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The ‘Grand Cru Jew’ pours fine wine at Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in the West Village
(New York Jewish Week) — Imagine an Upper West Side seder like any other: adults praying, haggadahs dappled with brisket juice, matzah ball soup a little too salty. Only that’s not a Manischewitz bottle on the table. That’s a magnum of Cru Beaujolais.
For this type of epicurean refinement, it helps to have someone in your family like Dean Fuerth, better known to his Instagram followers as the “Grand Cru Jew.” Though his nickname, derived from the highest designation for Burgundy wines, conjures up images of a “Seinfeld”-ian C-plot, Fuerth, 35, is a serious sommelier with extensive training in French fine dining. Since 2017, he has served as the beverage director for the Sushi Nakazawa empire, helming one of the most robust rare sake lists in the city, if not the world.
Fuerth’s handle comes from his time working as a young wine trainee at the Manhattan restaurant Bouley, where a senior sommelier set up challenges to sell unconventional bottles. One night, Fuerth ended up overselling his goal by about $4,000. “Oui, Grand Cru Jew,” Fuerth says the sommelier enthused — and the nickname stuck.
“It comes up in public,” Fuerth said of his moniker, with pride. “Especially in the wine community.”
Fuerth describes his family as falling into the “liberal Jew category” from the Upper West Side, attending synagogue on the High Holidays. “I have a very strong sense of family identity, personal identity,” he told the New York Jewish Week.
Fuerth was not predestined to become a sommelier — his family hardly consists of wine snobs. Via a phone interview, he tells the story of his aunt, who, at a seder in 2009, opened a bottle of Cupcake Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon. The following year, Fuerth noticed she was pouring the same vintage — she had re-corked last year’s bottle. Fuerth could only laugh.
“I’m now the culinary director for the family,” said Fuerth, half-joking.
In a family of lawyers, pursuing a fine dining career was unheard of; what’s more, sommelier isn’t a traditional Jewish profession. As wine writer Alice Feiring said last year: “It’s hard to tell your parents ‘I’m not going to medical school or law school, I’m going to be a wine waiter.’”
In the mid-aughts, Fuerth was pursuing a degree in film at Hunter College, but he dropped out after a year to become a production assistant on shows like “Law and Order” and “30 Rock.” To pay his bills, he took a job as a barback and busboy at the Upper West Side restaurant Bella Blu, a job he readily admits — with typical service industry candor — he wasn’t particularly good at. But he was able to handle bottles, a skill that gave him some currency in the wine world.
In 2010, he was off to a higher-paying gig as a server at Bar Boulud, the Burgundy wine bar at Lincoln Center run by celebrity chef Daniel Boulud. Under the auspices of the beverage director Michael Madrigale, Fuerth opened new bottles every night, giving him a crash course in the catalog of French wines. Fuerth still has an encyclopedic knowledge of this time: He recounts the exact bottle — a 1999 Cornas August Clape from the Rhone Valley — that kickstarted his ambitions.
“I was having my mind blown by how complex and deep and soulful wine can be,” he said. “Having a curiosity and a passion opened up this whole world.”
That understanding of terroir, how microclimates can impart flavor, intoxicated him. He closed out his film industry chapter for good and embarked upon what he called “French military” fine dining training. The culture privileges conformity over creativity — but Fuerth didn’t conform.
“Dean had that pirate mentality,” said Madrigale. “He’s like a New Yorker, straight up. When he gets it in his mind he wants to do something, he does it.”
Madrigale remembers a time when Fuerth, as a server, had sold enough wine to entitle him to a free meal at the upscale restaurant. He chose the decadent duck confit. “He was going to sit down and eat in the dining room, while other people are waiting for him to serve them,” Madrigale said, still astounded by Fuerth’s chutzpah. “I think even Daniel [Boulud] said, ‘Well he’s doing really well, let him do it.”’
Madrigale became a mentor to Fuerth, who began his formal wine training and accompanied Madrigale on a trip to Bordeaux. After Bar Boulud, Fuerth traversed through a Zagat list of the city’s Michelin-starred French fine dining outposts as a self-described wine “mercenary.” He landed one of his first sommelier gigs in 2014 at Bouley, the now-closed French joint from Chef David Bouley in Tribeca. His first beverage director gig came the following year at Betony, in Midtown.
“I was able to open up some of the craziest, most expensive bottles,” he said of his time at Bouley. “And I got my butt kicked.”
He arrived at Sushi Nakazawa first as a fan-boy diner. Nakazawa opened in the West Village in 2013 as a 10-seat omakase spot that was immediately lauded as one of the best Japanese restaurants in the city. Pete Wells, in his initial 4-star review for the New York Times, heralded Daisuke Nakazawa’s cookery: “The moment-to-moment joys of eating one mouthful of sushi after another can merge into a blur of fish bliss.”
He approached them for a job, and in 2017, became their beverage director. Fuerth was thrown into a new role: sake expert. “It’s a completely different animal,” Fuerth said of the rice alcohol; his French wine training proved non-transferrable.
How did the Grand Cru Jew fare? “It was a steep and harsh learning curve,” he admits. Fuerth began looking for low acid, richer grapes like Condrieu to compare with sake.
Buying sakes also proved opaque. The echelon of sake producers Fuerth was working with required a certain level of trust among buyers due to their microscopic scale. Take, for example, Dassai’s “Beyond the Beyond” Junmai Daiginjō. A known producer of high-end sake, Dassai started a contest in 2019 among Japanese farmers cultivating the very specific Yamada-Nishiki grain. After machine analysis and DNA testing, the company chose to buy just one plot of land for this sake. They made 23 bottles and sent just four to America. Nakazawa is selling their bottle for $19,000.
“Sake should be consumed at the right environment, at the right temperature and tell the story of what makes it special,” he said.
Fuerth has certaintly caught up: Just last week, World of Fine Wine selected Sushi Nakazawa as the best sake list in North America.
Now six years in, Fuerth’s conception of wine pairings has evolved, too. He matches high-ticket Burgundy and Champagne with new age bottles from places like Hungary and Quebec, all with a Japanese palate in mind. He has overseen Nakazawa’s expansion to Washington, D.C., as well as a pop-up in Aspen, Colorado, and will be continuing onto a new location in Los Angeles.
It’s not unusual for diners at Nakazawa to spend four figures on a bottle. Is it mind-blowing to regularly sell bottles the price of a used car? “I’m a little numb to it at this point,” Fuerth said.
It’s all a far cry from the Cupcake wine Fuerth’s aunt served at the seder years ago (although Fuerth admits to drinking Manischewitz at synagogue).
The day after our conversation, Fuerth was set to depart New York for Bordeaux, as part of a trip organized by a wine distributor to some of the most storied, cloistered chateaus of the region. There they would open decades-old bottles that had never left the vineyard.
“It never gets old,” Fuerth said. “I feel like a kid again.”
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The post The ‘Grand Cru Jew’ pours fine wine at Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in the West Village appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rabbi Zvi Kogan, the Chabad rabbi murdered in the UAE, remembered by close friend with roots in Montreal
Rabbi Zvi Kogan, the Chabad rabbi who was murdered in the United Arab Emirates last week, was a gregarious and kind person who had an infectious smile, recalled Rabbi Yehuda […]
The post Rabbi Zvi Kogan, the Chabad rabbi murdered in the UAE, remembered by close friend with roots in Montreal appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Will Show ‘Zero Tolerance’ for Lebanon Ceasefire Violations, Defense Chief Tells UN Envoy
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel will have “zero tolerance” for any breach of a ceasefire deal in Lebanon and is prepared to act “with great force” in response to any such violations, Israel’s defense chief said on Tuesday.
“We will act against any threat, anytime, and anywhere,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN’s special envoy for Lebanon, when meeting her in Tel Aviv, according a statement from his office.
Katz also demanded “effective enforcement” from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the international peacekeeping organization in the country.
“If you don’t do it, we will, and with great force,” he said, according to the Israeli readout.
“Every house in southern Lebanon that is rebuilt and in which a terrorist base is established will be demolished, every rearming and regrouping by terrorists will be attacked, every attempt to smuggle weapons will be thwarted, and every threat to our forces or Israeli citizens will be immediately destroyed,” the Israeli defense chief added in his meeting.
Katz’s comments came hours before Israel’s security cabinet was expected to approve a ceasefire after nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist group that wields significant influence across Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been launching barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel from neighboring Lebanon almost daily since Oct. 8 of last year, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of the Jewish state from Gaza to the south.
The relentless attacks from Hezbollah have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes in the north, and Israel has pledged to ensure their safe return.
Israel had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah but drastically escalated its military operations over the last two months, seeking to push the terrorist army further away from the border with Lebanon.
The US and France have been seeking to broker a ceasefire for months.
Diplomacy has largely focused on restoring and enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for Hezbollah’s withdrawal to north of the Litani River (around 30 km, or 19 miles, from the Israeli border) and the disarmament of its forces in southern Lebanon, with the buffer zone under the jurisdiction of the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.
Israel has insisted on retaining the right to conduct military operations against Hezbollah if the group attempts to rearm or rebuild its infrastructure — a stipulation that has met resistance from Lebanese officials, who argue it infringes on national sovereignty. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon has said Israel would maintain an ability to strike southern Lebanon under any agreement.
During his meeting with the UN’s special envoy for Lebanon on Tuesday, Katz stressed that the implementation of the ceasefire must include effective enforcement and oversight, including preventing arms smuggling and domestic arms production by Hezbollah.
Retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi — who leads the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of former military commanders — recently told The Algemeiner that any deal must include Iran’s “full exit” from Lebanon and Israel’s freedom of action to prevent any future buildup of Hezbollah. Otherwise, he warned, the agreement would be “devastating” for the Jewish state.
Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters the proposal under discussion would entail an Israeli military withdrawal from south Lebanon and regular Lebanese army troops deploying in the border region, long a Hezbollah stronghold, within 60 days.
He added that a sticking point over who would monitor compliance with the ceasefire was resolved in the last couple days, with an agreement to set up a five-country committee, including France and chaired by the United States.
Nabih Berri, the Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese parliamentary speaker, has been leading the Iran-backed terrorist group’s mediation efforts.
According to reports, Hezbollah will relocate its “heavy weapons” north of the Litani River as part of the expected ceasefire, and Israel has pledged to limit military action against violations by the Iranian proxy to situations where the Lebanese military fails to neutralize the threat, and only after consulting with the US.
In Washington, DC, American officials said on Monday that a truce was close but finalized.
“We don’t believe we have an agreement yet. We believe we’re close to an agreement. We believe that we have narrowed the gaps significantly, but there are still steps that we need to see taken. We hope that we can get there,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a press briefing.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby expressed similar sentiments.
“We’re close,” he told reporters, but “nothing is done until everything is done.”
The post Israel Will Show ‘Zero Tolerance’ for Lebanon Ceasefire Violations, Defense Chief Tells UN Envoy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Across Europe, Australia, and the West, Another Front Has Been Opened in the War Against Jews
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched its latest part of a genocidal war on Israel, terrorizing, massacring, and raping innocent civilians. This attack was part of a broader war, as terror groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq and Syria target the Jewish State — all coordinated by the chief terror architect, Iran. Including the Iranian-funded terror gangs in the West Bank, Israel is now fighting on seven different fronts against enemies committed to its destruction.
But there is an eighth front too — one that extends far beyond the Middle East.
In Amsterdam, Jewish and Israeli soccer fans were violently targeted and attacked in what can only be described as a pogrom.
One day before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany’s mass pogrom in 1938, in Amsterdam — the same city where Anne Frank hid from Nazi persecution — Jews had to once again hide from mobs seeking to harm them.
This is not normal or acceptable.
While some tried to falsely argue this riot — and so many others like it — are about opposition to Israel, that’s not true. Attacks outside synagogues, and against any Jew — before their view on Israel is even known — proves this targets our religion, not any country or state.
Antisemitism has been on the rise for decades. The October 7 massacre was not fueled primarily by political grievances, but by deep primal hatred — the same hatred driving antisemitism globally today.
Antisemitism is known as the “oldest hatred,” because at any given time in history, Jews have been targeted either for their religion, culture, ethnicity, or beliefs.
Today, this hatred is often expressed by attacking “Zionism”, the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland, Israel. (A homeland that was needed, because people tried to kill Jews everywhere else they have ever lived.)
This hatred of Jews spans the political spectrum. Extremists from the far-left to the far-right, who otherwise oppose each other, unite in their disdain for Jews. For example, white supremacist David Duke has voiced support for anti-Israel protests, citing a shared hatred of “Jewish supremacism.”
This has been made worse by the trend toward weak leadership and moral confusion prevalent in Western democracies, which fails to distinguish between aggressors and their victims.
France, the UK, and Canada have initiated limited arms embargoes on Israel, claiming concern about supposed violations of international humanitarian law. Yet 17% of all France’s arms exports go to Qatar — an actual human rights violator and key sponsor of Hamas.
Meanwhile, the Australian government often claims that it is a steadfast friend of Israel, yet its actions belie that description. It continues to reverse longstanding bipartisan positions by voting in favor of biased and one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.
Today, Australia ahistorically labels Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, and the West Bank as “Occupied Palestinian territory,” signaling to the Palestinians that negotiations aren’t necessary and everything they want is theirs by right without any need to compromise.
Australia even doubled its funding to UNRWA, despite UNRWA’s long history of spreading antisemitic propaganda and incitement to violence through its schools, and UNRWA employees’ direct involvement in the October 7 atrocities.
Australia says that Israel must listen to the international community. Yet it was that same international community that facilitated much of the funding that let Hamas turn Gaza into a giant terror base. The international community also allowed Hezbollah to build up a massive rocket arsenal in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701, meant to both disarm Hezbollah and keep it well away from Israel’s border.
The current Australian government is suddenly obsessed with trying to force a two-state solution right now, as if this is currently feasible with Hamas controlling Gaza and the corrupt Palestinian Authority having lost control of many of the cities of the West Bank. The message of this obsession is to reward Hamas’ terrorism on October 7, and encourage the Palestinian leadership to continue the rejectionism with which it has met every two-state peace offer Israel has ever made.
The Australian government’s calls on Israel for restraint and ceasefires, as if Israel initiated the October 7 conflict, while demanding comparatively little of Hamas, help fuel the “eighth front” war against the Jews.
When Jews are afraid to walk their own streets, when Jewish students are unable to go to university campuses, when Jews are abused in the streets of Townsville and cars are defaced in Sydney, it is a sign that the social cohesion that Australia likes to boast about has been eroded.
Israel is not above criticism, and criticizing its policies is perfectly legitimate, as it would be to criticize any country. However, such critics cross a line when they apply a double standard to Israel to which no other country is subjected, all while ignoring the unique security challenges it faces.
Western leaders who fail to clearly support democratic partners like Israel embolden those who wish to destroy all of us, and their weakness in confronting domestic manifestations of antisemitism makes Jewish communities worldwide vulnerable to hatred and violence.
Long after the guns fall silent along the seven fronts on which Israel is fighting, the eighth front will continue to rage, fueled by weak leadership that lacks both the wisdom to tell the difference between right and wrong, and the courage to confront the world’s oldest hatred.
Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
The post Across Europe, Australia, and the West, Another Front Has Been Opened in the War Against Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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