When you raised your cup of wine for Kiddush last Shabbos, you probably thought producing kosher wine presents no major problem. Just make sure Shabbos-observant Jews handle the wine throughout the process, and there's no more to worry about, right?

   Wrong! Welcome to the high-tech realities of the 1990's!

   The problems arise because, these days, all kosher wine companies (except some in Israel) buy at least some grape juice from non-Jewish plants. This has to be supervised carefully on location from the crushing of the grapes until the bottles are packed or the juice shipped to its destination at kosher wineries.

   Grapes must be harvested at their peak of ripeness at the end of the summer. If not crushed on time, their sugar content declines, affecting the wine's eventual taste. So kosher wine companies need a full team of Shabbos-observant Jewish workers and supervisors to participate through the entire process at a very specific time of year.

   In advance, someone acquainted with the process determines how many Shabbos-observant workers are needed at that plant for the many tasks that require contact, direct or indirect, with the juice or wine. All functions - such as placing grapes into crushers, adjusting switching pumps or any of a multitude of manual valves, dipping into the grape mush for samples to offer non-Jewish quality control experts, adding filtering materials or enzymes - must be performed only by Shabbos observers, who have to know what they are doing and what needs to be done.

   The kashrus agency checks each of these individuals in advance for Shabbos observance, general piety, and responsibility - for the work is intensive and must be completed within a limited time. The team operates under a head mashgiach (kashrus supervisor) who is knowledgeable both in the process and in all Halachic issues involved.

   The kashrus supervisors' first task is to kosherize the plant, which has been used for non-kosher wines. The plants are usually vast factories, with enormous areas of equipment and huge tanks.

   Pasteurization equipment, used for heating the juice to kill germs, presents special problems. Grape-growing country is primarily in California, where water is in short supply. Therefore pasteurization equipment usually uses steam regeneration and return, using the same steam over and over in order to conserve both water and energy.

   To be pasteurized, the juice runs through metal pipes heated either by direct steam or by hot water (itself heated by steam) that flows around the pipes under high pressure in a continuously circulating loop. Of course, water or steam used to heat pipes containing non-kosher juice absorbs some taste from that juice, which disqualifies it for use with kosher juice. So first the equipment must be kosherized with new steam and water, which is then replaced again before kosher juice can be pasteurized.

   Next, after pasteurization, the juice goes into settling tanks where grape sediment settles to the bottom so that clear juice later can be siphoned off. If the juice is not being shipped elsewhere, it ferments for a long time in fermentation tanks, until it becomes wine with the required alcoholic content.

   Although the juice is now cool, it remains in these tanks longer than 24 hours and therefore, according to Halacha, absorbs the taste of whatever the tanks previously held for 24 hours, just as if it is boiled there. Since the tanks have held non-kosher wine, they must be kosherized before use with kosher wine. If they are concrete, which is very porous and absorptive, there is a serious question whether they can be kosherized at all. Most, however, are stainless steel, which is easier to kosherize.

   These tanks are huge - perhaps 10,000 or even 50,000 gallons capacity - for which normal kosherization methods are utterly impracticable. With California's water problem, companies cannot be expected to allow kosherization by filling, then emptying and refilling three times such huge tanks with water for 24 hours each time, which would require an enormous quantity of water. Even more impracticable is "purging" (hag'ala), which requires pouring boiling water directly from a vessel just removed from the fire and running a red-hot object through the boiling water over the entire surface immediately after that.

   Although no compromises can be allowed in kashrus, innovative ways can found to kosherize such equipment while still satisfying the requirements of Halacha. Another important concern is to keep expenses down so that kosher grape juice (often used in soft drinks and as flavoring in candies etc.) should remain at a price comparable or not much pricier than non-kosher juice.

   One possibility for the kosherization process is to use a long hose to spray boiling hot water directly onto all surfaces. This has the advantage of being connected continuously to the boiler where the water is heated. However, its drawback is that it is usually far away - sometimes hundreds of feet - from the boiler, and therefore its use might not be considered pouring boiling water directly from its original heating vessel.

   Another possibility is to use a spray ball or spray arm (which has two rotating nozzles) to spray boiling hot water. Some halachic authorities have sanctioned the use of these if the tank is heated to high temperatures when the water emerges, or else if steam is added as the water emerges (by using a steam generator and mixing valve). Care must be taken that these gadgets spray the boiling water over all surfaces, not only upwards.

   Since these are not Jewish wineries, non-Jewish workers are present on the premises (as is many times the case even in all-kosher wineries). The kashrus supervisors must arrange stringent procedures and precautions to ensure that none of these workers have any contact, even indirect, with the juice and wine during any part of the process, which would disqualify it for kosher use.

   Wine usually is bottled on location, but much of the grape juice is shipped to all-kosher wineries for fermentation into wine. The juice is boiled into concentrate and shipped across the country in huge tanker trucks. These, too, first have to be kosherized with boiling water or steam. After filling, they are sealed so that no one, even the driver, can tamper with the juice during the trip.

   But the kashrus problems arising from wine and grape juice don't end there. Many companies pasteurize and process other fruit and vegetable juices in the same plants used for grape juice, rendering these juices unfit for kosher use. That is why any pasteurized product, including all juices, needs reliable kashrus supervision. Bottling and canning plants, too, often process drinks that include some grape juice or other doubtful ingredient, which is one reason why all soft drinks need kashrus supervision.

   According to one opinion of our Talmudic Sages, the famed fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that Eve gave Adam in the Garden of Eden was the grape. Later, Noah took grapevine shoots with him into the Ark and planted them soon after his dry landing; his first bout of drinking had most unfortunate consequences. But none of them dreamt of the kashrus problems their descendants would have in order to experience the same delight!

   One of the three ways, our Sages tell us, that you can tell a person's true character is when he drinks his wine, for "when wine goes in, secrets come out"! This revelatory quality of wine is also why it serves as an allegory for the deep mystical secrets of the Torah that Mashiach will reveal to us all when he arrives. Besides that allegorical wine, we are eagerly awaiting the "Yayin Hameshumar" - aged wine - that will feature prominently in the great feast after Mashiach's arrival, may it be very soon!

Rabbi Leizer Teitelbaum is a Rabbinic Coordinator at the O. K. Labs.