David Edelman: The Art Restorer of California Kosher Wine
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
By Gamliel Kronemer
About 20 years ago I remember brainstorming some ideas with wine writer Joshua London on getting high-end California wineries to start producing kosher wine. At the time there were only a handful of players in California: Herzog, Hagafen and the now-defunct Gan Eden. (Covenant was in business but had not yet released their first vintage.) London laid out a plan to start an organization to promote and facilitate the production of kosher wine at non-kosher wineries. I agreed that his plan had merit, but neither of us were ready to quit our day jobs, move out to California and throw caution to the wind. This conversation would, though, pop into my head when I first heard about the work of winemaker David Edelman.
Edelman, who was described by Andrew Breskin, proprietor of LiquidKosher.com, as “kosher winemaker to the stars,” is a young, enthusiastic, religiously observant winemaker who has carved a unique niche for himself making kosher wine for some of California’s most prestigious wineries. “I have a consulting company,” Purple Fox Wine Consulting, explained Edelman, “and the pitch is that I can make kosher wine for you and don’t need to be babysat” when working at a winery. Edelman feels that his work is like that of an “art restorer, not an artist. I go to each individual winery and work with them to mimic their style at their place with their teams.”
Edelman got his start in wine at a very young age. “I grew up in Oakland, California, so I was around the wine industry for a long time,” he explained. “I was in the Israeli Army before college, and when I came back, I called up my friend Jonathan Hajdu [winemaker at Covenant Wines and Hajdu Wines] and asked, ‘Can I work for you?’ and he said, ‘Sure.’ And from there I worked my way up the chain.”
Making wine became an outlet for his need to do physical labor. “My degree is in military history, but I have too much ADD not to work with my hands, so I monetized my hobbies and I worked in wine and I worked in sports … for a long time … nine years at the Oakland A’s baseball team, and a few years in football and college basketball, but I was also making wine the entire time.”
at Covenant Wines and Hajdu Wines
After working with Hajdu for a few years, Edelman started working with Dan Levin, a talented winemaker who started kosher wine programs at a few of Napa’s most prestigious wineries. “A lot of credit has to be given to Dan Levin,” said Edelman. “He is the guy who started a lot of the high-end kosher [at] non-kosher wineries. We work very closely together and when we need another person we help each other out. He really started all of this, and we have worked together since 2015.”
Edelman currently works on kosher wine programs at nine California wineries—some of them in concert with Levin, and others on his own. “It is a full-time job for me. … During the harvest I can put in 20 hour days, including driving, and I try to limit myself to a maximum of six wineries in a day.”
Many of Edelman’s clients are world-famous wineries such as Mayacamas, Marciano and the Napa Valley Reserve (which has a six-figure membership fee that one needs to pay in order to buy their wines), while others are newer wineries, such as Broad Branch. Many of the wines Edelman makes sell for upwards of $400. “I think one of the funnier things is working with very distinguished, famous wineries,” said Edelman, “and I’ve had to very kindly explain to them that while they are justifiably famous in the non-kosher world, in the kosher world nobody knows who you are.”
It is not merely skill and happenstance that have allowed Edelman to develop such an impressive client list. According to Breskin, Edelman is “very focused on his craft and has exceptional attention to detail. This allows him to move with ease in the company of the highest-end Napa winery owners and winemakers and quickly gain their confidence.”
Currently Edelman has enough clients that he can be selective when taking on new projects “I prefer people who are in it for the right reasons, usually wineries with a Jewish owner who wants to make kosher wine because of some kind of connection with Judaism,” he said. “I think that is lovely, and in the long run that leads to a much healthier relationship than people who are just in it for the money.
“I very, very rarely do [one-time] kosher runs. I build kosher wine programs,” he elaborated. “The reason is mainly financial. The labor costs stay the same [to produce a kosher wine], and say you are making cabernet, you have to sit on it for three years before it hits the market. If it sells well, and you did not make another vintage, you’ll have to wait another three years” before another kosher vintage can hit the market.
“It takes about 10 years,” said Edelman, for a winery to develop a mature kosher wine program. “Every single winery I work with takes a lot of pride in their kosher production. At Mayacamas for example it is bottled with the exact same label, with just an OU sticker on the back. In fact, at Mayacamas the entire sauvignon blanc and rosé production is kosher. They trust me and know I will do a good job with it.
“I have a key to most of these places, and [the winery staff] are more than happy to help me set up and clean up. Part of that—and this is something I learned from Dan [Levin]—is that you have to show that you are willing to fully set up and clean up after yourself. The sense of professionalism at these high-end wineries is extremely high, but once you show you can hold your own, people are extremely helpful.
“As you get to the top of the quality pyramid, what differentiates wines is nuance, and you get nuance through layering” of flavor and aroma elements, said Edelman. “A lot of that is done through barrel programs, fermentation programs, vessel usage, etc. What we have tried to do over the last 10 years, using Mayacamas Vineyards as an example, is to create micro-versions of the different versions that we use [in blending] to create the non-kosher. I will do almost 20 different picks there [of grapes from different parts of the vineyards] because that is their style. They will typically do almost 100 different picks.
“So, we do a microcosm of that” and then blend it to produce something in the wineries’ signature styles. We are often left with more wine than we need and that gets taken into the non-kosher program … we can make 10 times [of kosher wine] of what we need to bottle.” Edelman also noted that “we tend to get [grapes] from the better vineyards at almost all of the places we work, because if you are not going to be able to use as many vineyards you might as well use your best stuff.”
Edelman has developed strong professional and personal relationships with the staff at the wineries he works with. “I have had zero issues on the kosher side,” he added. “Everyone treats it as an academic challenge … it’s like they’re saying, ‘I am pretty good at making wine; What if I make wine with my hands tied behind my back?’ so [the primary winemakers] think of kosher wine as a fun challenge.”
While many kosher consumers are shocked to learn that there are now kosher wines that sell in excess of $400, in truth these wines sell very well. According to Breskin, who imports and distributes high-end European and California kosher wines through his website, LiquidKosher.com, “the kosher consumers’ curiosity for Napa Wines of the highest level is as strong as it’s ever been. I think it’s because there’s virtually no drop-off in quality between kosher and non-kosher productions once you get to the ultra-premium level.”
In addition to making wine for other wineries, Edelman makes a small amount of wine under his own label. “It’s how I pay for day school,” he joked. He makes his wines under the Otter & Fox label in conjunction with Jonathan Hajdu and sells it through LiquidKosher.com. “ I make pinot blanc and fiano, white wines, and I do cab. [What Hajdu makes] depends on the year, and my own mental bandwidth. I am also not very good at sales. So I try to keep my production low so I don’t end up forgetting to sell it.”
When I asked him if he thought there was space to expand kosher wine production in Napa, he said, “We could use more people. I would love to be in more places, but I am limited in that I have to be at a winery the whole time [during production]. If we had more frum Jewish people that wanted to do this [kind of work] we could expand very easily.”
Not long ago, the idea of top California wineries making kosher wine was merely a pipe dream. Dan Levin and David Edelman have made that dream a reality.
Gamliel Kronemer has been writing for more than 15 years about kosher wine, spirits, cocktails and food in a number of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the Jewish Link Wine Guide. Kronemer lives with his wife, Jessica, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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