8th Graders Learn How to Make Homemade Vino (Wait, What!)
Winemaker Joseph Zakon took his son’s class on a journey to make kosher wine with the Carbonic Maceration technique.
By COLlive reporter
Wine brands like Kesser, Joseph Zakon Winery, Farbrengen and Seloh have been for years a regular item on the Shabbos tables of frum Jews worldwide.
What is less know is that their creator, Joseph Zakon of Crown Heights, was the youngest person to start a bonded winery on the West End of Long Island back in 1981.
This past months, at the urging of Rabbi Levi Feldman, his son’s teacher at the Oholei Torah boys school, Zakon agrees to teach the youngsters the tricks of the trade.
Although his marrying off a daughter this week, Zakon took the time to purchase California Special brand wine grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese from a local market.
He was showing them a technique called Carbonic Maceration (whole grape berry fermentation) and gave each student a plastic 96 ounce container filled with grapes (stems were removed).
With loosely tightening the cap on the container, they allowed the carbon dioxide to escape during the natural process of fermentation. Fermentation was taking place within the whole berries and some juice that escaped from the grapes on the bottom of the containers pressed or bruised.
The students then had the opportunity to visit the Herzog winery, the largest kosher winery in the world, where they could see their work being processed efficiently on a much larger scale.
After approximately 30 days, the students emptied the grapes and fermenting juices from their plastic bottles into 5-gallon pails.
Zakon then came to their classroom with a modified home juicer (which does not allow the juicer to grind the seeds and skin of the grapes and prevents bitter flavors from the skins and seeds into the wine).
He explained that this juicer can be used for smaller quantities and is less back breaking then the traditional basket press. However the draw back was that he allowed the grape skins not to be pressed completely dry.
Approximately 30-40 days after the wine settled in the class room, Zakon showed the young bochurim the process of racking the wines off the lees and sediment.
The wine they were racking from the top of the container was clean, but had not reached the brilliants one expects from bottled wine.
Joseph explained that for that to happen most efficiently, one can use a fining agent that will blend with the wine. Then as the wine settles this fining agent causes the more stubborn sediments to cling to the fining agent and settle to the bottom of the container.
For this wine, he used a raw egg white of a half egg per 5-gallons.
The students were again fortunate to visit the bottling winery where they experienced up close the speed and efficiency used to bottle wine and grape juice, for the many Jewish communities.
After many months of patiently waiting, the day finally arrived, and the students bottled their wine with the help of a water filter, a single bottle filler connected with plastic tubing, a single bottle corker, an electric hot water kettle, bottles, corks, heat shrink seals.
And perhaps, most importantly, a self-stick label that the children designed using a home computer. They called it “Yain Malchus.”
“They did not get to sip the wine” Oh I am so relieved. According to Vosizneias,
The project began in September with each boy receiving an empty ninety six ounce plastic bottle and three pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grapes and ended in March with each student bottling, corking, labeling and sealing their own bottle of wine. The result? A dry, fruity red Kosher L’Pesach wine, with a sixteen percent alcohol content that, according to Zakon, has a nice flavor now but will improve with age as it develops.
16% alcohol! Holy crap! That’s really strong for wine. At the seders at our house, we use 6.5% wine, otherwise we wouldn’t make it to the end of the seder!
