Herschel kosher rosé in store by September
Hirsch started working in the family wine business located in the Yarra Valley in 2018 and became general manager in 2020.
If someone could bottle the enthusiasm of the young they would make a fortune.
Young Ben Hirsch (26 to be exact) bottled his enthusiasm recently when he finally turned the grapes he grows into 6600 bottles of Herschel kosher rosé wine.
It has taken time, but he hopes the results will be worth the wait.
Hirsch started working in the family wine business located in the Yarra Valley in 2018 and became general manager in 2020.
“When I got involved, Hirsch Hill was outsourcing everything. We owned the vineyard, and we outsourced the winemaking, bottling, storage, everything. I wanted to take the business to a new era.”
He hired chief winemaker Peter Mackey and started making their own wine in 2023.
“We have a new site, a new winery, and a much larger facility, which gave us more scope to do other things, part of which is to make some kosher wine as well,” he explained.
He did some research in the industry, talking to a lot of people and identified there was an opportunity in the market for a new brand kosher wine.
“Being connected to the community we found there is certainly a space in the market for us due to the lack of competitive quality in the industry.”
Mackey was making wine in the South of France alongside a large Parisian kosher project and saw endless difficulties involved.
He has seen nothing but positive involvement from Kosher Australia and their dedicated staff.
“It was something that we had to understand from a halachic perspective, yes, and that was all straightforward, Adam Ruschinek from Kosher Australia guided us through every step of the way,” Hirsch said.
Mackey explained that kosher wine has to be pasteurised or boiled as either grape juice or wine at a later stage.
“This is known as the mevushal method. We made a kosher rosé by pasteurising the juice from the shiraz grapes we harvested, and we boiled the juice at 86 degrees temperature.
“Doing this process at juice form doesn’t harm the outcome of the wine. In fact, most large wineries pasteurise as juice form for a safety reason,” he said.
Hirsch said they still make and sell their established non-kosher wines, cabernet, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and shiraz and other varieties under the Hirsch Hill brand.
“The new kosher wines will sell under the new Herschel label. We’re doing it this way as the kosher wines will still be under our company group, but we’re going to call it Herschel, a play on words,” Hirsch added.
He said a lot of wine drinkers consider the idea of kosher wine not up to the standard of non-kosher wine.
“In the Australian wine drinking culture that’s a stigma that I want to challenge, to create good kosher wine,” Hirsch said.
“Our customers should expect to see the Herschel kosher rosé wine on the shelves of their favourite wine stores around August or September this year.”
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