Kosher Wine in Cowboy Country

Making Kosher Wine in Cowboy Country

Zvi Naveh jumps out of a dusty pickup in the parking lot of The Steak Out restaurant in the sparsely populated grasslands east of the Patagonia Mountains. A native of Haifa, he is tall, athletic, and bronzed from his days in the sun-splashed landscape. "We lucked out," he says, his words still tinged with an Israeli accent. "The rabbi's coming down today from Tucson." We are standing at the Four Corners intersection in the business district of Sonoita, some 50 miles southeast of Tucson. It is winter, and hills of dry thistle and straw-colored grasses roll away in every direction behind a scattering of rustic storefronts that look like a set for a Hollywood Western. For the last 100 years, it has been a landscape dominated by cattle ranching and a handful of mines in the nearby Santa Rita and Patagonia mountains. But, with Naveh's arrival in the land of cowboys, a new industry has been added: the production of kosher wine. Naveh is one of several grape growers and wine makers who moved to the Elgin-Sonoita area in recent years. But Naveh differs from the others in two ways: first, he is the only grower who admits to being motivated by guilt. Second, he is the only one producing kosher wine. "I think maybe I'm trying to satisfy my guilt feelings for being out here," he says, "for bringing my kids out here . . . . I was

(LEFT) A watchful Naveh adjusts a grapevine on a trellis. (RIGHT) The vines that Naveh planted in his vineyard to produce his sauvignon blanc wine are French bybrids that be brought from California. (BELOW) At first Naveh produced only the sauvignon blanc and a cabernet sauvignon, but last year he added a cabernet of rosé and a Pinot noir to his line. A small circled "K" on the label (not visible in photograph) indicates that Brooklyn's Organization of Kosherus Laboratories inspected Naveh's winery. A "P" shows that the wine is kosher for Passover.

Kosher Wine

born in Israel, and even though I didn't go to the synagogue or didn't really practice Judaism, it was all around me. So the cultural thing maybe provides some kind of false security. I don't exactly know what it is.

There isn't a major supermarket or movie theater in the area, much less a synagogue. Jewish families are few. Naveh was concerned that his children might grow up isolated from their heritage. His remedy for this dilemma was kosher wine.

In 1985 he planted his vines, French hybrids acquired in California. In January, 1992, he was surrounded by 300 gallons of cabernet sauvignon aging in oak barrels and 550 gallons of sauvignon blanc in stainless-steel vats. Now one of his chief chores is explaining to people the difference between his product, a boutique kosher wine, and other wine.

"Rabbi Yossie can explain it better," Naveh says, "but the general drift is that because wine can affect your spirits or your emotions let's face it, you can get drunk on it the people handling it must be pure of spirit and have good intentions."

Rabbi Yossie turns out to be Yossie Shem Tov, a barrel-chested scholar who eschews the casual dress of farmers and cowboys and shows up in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and tie. Where a Stetson might have been, he wears a black yarmulke.

He removes his jacket, puts on a white butcher's apron, and he's ready to go to work. His job on this day is to top off the wine in the oak barrels, replacing what has evaporated. Each time he does anything to the wine, he seals the spigots with packing tape, takes a marking pen and, in Hebrew letters, writes "kosher."

As he performs his chores, we ask the rabbi to elaborate on Naveh's explanation of kosher wine.

"This is the way it is," he begins in a soft Brooklyn accent. "When a religious and observant person is making wine, they are thinking that this wine is being set aside for a sanctification toward God.

"The wine is a link to God. It is very potent in the sense that when you drink it, it can take full control over your intellect and emotions.

Therefore, we have to make sure that the wine is something that was from the beginning made with the intent of serving God. So when it does conquer your emotions, maybe your emotions would lean toward God."

What this means, Naveh adds, is that the wine-making process must be done by Sabbath observers. While there appears to be a difference of opinion among rabbis about whether the presence or absence of a particular ingredient renders the wine kosher, they agree that the process of making a kosher wine must be monitored closely by an orthodox Jew.

In a place where most men have names like Randy, Jed, or Slim, finding orthodox Jews can be a problem, as Naveh explains: "The day we made the wine, this whole place had to be secured from nonbelievers. Gordon Dutt, the wine maker who supervises all of this, is a non-Jew, which meant he was not allowed to be around when the grapes were being converted to wine. But he had to be around to tell us when to change the pressure gauge, for example. So Gordon's hiding behind steel vats [about 40 feet away], and he can tell, by the sound that the bladder press makes, when the pressure has to be changed. So he's hiding and calling out instructions to us: Turn the pressure up to 10 pounds! Go up to 20 pounds!' "Talk about the Wild West! It was pretty wild that day!"

The work paid off, however. On a day local cowpokes were taking their cows to auction, Naveh shipped his first 3,000 bottles of Naveh Vineyards kosher wine. Soon after, he and a small group of investors launched Santa Cruz Winery Ltd. and built a facility at Elgin where future wines will be bottled. Kosher wines that, Naveh hopes, will be as at home in the rolling grasslands of southeastern Arizona as he is.

Tucson-based Sam Negri, who has traveled the SonoitaElgin area for more than 20 years, toasted his first glass of kosher wine while preparing this article. He also wrote about Lochiel in this issue. Edward McCain says that Sonoita is one of bis favorite spots to visit and photograph.