Manischewitz

Did You Know?

• The company was fined $1 million in 1991 for price fixing.
• Between 1982 and 1986, Manischewitz colluded with two other matzo producers to fix prices during Passover.

History

Before the mid-1800s, matzo was usually baked in synagogue ovens built for that purpose. After that, small bakeries with specialized machines took over, but the flatbread was still hard for poorer families to get. Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz changed that in 1888 when he founded his company in Cincinnati, Ohio. He created a machine that cut and baked matzo into a shape that was easy to package and ship, which lowered costs and made it much more available to Jewish Americans. The company went public in 1923 and stayed that way until a management buyout led by Kohlberg & Company took it private in 1990 for $42.5 million. By 1926, the Cuvier Press Club called it the world’s largest matzo baker and the first American exporter of the bread. To keep production going year-round, the company introduced Tam-Tam crackers in the 1930s—small hexagonal pieces that, according to a book by the founder’s great-granddaughter, are quite different from modern Tam Tams. The original square matzo was a big change from the old method of rolling and trimming edges by hand, and making matzos by machine was itself considered revolutionary. A second plant opened on Bay Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1932 to serve the New York area’s large Jewish community, and the Cincinnati site closed in 1958. In 1990, the company was fined $1 million for price fixing with rivals Streit’s and Horowitz-Margareten. Richard A. Bernstein bought it from KKR in 1998. The name changed to R.A.B. Food Group, LLC in 2004, and today it is called The Manischewitz Company.

Foods

Manischewitz stirred up debate when it started using machines to make matzos instead of doing it by hand. Some rabbis insisted that only a man, not a machine, could produce matzo fit for religious use. The company overcame this by strictly following halakha, and during Passover it has made as many as 851,000 matzos in a single day. In 1984, Manischewitz bought Horowitz-Margareten Matzo and now also makes Goodman matzo and macaroons. Its own label includes cookies, macaroons, pasta, and soups. Other kosher brands under the R.A.B. umbrella include Carmel, Elite, Mother's, Rokeach, Mrs. Adler's, and Tradition. R.A.B. has no hand in Manischewitz wine beyond the name. Starting in 1986, it licensed the brand to the Manischewitz Wine Company, then part of Canandaigua Wine Company (now Constellation Brands). In 2021, E & J Gallo Winery bought the wine brand.

Wine

The Manischewitz winery is located in Canandaigua, New York, and is the property of E & J Gallo, which continues to license the Manischewitz name from R.A.B. Foods. The winery was founded by Leo Star and run by the Star family since 1927. It is best known for its budget concord wine, made from labrusca grapes and combined with a large amount of residual sugar. Concord was popularized by U.S. media as the kosher wine, and it is often used to celebrate Passover. However, Manischewitz's sweet Concord contains corn syrup, which is forbidden during Passover among Ashkenazi Jews; the company produces special Kosher for Passover bottlings sweetened with cane sugar. The sweetness of Manischewitz wine and other kosher wines is often the fodder of jokes, but kosher wine does not have to be sweet. One reason for the prevalence of sweet kosher wine in the U.S. dates back to early Jewish settlers, who needed locally produced kosher wine for Kiddush rituals. Limited grape varieties, limited production time, and a market dominated by hard cider yielded a bitter wine that had to be sweetened to be palatable. Because the sweet Manischewitz variety is so well known, the existence of a thriving kosher wine industry anchored by vineyards in France and Israel is often a surprise to Americans unaccustomed to taking kosher wine seriously. The company has used the slogan 'Man-O-Manischewitz What a Wine!' for advertising, and this campaign is fictionally represented in season five of Mad Men as a new account.