The other week, I received an email from the well-respected Wally's Wine & Spirits in West LA, with the heading "First Night of Passover Is Saturday, April 19th." Under that, the store offered some suggestions of wines that are kosher for Passover, with numbers from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate. And they certainly came as something of a surprise – even a shock. There's a 2005 Castel Petite Red from Israel, priced at $40, earning an impressive 90 points. And for the really high rollers, there's a 2005 Chateau Quinault Lafleur from France, which gets 91 points and sells for $165.
Now, I know that over the years, kosher for Passover wines have gotten rather trendy. Wineries like Herzog Cellars and Hagafen are producing reputable wines. But when you start spending over $100 a bottle, you're dealing with serious wines. Which for me at least, is not what Passover is all about.
For me, it's about eating brisket that's been cooked to mush, and chicken soup with matzo balls that are the true definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction (or at least of Mass Indigestion). But mostly, it's about the wines of my youth: Manischewitz and Mogen David. Sweet, sticky, cloying and inexpensive, they're barely wines in today's terms. And yet, for the holiday, they're the very essence of wine. They're the wine that goes with matzo and macaroons. They're wine that tastes like history.
I was fairly sure that someone would bring something fancy to my house for our family seder. And I wasn't disappointed. My brother-in-law, the wine snob who's more impressed by price than by quality, showed up with an upscale kosher wine from Napa – Red C from the Covenant Winery. He told us, early and often, that it had cost $42 a bottle. And it was good, no denying that. But it wasn't the sweet stuff. It was real wine. And real wine isn't what the holiday dinner is all about. Me, I sipped on the sweet stuff all evening long. It may knock my fillings loose. But it will strengthen my soul.
– Merrill Shindler