his Essa wines in the blind tastings I do regularly for the Wine Wizard website. He made it clear he wanted them judged to the same standards I apply to all my SA wine ratings.
Mostly they scored very well indeed, with several garnering 90 points or more. These are the kind of scores that would gratify even our best-respected winemakers. The fact that they are kosher is incidental (in the same way that The Macallan 50 Year Old is kosher — though this is hardly a selling point).
Rynderman learnt to make wine at the Four Gates Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His Essa wines are made at the Onderkloof Wine Estate in Somerset West with more than 90% of his admittedly very small production exported to the US. They range in price from a little over R100 a bottle (for the rosé) to about R900 for the mature red blends. Most are in the R400-R500 range.
Two of the five wines I sampled bagged the highest scores in that week’s tasting. The Blanc Fumé (94 points) is exceptional. Fragrant and nuanced, with mown hay aromas, whiffs of lime blossom and hints of tropical fruit, it’s fairly priced at R500. The highest-scoring red (93 points) was the cabernet franc. It’s savoury and textured, with instantly accessible tannins — unusual for the variety — and succulent perfumed red fruit notes.
To give this some context, it’s worth looking at some of the other top-scoring wines from the past few weeks. The Groot Phesantekraal Anna de Kooning chenin was the only wine that, at 96, topped the 95-point mark: it’s multilayered, generous yet unflamboyant. Klein Constantia’s Perdeblokke Sauvignon scored a very creditable 92. The Flagstone Music Room Cabernet 2020 matched the Essa Cabernet Franc on 93, as did the 2019 Grande Provence Red blend. Plaisir de Merle’s “Plaisir” red blend rated 92. At R160 a bottle, it represents great value.
In short, just as you don’t care if a dish at your favourite restaurant has been prepared with halaal meat (as long as it’s good), the same should be true for kosher wine. Until the Essa samples crossed my tasting bench, this had only happened a countable times in my life, and never with wines produced in SA.
This column was originally published in Business Day.
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Kosher wines hold their own among SA peers
Five Essa wines bagged the highest scores
My first exposure to the viticultural side of the wine business would have been when our family travelled in and around the vineyards of Bordeaux during the summer ahead of my 10th birthday. However, I think my first visit to any winery took place in the weeks after my matric exams, so just ahead of my 18th birthday.
I was on a tour of Israel organised by the Junior City Council. The cellar in question was Carmel, a vast and not particularly atmospheric wine factory established in Rishon LeZion by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in 1882. While I was hardly a wine buff, I had been generously indulged from my early teens by my parents and their friends. I knew enough to recognise that the wines we sampled were pretty ordinary. I obviously couldn’t have identified the cause. Today I know that the conventions of kosher winemaking had interposed themselves between the vineyard and the bottle.
Quality wine production is difficult enough without adding arcane rabbinic rules to the winemaker’s burden. The kosher wines I have tasted over the years were mostly uninspiring. Notable exceptions were some of the wines produced by Yarden in Golan, a widely recognised benchmark producer. What made them different and better was, among many other factors, that the juice had not been flash pasteurised — mandatory if the entire winemaking team is not Sabbath observant.
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Shows offer some help for wine drinkers spoilt for choice
Given the abuse to which most kosher wine is subjected, I never imagined I might ever seriously be tasting premium high-quality Cape wines that also happened to be compliant with the requirements of the Beth Din. I was therefore a little surprised to receive an invitation from Josh Rynderman to include his Essa wines in the blind tastings I do regularly for the Wine Wizard website. He made it clear he wanted them judged to the same standards I apply to all my SA wine ratings.
Mostly they scored very well indeed, with several garnering 90 points or more. These are the kind of scores that would gratify even our best-respected winemakers. The fact that they are kosher is incidental (in the same way that The Macallan 50 Year Old is kosher — though this is hardly a selling point).
Rynderman learnt to make wine at the Four Gates Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His Essa wines are made at the Onderkloof Wine Estate in Somerset West with more than 90% of his admittedly very small production exported to the US. They range in price from a little over R100 a bottle (for the rosé) to about R900 for the mature red blends. Most are in the R400-R500 range.
Two of the five wines I sampled bagged the highest scores in that week’s tasting. The Blanc Fumé (94 points) is exceptional. Fragrant and nuanced, with mown hay aromas, whiffs of lime blossom and hints of tropical fruit, it’s fairly priced at R500. The highest-scoring red (93 points) was the cabernet franc. It’s savoury and textured, with instantly accessible tannins — unusual for the variety — and succulent perfumed red fruit notes.
To give this some context, it’s worth looking at some of the other top-scoring wines from the past few weeks. The Groot Phesantekraal Anna de Kooning chenin was the only wine that, at 96, topped the 95-point mark: it’s multilayered, generous yet unflamboyant. Klein Constantia’s Perdeblokke Sauvignon scored a very creditable 92. The Flagstone Music Room Cabernet 2020 matched the Essa Cabernet Franc on 93, as did the 2019 Grande Provence Red blend. Plaisir de Merle’s “Plaisir” red blend rated 92. At R160 a bottle, it represents great value.
In short, just as you don’t care if a dish at your favourite restaurant has been prepared with halaal meat (as long as it’s good), the same should be true for kosher wine. Until the Essa samples crossed my tasting bench, this had only happened a countable times in my life, and never with wines produced in SA.
This column was originally published in Business Day.
You might also like....
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Well-aged wines remain the wiser option
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Protegé programme is an important driver of change
Michael Fridjhon: How wine adds to the meal, and the bill