Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Baba Basra 96b - Grape Juice from Concentrate

The gemara discusses wine that is made from sediment concentrate and concludes that it would depend on whether it yields more wine than the water that was put in. The Shulchan Aruch (204:5) paskens that with strong wines we allow as much as 3 parts water for one part juice to require hagafen. If there is less than that ratio, or with our wines that are weak we make shehakol since the wine taste very diluted. The rule is that we measure based on the custom to mix wine in every particular location. In short, if the adding of water will yield more wine than water so that we are sure that it contains some juice AND it taste like wine, we consider the entire mixture to have the status of wine and make hagafen.
Based on this, it would seem that grape juice made from concentrate which has the full taste of the regular grape juice, should also be a borei p'ri hagafen see the actual concentrate contributes to the amount of wine at a significant ratio (20%).
However, R' Shlomo Zalman has a very interesting teshuva (mincha shlomo 1:4) http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=15096&st=&pgnum=45 where he explains that grape juice may be different than actual wine. The only reason we make hagafen on grape juice is because it has the capacity to ferment and develop into wine, so that even if that process is disabled by cooking it, it still retains its status of pri hagafen. Therefore, the chiddush that we find by wine that it has the capacity to turn even the water that is mixed into it, into wine, may only apply to actual wine but not to grape juice. Based on this he concludes that grape juice concentrate that is mixed with water to restore the taste of grape juice at a ratio of 4 to 1 (20% juice, 80% water), would not be considered wine. He submits that regarding the bracha rishona, one should make hagafen since the bracha rishona is completely dependent upon the taste and grape juice concentrate after being mixed with water tastes exactly like actual juice that is squeezed from the grape. But, it is not considered wine so that the bracha achrona should be borei nefashos since he only drank a ri'vi'is of water, not of wine. Similarly when it comes to kiddush, R' Shlomo Zalman says that since many rishonim don't allow even wine that is mevushal, although we rely on the rosh to permit mevushal wine for kiddush, that is only due to the fact that it doesn't undergo a change for the worse. But when it is boiled to the point that it reduces its quantity by 1/5 and is turned into concentrate, it is passul for kiddush at that point since it isn't even fit to drink, so the adding of water should not be able to restore it into being wine once again.

1 comment:

Avi Lebowitz said...

There are those who are machmir not to use regular grape juice. This seems to be against the gemara 97a on the bottom that says that yayin mi'gito is kasher even li'chatchila for kiddush. However, their justification is the rashbam 97b d.h. yayin koseis, who says that the rationale behind using yayin mi'gito is that it will ferment and turn to wine. Therefore, grape juice which has additives that prevent natural fermentation may be unfit for kiddush. But, it seems more logical to assume that even if the fermentation process is dwarfed, it is still the type of juice that will normally ferment and therefore considered wine even before it ferements.