I have been off the blog for a bit of time because of a mix of things – but I have still been on the sauce and I have had the chance to enjoy some nice wines and some real duds as well. One of the clear themes I have found in this time off and while I have been on the road – is that wine is a complex concept for many when faced with a wall of options. The many times that I was in a kosher wine store or kosher wine section on my travels, I watched many a person just become befuddled by the options that faced them. The good news is that there is TONS of kosher wine options now for the mass kosher market. The problem is that many of those options are poor – for those with a slightly advanced palate and/or desire for the good things in life. The bad news is that they cost a lot and there are fewer and fewer QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) wines in the kosher wine market. For example, while I think that the baseline Herzog wines are fine, they are not QPR winners, because they lack quality. The response I normally hear to that comment is one of two: they taste fine to me or you get what you pay for. Lets break those two down:

Not everyone is a wine snob like me and I am fine with that – but there is still a grade that most can agree on and while the baseline Herzog wines are fine wines – they are not quality wines. The Herzog reserve wines are quality wines to me – but they are more expensive. When I talk with people in the industry, both on the sale side and the wine production side, they comment that it is hard to make a kosher wine that is also reasonably priced. Clearly the high costs of the grapes, production, and all things California make it costly, but this is not a problem in the world of non-kosher wines. Take a gander at the plethora of California options that the Wine Enthusiast scored highly. Clearly the lack of QPR kosher California wines is not tied to the high cost of living in California. Whatever the reason, it is sad to see, but there are other regions where kosher QPR does live well. Another revelation from my time in the aisles, was that some decide on what they will buy based upon the very purpose for why it is being bought. An average wine is quality enough for a guest to a house that sees grape juice and wine as one the same, while a Yarden Katzrin may not be quality enough for one visiting the house of a wine maker or boss. Of course those may be extremes in each direction, but while I stood in the aisle and helped folks find kosher wine – the criteria continued to revolve around – price, purpose, flavor, pairing, and then quality – if ever.

Another interesting criteria that I have heard about – though one that I did not notice or hear when standing in the aisle, is the love affair with wine consumers and labels! It is something that I find myself doing when buying beer – and it is a criteria that some consumers use when faced with the all daunting task of buying wine from a wall of options.

My take away from these experiences, was the continued affirmation that while I believe I am on the pursuit of wine knowledge and experiences, the vast majority see the beverage as a tool or condiment to their own pursuits. This is much the same realization that hit me while I gained knowledge in the world of computers. While I found breaking down and rebuilding of computers to be an honest and well paying pursuit others saw the very kernel of my self-satisfaction as nothing more than madness, as computers were simply a tool to simplify their own pursuits. Surely, this is not a revelation to many – but it is a fact that needs to be repeated to those that drink from the cup of wine plenty. To remind us all – that we are not the norm, and while wineries and wine makers may find solace in what we write and preach – they realize (and so should we) that we are not the saviors or upholders of the common winery – that would be the folks looking blankly in the wine aisle.