From Crown Heights to California Wine Maven
Rabbi Elchonon Tenenbaum, a 30-something Chabad rabbi fresh off the boat from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, moved to Napa Valley four years ago. The rabbi hadn’t seen many vineyards in his life, and he hadn’t drunk much kosher wine outside of the strange, sweet brew made from Concord grapes that gives kosher winemakers a bad name.
But he called me at our winery, and I showed him around the valley. We became friends, and we shared bottles of kosher wine made from high-quality grapes grown in some of Napa’s greatest vineyards. Not surprisingly, the rabbi got bitten by the wine bug. One fall he harvested a few clusters from a friend’s vineyard and crushed the grapes at his house. The resulting wine was pretty good, too — all 12 bottles.