The 2025 production of the Jewish Link Wine Guide was bittersweet for me. My husband, Alexander Kratz, z”l, passed away after a long illness on Tu B’Shevat, February 13, 2025, just as the blind tastings for the wine guide were beginning. While I sat shiva I hardly looked at and barely responded to emails about the magazine, and placed my world of trust into our managing editor, Michal Rosenberg, our contributing editor, Josh London and our copy editor, Cathy Fisher. These editors are not just colleagues; they are dear and cherished friends, and while I wish I hadn’t had to ask them for help, I know they did it without question and with a degree of kindness and sensitivity that I will not forget. I hope we will know no more sorrow, and I am grateful for the many messages of consolation I received from my colleagues and friends in the kosher wine community.

 

Due to my limited time during the shloshim and other various factors, we were unable to spend significant time creating special awards such as wineries of the year or innovator awards, but we plan to return to this model, along with our JewishLink Wine Guide Grand Tasting, in February 2026. Looking at the finalized lists this year, we were pleased with the results and found them to be right on target. We know we are doing something right when we have had our five judges returning for five solid years, including Yossie Horwitz, our founding judge and the initial designer of our blind tastings which we still follow, as well as Greg Raykher, Daphna Roth, Yeruchum Rosenberg and Jeff Katz. A special thanks to Yeruchum, who helped move an incredible amount of boxes into our new tasting space across the hall and who took care of many of the technical details I was unable to complete. We are also glad that Tzvi Sabo returned to us for a second year as our wine guide staff assistant, to help catalog the wines, create the blind tastings, execute set-up and clean-up. He did an admirable job. Tzvi is also an excellent photographer, whose services we will hope to hire again for the Wine Guide Grand Tasting next year.

 

 We are also glad to return to focus on our Israeli wine colleagues and friends with that lead article written by Josh London, with an article on the kosher wines of Burgundy written by Yossie Horwitz, another cover story celebrating Ernie Weir of Hagafen’s half-century of vintages, with pieces by Dr. Kenneth Friedman and Gamliel Kronemer about various new wines coming into kosher distribution from Georgia (in Eastern Europe), as well as a piece I wrote about an old kosher South African winery coming back to worldwide distribution. We are also glad to include a piece about Ya’acov Oryah’s special Israeli wines from Gregory Aubrey of KosherWine.com. While their wines were out of stock as our tastings were beginning, we are glad to include a feature on him regardless.