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Jelínek targets U.S. kosher market

Chilean acquisition secures firm's supply of pears, grapes

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 27th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Rudolf Jelínek hopes that the orchards at its distillery facilities in Quillón, Chile, will bear fruit.
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Kosher legacy

Jelínek has sold kosher liquors, including plum brandy (slivovice) and pear brandy, to the United States since 1934
Slivovice and pear brandy avoid the kosher requirements applied to grape brandy, which is strictly regulated in the Bible because of its wine origin
Jelínek distills its kosher products in the same manner as its normal liquors, but with equipment rinsed to meet kosher standards

The Rudolf Jelínek distillery is moving some of the production of its pear brandy a bit further west from its operations in south Moravia — to South America.
The Czech distiller, which has recorded strong sales in the U.S. market, announced Feb. 19 that it has purchased a fruit brandy manufacturer in Chile, the Southern Hemisphere’s seond-largest pear producing country.
Jelínek hopes that the purchase, which will secure it a supply of high-quality fruit, will eventually allow it to serve the North American market without detours to its base in Vizovice, south Moravia.
The U.S. market is the third most important for Jelínek, right after Slovakia and Austria, said spokeswoman Markéta Matějčná. Jelínek sold 6.6 million bottles of liquor last year.
Much of the U.S. demand comes from the country’s burgeoning market for kosher products, which have moved beyond their base of observant Jewish consumers.
“We export the 5-year-old white and the 10-year-old gold kosher slivovice [to the States], as well as Williams pear brandy and kosher plum vodka,” Matějčná said.
Among the 25 stateside distributors is the Royal Wine Company, also known as Kedem, the largest seller of kosher wines and liquors in the United States (Kedem’s owner, David Herzog, is of Czech origin.) In addition to immigrants living in Illinois familiar with the drink, New Yorkers have developed a taste for Jelínek’s take on slivovice, the Czech plum brandy.
Jelínek has been making kosher-certified products since 1934, and its plum brandy remains a favorite with the local Jewish community in New York, according to the company.
Kosher products are a mainstream phenomenon in the United States, with the total number of packaged goods certified kosher now topping 98,000. Only one in 10 of the 11 million Americans buying kosher products have Jewish heritage.
Jelínek selling kosher liquor is more reflective of the company’s marketing savvy than anything else, said Martin ?řufánek of the Zusy distillery, a small, family-owned competitor to Jelínek, founded in 2000.
“It’s simply a marketing exercise,” he said. “I looked into this a few years ago, but discovered that it requires the payment of hefty fees for the status, while the manufacturing process itself remains almost unchanged.”
Gaining kosher certification requires rigorous attention, Matějčná said.
“We cooperate with the Orthodox Council of Maharal and the largest U.S. authority, the Orthodox Union,” she said.
“To get the certificate, one must fulfill all the rules on kosher production in accordance with the Jewish faith. That means continuous supervision of the production process, beginning with the fruit harvest, through distillation and bottling,” she added.
Pear supply
Beyond offering an improved entry point to the United States, the South American distillery will allow Jelínek to process Chilean pears and wine grapes locally, shipping the final distillate back to the Czech Republic for bottling and packaging.
While there’s no shortage of pears in the Czech Republic, the quality and volume of supplies constantly varied in flux with environmental factors, such as the weather, Matějčná said.
The country’s big processors can’t get the amount of fruit they need on the domestic market, and for them [Czech] fruits are relatively expensive, said Zusy’s ?řufánek.
“By buying a distillery in Chile, Jelínek secured a huge supply of Williams pears, which can then be distilled and distributed worldwide,” ?řufánek said.
Saving a barb for his much larger competitor, he added: “It remains a question whether [Jelínek] can still be called a Czech distillery.”
Despite Jelínek’s interest in pears, slivovice remains the Czech Republic’s staple brandy. However, commercial slivovice’s aura has been pruned by inferior versions, like industrial slivovice — usually a liquor with added plum distillate — “cottage” varieties and illegal home-brewing.
“Most people in the Czech Republic unfortunately think that commercial slivovice is only a surrogate and that ‘real’ slivovice has to be distilled underground in a home basement,” ?řufánek said. “Therefore, slivovice is a cheap and undervalued brand [domestically].”
This do-it-yourself aesthetic does not translate to markets like that in the United States, however, which is why Zusy, like Jelínek, is working hard to get its foot in the door.
Zusy would like to expand sales on the U.S. market, but for a small family company that does not have huge amounts of capital or the support of financial groups, it’s a more difficult path, ?řufánek said.

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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