Manischewitz, Mézes Mály, and Me
by bryce wiatrak
The first wine I ever tasted was Manischewitz. I was five or six, and I drank it from a miniature plastic cup in the lobby of Congregation Shalom in the Milwaukee suburbs. Two tables, draped in gently purple-stained white cloth, awaited members after Rosh Hashanah services. One held shots of grape juice for the children, and the other the good (?) stuff for their parents. My father offered me a sip of the adult libation, and upon witnessing my disgust explained to me that wine was an acquired taste. That taste I have now more than acquired—it pays my rent and consumes my near every thought. But a taste for Manischewitz? My feelings there haven’t wavered.
As a young Jewish American, fresh into my studies of wine, I would utter an internal sigh each time I read of some monk who reshaped the wine world. Dom Pérignon. Scala Dei. Clos Vougeot. The catalog of Christianity’s contributions to the history of wine reads like a wish list for my dream cellar. Even my new home of California owes its viticultural roots to Junípero Serra and his fellow Franciscan Fathers. But we members of the tribe get…Manischewitz. It didn’t help that the second winery I ever visited (thankfully, I’d studied in Tuscany the summer before and enjoyed a Pecorino-fueled tour of San Felice) fell on my Birthright trip to Israel—where 40 some-odd Jewish kids, my older sister, and I were shepherded to a pomegranate winery. I didn’t know squat about wine then—but I knew that this hardly counted. It would take years before I understood how completely unrepresentative of Israeli wine culture, one that’s observed a magnificent transformation over the past two decades, that pomegranate winery was.
To backtrack a moment, to whomever is reading this essay it might seem that I am deeply in touch with my Jewish heritage. In truth, I haven’t entered a synagogue since my little sister’s Bat Mitzvah. Like many secular, millennial Jews, my relationship with my religious ancestry is complicated—fluctuating between affirmation, disavowal, but most often finding some shade in between. Yet, despite how American I feel, it’s difficult to fully shake a vestigial sentiment of otherness. When first falling in love with wine, that small voice of the outsider offered a slow crescendo—as if I was studying someone else’s industry, and not my own. I wanted Dom Ruinart to be mine, not Manischewitz.
That feeling changed when I went to Tokaj. The summer following my graduate studies, I embarked on a six-week voyage through Europe’s greatest vinous hits. The trip involved taking my first sips of DRC from cask, eating at the chef’s table at Osteria Francescana, celebrating my 25 th birthday on Pantelleria, and toasting summer adieu with a glass of rosé in Provence. Alright, (not-so) humble brag over. But without question, Tokaj is the leg I will always value most.
My older sister—the same one who also experienced the unfortunate pomegranate winery—joined me in Hungary. Our mission was twofold: we both have a sweet tooth (and my sister delighted in the prospect of drinking wine from a spoon), but also we have Hungarian ancestry through our father’s maternal line and family in Budapest we’d never met. My grandmother told me that Tokaji Aszú was the favorite drink of my great-grandfather, who fortuitously fled his homeland for the United States in the 1920s. He made his exit alone—and many of our Hungarian relatives later perished. Others did not, and one, my great aunt, survived Auschwitz and lived to be 98. She was unwell when my sister and I reached Budapest, but her daughter showed us where our great-grandfather prayed, worked, lived, ate, drank.
I thought of him as my sister and I drove to Mád, a short two hours from Budapest. When we arrived, we were surprised to find a synagogue. A winemaker shared with us that Mád once boasted a vibrant Jewish community, and one that was entirely eradicated during World War II. Beginning in late 18 th century, Jews served a critical role in developing the Tokaj region, as merchants and winemakers. An estimated 80% of Mád’s fabled vineyards were owned by Jewish families at one time in the 1800s, an era when the region’s wines filled the glasses of nobility across the continent. Royal Tokaji today occupies several of the buildings once owned by the Zimmerman family—a highly influential Jewish winegrowing dynasty. With few Jews present in Mád today, this history is easy to miss, but one that I was grateful to see lamented.
Many memorable incidents transpired during those 48 hours with my sister in Tokaj. Our rental service drove us to the car lot in a windowless van, the experience more reminiscent of an abduction sequence in a horror film than an airport shuttle. We ate countless bowls of beet risotto, seemingly the only vegetarian offering on any Hungarian menu. One winemaker tried to divert us from returning to our lodging—an attempt to cover up a tryst with his assistant at our hotel spa. We tasted more great wines than I can relay, witnessed the aszú harvest firsthand, and tasted eszencia free run from the tap.
These memories, I will always cherish. But most important, in Tokaj I finally felt as if the great tradition of wine held a place for my people too. And if my history were intertwined with that of wine, I wanted my future to be as well. I only hope that everyone can enjoy such a moment of inclusion in some corner of the wine world. For me, it was in that instant that I knew I wanted to be a Master of Wine—a program that approaches the subject globally and from every angle. If I’ve learned anything in this journey so far, it’s the humbling notion that any wine from anywhere has its place—Manischewitz included, and perhaps even pomegranate wine. And just as every wine has its place, so does every person.