In nine days, my family and guests will sit down to dinner on the first night of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. After a summer of swizzling easy-going wines, mainly chilled rosé and Beaujolais, autumn hovers in the wings, and it’s the right time to shift to wines with more heft and flavor with the season’s first roast leg of lamb. By preference, those wines are usually not only kosher, but Israeli. And if there were only one label on my table, it would be Yarden. Beginning in 1983, Yarden (the top label of Golan Heights Winery), showed the world that Israel, formerly a vinous backwater producing mainly sweet sacramental wines, could make dry, food-friendly wines of elegance and character.

The spark plug of that venture was Yarden’s first CEO, Shimshon Welner, who until the early 1980s directed an apple growers’ cooperative on the Golan Heights, wrested from Syria a decade earlier. Mr. Welner convinced the dubious growers to rip out some of their Granny Smith orchards in order to create a new vineyard region that could benefit from the Golan Height’s wine-friendly volcanic soils and relatively cool climate. Since Israel then had no winemakers who knew how to make wines that could compete in the world arena, Mr. Welner also signed up a string of California winemakers to bring their skills to the Golan Heights. And he even took the novel step of banishing the word “kosher” to the back of his wines from the front label. If Yarden was truly to become a contender, it would have to do it on quality, not kashruth.

Not that there is any biblical mention of what makes wine kosher. But rabbinical tradition weighs in strictly: Once the winemaking process starts, only religiously observant Jews may be “hands on.” Fining and filtering agents, as well as oak barrels and oak chips, are strictly regulated. So is cleanliness of tanks and barrels. Only if the wine is flash pasteurized, a process known as mevushal (“boiling” in Hebrew), can it be touched by non-Jewish hands. So strict is the process that, at the sprawling Golan Heights Winery in the town of Katzrin, high above the Sea of Galilee, the head winemaker for the last decade, Victor Schoenfeld, is not permitted to draw a tasting sample from cask. A religious assistant must do that. The California-born Mr. Schoenfeld, who is Jewish but not observant, cannot even unlock the door to the winery in the morning or lock up in the evening. That also must be done by religious staff.

Mr. Welner left Yarden in 1990 to work in Israel’s defense industry. Five years later, he gravitated back to wine, this time to develop the first kosher wines in South America. Those wines had to be approved by the Orthodox Union and carry its “OU” seal on the label. “I started in Chile in 1996, where we had to teach teams of Orthodox Jews how to work in the non-kosher facilities where we made our wine,” Mr. Welner said in a phone interview last week from Asti, Italy, where the moscato harvest was in full swing. “Then we planted our flag in the Mendoza Valley of Argentina. We now have seven trained teams in South America who can make a winery kosher.”

Three years ago, Mr. Welner began making kosher wines in Australia under the Kolobarra label. He and his wife Liora attend the harvest wherever their wines are made. In the Southern Hemisphere’s spring, they’re in Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and Australia. While those vineyards are dormant, the couple splits its time between Spain and Italy. “We’d just been in Fruili yesterday where we finished making pinot grigio,” Mr. Welner said. “We drove 500 kilometers down to Asti to make moscato. Next week, we’ll be back in Asti.”

Isn’t it a grueling schedule for a 65-year-old? “We love what we do,” he said. (Well, not always. “We recently had a situation where a non-Jewish winery worker opened a valve on a tank of cabernet sauvignon,” he said. “At that moment, we had 10,000 liters of wine that was no longer kosher.”)

Mr. Welner’s wines are mostly priced at around $10 a bottle. I don’t know of any other kosher array that offers so much value or global variety. His carménère, listed below, will be on my table at Rosh Hashana along with a Yarden chardonnay and syrah. There will be one more wine as well: Massaya 2002, a red wine blend made in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. We’ll sip it in along with the kosher wines in the hope that peace will come.

RECOMMENDED WINES (All but the last are Welner Wines. They are available at Skyview Wines at 5691 Riverdale Ave., Riverdale, 718-601-8222, www.skyviewwine.com. Massaya is stocked by Harlem Vintage at 2235 Frederick Douglass Blvd., 212-866-9463, www.harlemvintage.com.)

Kolobarra Hills Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Western Australia ($9.99) This wine’s fresh blackberry aromas and taste, along with its soft tannins, aren’t for Bordeaux lovers. Everyone else will be pleased.

Tierra Salvaje Carménère 2003, Maule Valley, Chile ($9.99) This variety, brought from Bordeaux in the 19th century and all but forgotten there, comes on strong in Chile. It smells of cassis and tastes of spicy plums. Clean and modern in style, this wine has just enough tannins and acidity to match but not overwhelm a roast chicken.

S’forno Monastrell 2002, Yecla, Spain ($9.95) From a hot and dry region in southeastern Spain, this wine is the big bruiser in Mr. Welner’s portfolio. It’s made from Monastrell, the Iberian version of Mourvèdre, popular in southern France. I was surprised to discover that this wine combines well with a long-aged Wisconsin cheddar cheese.

Welnerberg White 2005, Swartland, South Africa ($8.95) No grape variety is identified on this wine’s label. But elements of fresh mown grass and celery, along with an uncomplicated but lively taste, shouted French Colombard, a variety that was popular in California decades ago. I wish it would come back.

Massaya 2002, Tanaïl Property, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon ($15.99) This red is from young, ambitious winery whose partners include several distinguished winemakers from Bordeaux and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The wine, a blend of Bordeaux varieties, is silky and tender, with the vanilla kiss of new French oak.