How Kosher Wine Survived 2020
By Joshua E. London | March 05, 2021
There is no sugarcoating it. Last year was rough—the pandemic, the lockdowns, the resulting recession, and in some places civil unrest, rising crime and violence, and even a U.S.-EU trade war with tariffs that targeted parts of the drinks trade. There were also the devastating wildfires that hit the Pacific Northwest’s wine country especially hard. (See Gamliel Kronemer’s article on page 13 for more on this.) Fortunately for all of us, kosher wine survived.
In a sense, of course, kosher wine was always going to survive. As Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union kosher division, aptly put it: “The food industry, as a rule, is protected from deep recessions because people have to eat.”