Rachel Lipman represents the fifth generation of a family winemaking business with roots in Poland, more than 150 years ago, at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

William Loew, a Holocaust survivor and Rachel’s grandfather, came to the United States, and the family established the Loew Vineyards winery in Frederick County in 1982, at a time when not a lot of people were in the wine business in Maryland.

The winery is the fourth-oldest in the state, where there are now over 100 wineries.

“My family history goes back to the mid-1800s of producing honey wine, commercially, in Poland. We have like this really royal empire, from my notion of it,” Lipman told the Baltimore Jewish Times in an interview. “This big empire of honey wineries that existed in Lwów, Poland, which is now Lviv, Ukraine.”

Lipman describes her family as having “one of the longest tenures of mead production in the world. And there’s nobody in the world that is making mead the way that we do. And I can say that totally with confidence because my grandfather invented the piece of equipment.”

Mead was known as a product associated with Jews, at least before the Holocaust, when most such businesses were destroyed. Mead was “the national drink of choice” in Poland before World War II, Lipman said, although vodka began to overtake it during Poland’s time as part of the Eastern Bloc.

But Lipman and her family have kept the legacy alive in the United States.

Lipman was taught the finer points of the winemaking process by her grandfather, starting when she was about 12 years old, and she’s worked at the winery full-time since 2018, taking over the leadership of the business after her grandfather’s passing in 2022.

Her grandmother, aunts and other family members also remain involved in the business.

In addition to having learned from her grandfather, Lipman has degrees in plant science and communications from the University of Maryland and a winemaking certification from Washington State University.

She did an internship at an organic winery in the Loire Valley in France and worked for a time on the distribution side of the wine business.

Now, the Loew Vineyards winery is in the process of obtaining a Star-K kosher certification for its mead offerings, which would make it the first winery in Maryland, and the only one in the DMV area, to gain that distinction.

“Starting with the 2025 vintage, our grape wines, so any products that we have with grapes, will be under a conservative hechsher. And then our meads, the honey wines that are without grapes, that will be under the Star K hechsher,” Lipman said. “They’re very separate.”

“We got this grant to be able to convert our winery into becoming kosher,” Lipman said.

The grant was an agricultural innovation grant from Frederick County, which will allow them to purchase boilers, pumps, steam generators and other equipment necessary for the process.

The first wine product with the Conservative designation will arrive in November of this year; those who sign up for the winery’s Wine Club First can get that first. The first Star K-designated mead will arrive by March 2026.

A big marketing push is planned for the Jewish community, Lipman said, including the establishment of a “Kosher List,” where customers can sign up to receive the kosher products.

The Frederick News-Post was the first to report that the winery was going for that certification.

The grant only came through in mid-June, Lipman said, so the winery is still relatively close to the start of the process, with the new equipment set to arrive later this summer.

This was something that the business was considering for about three years, but it was a question of bandwidth, as the winery has only two full-time employees besides Lipman.

Also, going forward, Lipman will not be able to work in the winery or cellar on Shabbat or Jewish holidays.

Lipman said she understands that not everyone will be on board with the Conservative hechsher. But it was clear that the winery will go through a branding process and make clear which products among its offerings, including previous vintages, are kosher and not.

Rabbi Jordan Hersh of Beth Shalom Congregation in Frederick, who was the rabbi for her grandparents, will perform the Conservative certification, per the News-Post.

“Operationally, in terms of how we produce the wines and the meads, that is not changing,” Lipman said. “The only difference, really, is the yeast and the fact that we’re kosherizing barrels and tanks and all that stuff. Those pieces of equipment will be kosher, but beyond that, my practices of how I produce something is not changing.”

Several of the company’s forthcoming mead products are named after ancestors of the family.

One upcoming product is called Malka, named for Lipman’s great-great-grandmother, who owned a meadery in Burczyn, Poland, in 1870, which Lipman described as “three years after the Habsburg Emperor granted Jews [the right] to be able to engage in commerce and own 100 percent of their own businesses.”

Another will include apples, making it ideal for Rosh Hashanah.

In an industry where the prototypical entrepreneurs are older and often retired from other pursuits, and also notably male-skewing, Lipman has been referred to in numerous news stories as the youngest winemaker in the state of Maryland.

Lipman said she isn’t sure if that’s still the case, but she’s certainly “the youngest at my stature.”

Visit loewvineyards.net for more on the winery, its history and how to sign up for the wine and mead products.

Stephen Silver is a freelance writer.