“We were lucky this time, but this only re-enforces the concept that I spoke about recently at the Agudah Convention,” Rabbi Fishbane said. In the end, the Grey Goose unflavored vodka has a hechsher, and the people consuming it were not drinking a product containing stam yeinum. In addition, the Rav Hamachshir insisted that the entire factory only use this grain alcohol for their unflavored vodka, and actually koshered the machinery beforehand in order to certify the high quality of the hechsher.” The Rav Hamachshir insisted that the product use a special run of grain alcohol from Strasbourg which had supervision. “I quickly called the Rabbanim who we had dealt with in the past, and they informed me that Grey Goose had contracted a special run for the duty-free shops in Israel and that product had a hashgachah.
Little did I know that he was referring to the bruhaha that had developed with Grey Goose,” Rabbi Fishbane told Hamodia. I happened to be in Florida this week, and someone asked me, ‘What’s the story with the vodka?’ I assumed he was speaking about Baluga Gold, which has an issue of alcohol made from a dairy source, which would render it problematic to consume it with meat. Within a short period of time, word travelled (as it usually does via social media) that was problematic. “The office told her that it is not on the approved list, and she posted on social media that it was unapproved. Recently a woman called the CRC office and asked about the kosher status of Grey Goose unflavored vodka. The Rabbanim alerted us to this issue, and as a result of the questionable source of the alcohol, we of course did not put it on our approved list, but did not put it on the unapproved list either, since we had no proof that the source of the alcohol was from grapes.” “Alcohol can be made from a variety of bases, and in France, where grapes are plentiful, there is a probability that it comes from grapes. “When it came to Grey Goose, we heard from two Rabbanim in France, where the vodka is produced, that there may very well be a problem with it. Yet as a community organization, we do publish a list of liquors which are permissible, and we do a tremendous amount of research before we add any item to the list,” Rabbi Fishbane explained. “At CRC, we constantly stress that we recommend that people only purchase products which have a reliable hechsher. The Grey Goose predicament began when someone innocently called Rabbi Fishbane to ask if Grey Goose unflavored vodka is kosher. Nevertheless, it is a lesson as to how careful we have to be, both in what we consume and how we correspond with each other in this day of instant communication.” “This time, we got lucky that despite the fact that we the CRC does not list it on there approved list of liquors, it ended up that there actually was someone providing supervision and there were no ingredients which rendered the product non-kosher. “What occurred with Grey Goose vodka on Thursday clearly shows that our policy of encouraging Yidden to only buy liquors with a reliable hechsher is proper,” said Rabbi Sholem Yehudah Fishbane, Kashrus Administrator for the Chicago Rabbinical Council (CRC).