Lucid Absinthe, the first genuine absinthe to be legal for import and sale in the United States in over 95 years, has acquired kosher certification from the Orthodox Union. After receiving enormous interest in Lucid from consumers who keep kosher, and committed to serving that segment of the market, Viridian Spirits, owners of Lucid, contacted the OU to determine whether Lucid would qualify for the certification. The company was delighted to learn that all of its existing processes and ingredients already were sufficient to achieve Orthodox Union’s hallowed seal.
Koval is a Yiddish word for ‘blacksmith’ or ‘to forge,” but the term has also been used to refer to someone who does something out of the ordinary, or a “black sheep in the family.” It is thus fitting that Sonat Birnecker Hart and Robert Birnecker chose to name their company Koval, since it is not every day that one hears of a Professor of Jewish Studies and a Foreign Deputy Press Secretary leaving their careers to make spirits. Indeed they named the company after Sonat’s great-grandfather, a renegade in his own right, who left Vienna at the turn of the century for Chicago at the age of 17, in search of a new way of life, much to the dismay of his parents and gratitude of later generations, earning him the soubriquet, Koval.
The Orthodox Union receives many inquiries about certification of wine. This is a typical response, as written by Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, Senior Rabbinic Coordinator.
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