Rachel Lipman learns to prune vines from her grandfather. (Courtesy of Loew Vineyards)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The patriarch of the Loew family in the mid-1800s was Meilech Loew, who made mead and distributed it internationally. Meilech and his wife, Malka, had 10 sons, two of whom created their own meaderies, while the others ventured into wine distribution and marketing. One son, Eisig, established the first national meadery and beeswax facility in Poland. He and his wife, Clara, had three sons, one of whom was Wolfgang \u2014 Lipman\u2019s grandfather, who Americanized his name to William (Bill) upon immigrating to the U.S.<\/p>\n
During the Holocaust, the family\u2019s winemaking business was decimated \u2014 as were nearly all the members of the Loew family. Bill survived serving as part of the Underground, where his multilingual skills were highly prized. He was imprisoned in a Budapest political prison and two concentration camps, and eventually was liberated during a Dachau death march on April 23, 1945, by the U.S. Army\u2019s 99th Infantry Division. Each year, the family commemorates this special day with Bill, 95, who remains involved with the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a birthday celebration for us,\u201d Lipman says.<\/p>\n
Once he arrived in America, Bill attended night school, married Lois Hendrickson and eventually became an electrical engineer. Yet the sweet smell of the barrels from his family\u2019s meadery always remained a part of him. Upon retiring in 1982, he purchased a 37-acre plot in Frederick County, Maryland, with the aim of planting grapes and continuing his family\u2019s wine and mead-making legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way our family oriented ourselves, everything was about preserving the past,\u201d Lipman says. \u201cThere was little discussion of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
COVID, however, served as a pivotal moment for the family business. Not only did Lipman have to safeguard her grandparents, who enjoyed interacting with customers in their tasting room, she knew she had to implement some operational changes if she wanted a sustainable future.<\/p>\n
Citing Hillel the Elder\u2019s iconic quote \u2014 \u201cif not now, when?\u201d \u2014 Lipman and her family made a significant investment in new fermentation tanks, which has allowed them to increase production to meet growing demand. They also remodeled the tasting room, created an online reservation system and updated their website to showcase the family\u2019s long history in the business.<\/p>\n
Lipman credits her grandmother with helping to facilitate a lot of the recent changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe knows we have something that cannot die,\u201d Lipman says of her grandmother. \u201cWithout her, we wouldn\u2019t have been pushing for a future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Locating historical documents about her family required perseverance. Lipman joined a global Facebook group of mead-makers and posted about her family\u2019s long tradition. Doing so helped her locate mead labels from her great-grandfather\u2019s business, and even an article in a Lvov newspaper about how her mead-making great-uncle collected tzedakah.<\/p>\n
She also uncovered many documents that traced the history of mead in Europe \u2014 how it was predominantly produced by monks in the 1600s to its heyday in the 1800s through World War II.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese documents just say the businesses disappeared after World War II,\u201d Lipman says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t say that Jews owned these businesses and that is why they were gone. The people and the industry were destroyed by the Nazis. I intend to make that known.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the oldest grandchild, Lipman spent much of her childhood at her grandparents\u2019 vineyard. From cooking Passover meals with her grandmother to riding on her grandfather\u2019s tractors out to the vineyards, Lipman was and remains exceptionally close to her grandparents.<\/p>\n
As she got older, her grandfather taught her chromatography, a technique that allows you to investigate the flavor of the wine. Lipman ultimately decided to study plant science at the University of Maryland and even interned at an organic vineyard in France\u2019s Loire Valley.<\/p>\n
Lipman doesn\u2019t think her grandparents were intentionally grooming her to work on the vineyard, but does believe \u201cthey wanted me to love the vineyard as much as they do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She continues: \u201cWhen you are 21, you think, \u2018Sure being in the alcohol business sounds great! I worked at beer and wine stores then, but the more I learned about the industry, the more serious I became about it [as a future career].\u201d<\/p>\n
As Lipman\u2019s family prepares for Rosh Hashanah 5782, be some of their red wines and meads will be on the table \u2014 along with challah, brisket and salmon. Lipman also buys a number of apple varieties at the farmers market, and they\u2019ll have honey and salt flights, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur family has one of the longest production of meads in the world,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is a pretty incredible story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lipman hopes to continue to produce wines well into the future and watch the roots that her family planted so long ago continue to flourish. In the meantime, the Loew family looks forward to saying \u201cL\u2019chaim!\u201d\u2014 \u201cto life!\u201d \u2014 over their wines this Rosh Hashanah, knowing all too well the meaning of the phrase.<\/p>\n
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