My apologies to all, and my last word on the subject. And I accept the award, walking down the runway, crying tears of joy while clutching my award.
Elie:
Interesting discussion here, and interesting that it has morphed into this machlokes. The fact is, I think, that we have no machlokes, and that we're saying vaery much the same thing in different ways:
1. The OU does in fact rely on Rav Moshe's shita:
"Contemporary poskim address two major questions about Yayin Mevushal (cooked wine). The first is: To what temperature must the wine have been heated to classify it as “cooked”? This is a subject of dispute. The OU’s policy is to follow the opinion of Rav Moshe Feinstein and require a cooking temperature of 175 degrees F. The second question is: Can we consider pasteurized wine to be Mevushal? Maran Hagaon Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and [l’havdil bein chayyim l’chayyim] Rav Elyashiv maintain (for different reasons) that wine is not to be considered Mevushal merely by dint of being pasteurized. The prevalent practice in America is to follow the opinion of Rav Moshe Feinstein, who maintains that pasteurized wine is indeed Mevushal."
http://www.oukosher.org/index.php/commo ... sekeepers/
Yes, but the lechatchila position is 185. At least, that is what has always been required of me and those I know in the California wine industry.
[quote2. I'm pretty sure that the Tzelemer Rav's shita of 90C/194F applies to grape juice. For wine, presumably it would be lower. In any event, your observation about wine having to be 14.85% alcohol is misplaced.
][/quote]
The physical chemistry is well known. Solutes raise the actual boiling point. Grape juice would have a significantly higher boiling point than water, by virtue of the fact that there is so much dissolved sugar. Therefore, if the 90 degree C temperature is specifically for grape juice (with a higher boiling point than water), and the same relationship is maintained with wine (the temperature required decreases [alcohol/water is a mixture of liquids, as opposed to a lovent/solute relationship], as the boiling point decreases to below the boiling point of water), then it tends to prove my point-- and the temperature the Tzelemer requires may actually be no different than the 185 the OU seems to require in fact (as opposed to the the lower temperature they require as stated in the literature). If at 194, only alcohol/water at higher than 14.85% will boil at standard pressure, then at lower temperatures still, only progressively higher alcohol mixtures will boil.
This is a serious machlokes with the gedolei haposkim having weighed in with various opinions. I'm not aware of any shita that wine must reach a rolling boil (ma'ale ababuos) to be considered mevushal. The question is, how hot is considered "cooked." The majority opinion of rishonim is that it must be nechsar--some must be lost to evaporation. (The minority opinion is that any "heated" wine is mevushal even if it's not nechsar.) Rav Moshe's opinion is a big chidush as he extrapolates from hilchos shabos where yad soledes is considered mevushal to wine, where it must be nechsar. Most poskim require that it reach a point where it begins to simmer--i.e., evaporate rapidly. The debate among poskim (aside from Rav Moshe and those--like Rav Auerebach and Rav Elyashiv--who hold that the color and/or taste of the wine must be affected) is at what temperature is there sufficient evaporation to be considered nechsar.
Again, the physical chemistry is clear. A "simmer" occurs in a vessel when the heated layer of liquid reaches the boiling point, when the liquid above may or may not be quite there yet (it must be really close or the bubbles will not get near the top surface. At the boiling point, increased heat increases the rate of boiling, not the temperature of the liquid. We're therefore talking about the boiling point when we talk about a simmer. The wine evaporates rapidly at temperatures leading up to a simmer as well. The definition of a temperature lower than the boiling point at which wine evaporates rapidly vs. slowly indeed is arbitrary. When one sees steam rising off a pot, it is not the vapor but rather the condensate which one sees. Aqueous liquids evaporate even at room temperature , but more as the temperature rises. If one placed a condenser over a pot, one would see the condensation of the vapor. Since we know this the point at which we define loss to evaporation, or evaporating rapidly, is arbitrary. Since it was well known even in Rav Moshe's time, there would presumably be no machlokes between Rav Moshe and the other poskim, except the question of simmering. And as I said earlier, the simmering occurs very close to or identically to the time when the entire pot is in thermal equilibrium at the boiling point. Any point along the way could theoretically be considered cooking.
(Regarding what you said about l'chatchila/b'dieved, Rav Moshe cites 3 different temperatures for yad soledes l'chumra: 160, 165, and 175. Interestingly, OU follows the most stringent when it comes to wine even though OU follows 165 for shabos and kashering through iruy.)
I stand corrected. I thought 160 was a bedieved position, you say it is lechatchila.
[quoteThus, contrary to your conclusion, the choices that should be made are 1) temperature and 2) duration/effect on wine's taste and color--with longer cooking necessary to satisfy Rav Aurebach and Rav Elyashiv's shita. (As an aside, many have already pointed out that Rav Elyashiv's shita is based on misinformation--he writes that he was told that commercial wine is routinely pasteurized, which is simply wrong.) Since almost no one is machmir on 2, the difference between the hechsherim is on 1.][/quote]
I do not know how many mevushal wines carried Rav Auerbach's hechsher, but if any, I am not certain that their shitta fulfils their purpose in this regard, though in many cases, it probably does. But if accomplished through modern continuous processes in a closed system, Rav Auerbach (Zt"l) and Rav Elyashiv (Zt'l) only presume that there has been a noticeable effect, unless the wine is tasted before and after to ascertain the change. It all comes down to the reason for the enactment of wine bishul in the first place-- that the wine must be worse than would be dedicated to idols, or later, worse than would be normally served to nonJews socially. Assuming that the desired flavor is the one before bishul, the presumption is that bishul would somewhat change the flavor profile, making it what we can define as "worse". However, bishul is now factored into the profile of the initial wine, so that if carefully done, changes can be predictable enough to even make the wine "better", bringing it up to the desired flavor profile, even with low technology equipment. I do understand that they did not hold that most mevushal wines were, in fact mevushal.
Thanks, Elie, for this fun and hopefully informative (on both sides) conversation. I hope you see better, now, that we were really saying much the same thing in different ways, and are not at odds at all.
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