I cannot prove it, but I swear that the wine used at my first Communion was poured from an oversized jug of that Carlo Rossi sweet red wine they sell on the food market, but not within the section with the opposite alcohol due to its lower-than-average alcohol content and, perhaps, its curious self-description as “grape wine with natural flavors.”
I is not going to attempt to prove it, because I’m not attempting to get my hometown parish in trouble. Using that wine as matter for transubstantiation can be verboten under Catholic teaching, which is sort of specific in its instructions and forbids “wine of unknown provenance,” amongst other things. But I’m certain enough, each as a Catholic and a budding wine hobbyist, that it was an inadequate introduction to the wealthy relationship between the church and viticulture.
Because here’s the thing: The Catholic Church, again and again and once again throughout history, has made critical contributions to winemaking and wine drinking. For reasons which are historical, theological and at times coincidental, the church has been in the combination at nearly every major turning point within the history of wine. And while there was a resurgence of interest in Catholic beer brewing (the legend of the monk brewmaster forgoing solid food and consuming only beer during his Lenten fast still looms large), the church’s contribution to wine culture throughout history often stays a lamp hidden under a bushel basket, a legacy unclaimed.
From Cana to Napa
The Catholic connection to winemaking has its foundations in Scripture. Testaments Old and Recent are full of references to vineyards, grapes and wines. One among the primary things that Noah does after the flood is get drunk on wine he had produced from his vineyard, resulting in a clumsy and embarrassing encounter along with his children. However the references usually are not all negative. Quite the opposite. The Psalmist writes that God made wine to gladden the hearts of man. In Zechariah, the Lord says he’ll “bring them back, because I even have mercy on them,” and that “their hearts will likely be cheered as by wine.” The truth is, within the Old Testament, only the Book of Ruth is bereft of any reference to wine or vineyards.
While a few of Jesus’ followers have opted for grape juice, the Catholic Church has never allowed a substitution for wine, even when it has proved difficult while evangelizing in places where there have been no vineyards.
Within the Recent Testament, we meet a Jesus Christ whose public ministry is kicked off with the transformation of roughly 180 gallons of water into wine (about 950 bottles). Jesus evidently feasted a lot, especially compared with John the Baptist’s asceticism, that he was accused of being a “glutton and a drunkard” (Lk 7:34). When Jesus told his followers that he was the vine they usually were the branches, it was likely a metaphor that was easy for them to understand. It relied upon a drink that was common to the culture of first-century Palestine, which recent archeological discoveries have helped confirm. That is all to say: Catholics worship a God who each made (albeit miraculously) and drank wine.
Yet the event that the majority obviously cements wine’s relationship to Christianity took place the night before Jesus was crucified. On the Last Supper he took the chalice and, giving thanks, gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it.” Because the time of the primary Christians, wine has been utilized in the liturgy of the Eucharist in fidelity to this command. And while a few of Jesus’ followers have opted for grape juice, the Catholic Church has never allowed a substitution for wine, even when it has proved difficult while evangelizing in places where there have been no vineyards. The truth is, we see missionaries planting vineyards wherever they’re sent, including California, Argentina, Chile and Japan.
A Spiritual Discipline
The Christian interest in wine remained robust within the early church. The desert fathers, of their asceticism, were extremely unlikely to have imbibed much. However the birth of monasticism brought spiritual seekers out from their solitude within the wilderness and together under one roof, and in these early monastic communities tending vineyards and drinking wine (which was safer than water) was often a part of each day life.
Within the Rule of St. Benedict, the foundational document for structuring Western monastic life, abstaining from drinking wine is written about with the identical long view as abstaining from sex. In brief: It’s good for the dominion of God, but probably too difficult for most individuals. “We imagine that a hermina of wine a day [that is, 2.5 bottles a week] is sufficient for every,” Benedict instructs. “But those upon whom God bestows the gift of abstinence should know they shall have a special reward.” And while Benedict is sort of specific in his quantitative directives, he gives superiors a great amount of flexibility, noting that “if the necessities of the place, or the work, or the warmth of the summer should call for more, let it stand throughout the discretion of the superior to grant more.”
Ask any vigneron today who first discovered which plots of land produce the most effective wine, they’ll not hesitate: It was the monks.
After the autumn of the Roman Empire, the various vineyards throughout Europe could have fallen into disrepair. Yet based on Hugh Johnson, the dean of wine history and the writer of From Noah to Now: The Story of Wine, the church preserved European winemaking: “Saintly bishops are credited with many miracles, but perhaps their best was the upkeep of organized agriculture (of which wine growing was a crucial part) through the three centuries when it should have seemed hell’s legions were massing within the east.”
Hell’s legions didn’t prevail against the church after the autumn of Rome, however the church’s own corruption and spiritual laxity infiltrated monastic life. In A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Thomas Bokenkotter writes that “monasteries fell prey to the identical evils and disorders that afflicted secular society throughout the breakdown of the Carolingian order. A lot of them fell into complete decadence and in some cases were hardly greater than strongholds of brigands.” Clearly, change was needed, and a reform movement took hold in what would turn out to be one in every of the world’s most famous wine-growing regions: Burgundy, France.
Today, Burgundy’s wines are classified and ranked not based on the producer of the wine, but by the geographical plot of land on which the grapes were grown. There’s something very Catholic about this: that a winemaker must put aside any sense of non-public gain or recognition in favor of becoming a vessel for the fruit of the earth. Every vineyard is ranked by the French government’s appellation control system. But ask any vigneron today who first discovered which plots of land produce the most effective wine, they’ll not hesitate: It was the monks.
Unhappy with the mediocrity and decadence of medieval monastic life, a latest group of monks, led by St. Robert of Molesmes, arrived at Citeaux, a spot Bokenkotter calls “a desolate spot within the diocese of Chalons in France.” Yet due to the Cistercian fathers, who grew to great influence and power throughout the twelfth century, it slowly became a world wine capital. The Cistercians had the spirit of revolutionaries together with an intense piety. Based on Mr. Johnson, they “saw the vineyards of the Côte as their God-given challenge.”
Here is how Mr. Johnson describes the work of the Cistercians: “By their readiness to experiment, their reinvestment within the land, and their ability to see things on an extended time-scale, they slowly but surely moved the ratchet of quality up notch by notch.” People today enterprise that the Cistercians went to date as to literally taste the soil where they planted their vines. And because of their efforts, anyone who has driven through Burgundy in our time can have difficulty describing its vineyard-laden roads and quaint towns as “desolate.”
The legend goes that Dom Perignon invented champagne, calling out to his confreres, “Come quickly, I’m tasting the celebrities!”
France is overflowing with other spots where the history of Catholicism and wine mix together. After the Cistercians, one other monk made himself a household name internationally, even to at the present time, for his contributions to viticulture. The legend goes that Dom Perignon invented champagne, calling out to his confreres, “Come quickly, I’m tasting the celebrities!” And while it stays unclear if Dom Perignon actually was the inventor (his abbey’s archives “disappeared” throughout the French Revolution), we do know that he was a meticulous vineyard manager and winemaker. The treasurer of Dom Perignon’s Hautviller Abbey, Mr. Johnson says, “studied the most effective vineyards, the most effective timing, the most effective techniques, and one of the best ways of preserving the wine to make it as fragrant as possible, silky in texture and long in flavour.”
The explanations for the Avignon papacy, when the pope’s primary residence moved from Rome to France for 70 years, are multiple and complicated. But at the least a minor pull on the pope, Mr. Johnson suggests, might need been that Burgundy’s wine was a bit closer and easier to eat. In 1364, Urban V (the one Avignon pope to be beatified) published a papal bull forbidding the abbot of Cîteaux to send any wine to Rome under pain of excommunication. Today, you possibly can still drink wine that is called for the vineyards that were planted just outside the brand new papal residence: Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Wine Across the World
France is definitely among the many more dramatic sites of each church and wine history. But throughout the world, the fruit of the vine and the church continued to grow and mature alongside each other.
Closer to home, Jesuits brought their “mission” grapes from Mexico within the 18th century, planting vineyards up the coast of California. And when a wave of spiritual (and anti-Catholic) zealotry threatened the long run of winemaking in america, the Catholic Church was there to preserve it for future generations.
While Prohibition restricted the “the manufacture, sale, or transportation” of alcohol within the country, a provision tailored to the church prevented America’s burgeoning wine industry from totally collapsing: Wine for religious ceremonies can be exempt from the prohibition against manufacturing alcohol. In Los Angeles, when nearly all 100 wineries in the world needed to close, the archdiocese granted Santo Cambianica, a devout Catholic who had named his winery “San Antonio” after his patron saint, permission to make sacramental wine. Today, San Antonio Winery stays the biggest supplier of sacramental wine within the country and was named winery of the yr by Wine Enthusiast in 2016.
An analogous story is told in regards to the Napa Valley. George de Latour, who founded Beaulieu Vineyards in 1900, used his connections with the archbishop of San Francisco to secure exclusive rights to sell sacramental wine after the passage of the Volstead Act. After Prohibition, with the now-famed Napa vineyards still intact, Mr. Latour was seeking to increase the industrial quality of his wine. He brought in André Tchelistcheff, a Russian winemaker living in France. Mr. Tchelistcheff would go on to coach and work with now-legendary names throughout the wine world, including Mike Grgich, Joseph Heitz and Robert Mondavi.
The numbers speak for themselves. In 1922, the primary yr that sacramental wine was excluded from Prohibition, 2,139,000 gallons were sold. By 1924, the quantity had risen to 2,944,700. Was america undergoing a spiritual revival? A report from the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in 1925 was undecided: “There isn’t any way of knowing what the legitimate consumption of fermented sacramental wine is nevertheless it is evident that the legitimate demand doesn’t increase 800,000 gallons in two years.” Were it not for the jesuitical ingenuity of just a few Catholics, it’s doubtful we might have the colourful California wine scene we now have today.
Future Growth
The story of Catholicism and wine just isn’t one in every of consistent progress. Back in France, the good vineyards that generations of monks had toiled to cultivate were, like lots of France’s great cathedrals, victims of fanatics of the French Revolution. “Among the many officers whose task it was to inform the abbot of Citeaux that every one the abbey’s lands…were being appropriated by the state,” Mr. Johnson writes, “was Napoleon Bonaparte.” Inside 100 years they encountered something worse: a plague of phylloxera, a microscopic insect that worn out almost all the country’s grape vines.
Where vineyards weren’t seized by revolutions or insects, religious communities began to give up their vines and land voluntarily. “There are fewer laborers within the vineyard,” is commonly a euphemism to explain the decline within the variety of vocations to the priesthood and spiritual life. But it’s also a quite literal explanation for why there are fewer Catholic wineries today. The low numbers of spiritual vocations has led to a shortage of labor. And with limited resources, religious communities are inclined to deal with ministries they consider more obviously pastoral or mission-critical.
When the Heublein division of Grand Metropolitan PLC bought Christian Brothers Winery in 1989, it was the biggest winery sale in U.S. history. David Brennan, F.S.C., then-president of the Lasallian Christian Brothers, explained the rationale behind the deal on the time: “The choice to sell…was a difficult one, but this motion allows the Brothers to present the best priority to their educational works.”
Even still, there are signs of hope for Catholic winemaking today. In Traverse City, Mich., parishioners at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church began what they called The Sacramental Wine and Vineyard Ministry, through which 2.3 acres of grapes are grown on the parish’s own grounds for sacramental and consumer wine. Religious orders are tending to vines around the globe again, from California to Italy. In an example that’s inspired by the Catholic imagination, the Diocese of Oakland planted grapevines next to its Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
And in France? In recent a long time, five French monasteries have reconnected with winemaking. The French Catholic writer Marc Patier profiled them in his book, Les Vignerons Du Ciel: Les Moines et Le Vin (The Winemakers of Heaven: Monks and Wine). “The connection between monks and wine, in France, looked as if it would belong to a definitively gone past,” Mr. Patier writes. “It’s to forget that with the monks every thing is an everlasting starting.” And it isn’t just the lads (nor has it ever been, Mr. Patier is quick to remind): Nuns are well-represented, and in some regions are even in the bulk at some monastic winemakers. French consumers can find monastic wines (and other products) in sleekly designed e-commerce sites like Divine Box. While it’s difficult to argue that Catholic religious dominate the world’s leading winemakers today, priests, brothers, sisters and laypeople proceed to practice what their forerunners in faith have done for hundreds of years.
Recent Clairvaux Vineyard in Northern California is a great example of successful Catholic winemaking today. In 1955, the Abbey of Gethsemani purchased a plot of land to start a latest monastery. The land was purchased from a former governor of California, Leland Stanford, who had established 4,000 acres of grapes and a winery that produced over two million gallons a yr prior to Prohibition. Stanford sold off the land in 1919, and the vines were ripped out.
There’s a sacramentality to the winemaking process, from growing to fermenting to drinking, that’s more likely to all the time discover a home in a Catholic imagination.
But in 2000, on the prodding of a neighbor, the Cistercian monks pivoted from dairy and orchard farming to plant their first six acres of grape vines on the land. “You understand, we—the Cistercians—set the usual for ‘modern’ wine production at Citeaux,” Abbot Paul Mark Schwan jogged my memory in a conversation by phone of the order’s connection to medieval winemaking. “We’re very much aware of that connection.”
Today, the monks’ primary labor is working within the vineyard, but as in lots of Catholic apostolates, they partner with lay people, including Aimée Sunseri, a fifth-generation California winemaker.
And while it’s heartening to see the church return to increase global wine culture, Abbot Paul Mark sees their efforts as a contribution to the larger mission of the church. He estimates 38,000 people visit the monastery annually. “Now, most individuals come because they’re on the lookout for wine,” he told me, “nevertheless it also becomes our way of evangelization. When people come, they realize it’s greater than only a bottle of wine. It’s as in the event that they’re buying a type of spirituality in a bottle.”
A Complex Mix
“The links between wine and worship,” Hugh Johnson writes, “recur so often in [the story of wine] that the storyteller must keep difficult himself: Was it really religion that called the tune again?” In other words, does it matter whether all these winemaking Catholics were motivated by faith or funds? In any case, vineyards were extremely economically viable for the Cistercians in Gaul throughout the Middle Ages, and producing sacramental wine during Prohibition was a convenient loophole. Yet, there’s a sacramentality to the winemaking process, from growing to fermenting to drinking, that’s more likely to all the time discover a home in a Catholic imagination.
Wines, at their best, are beautiful and complicated artworks which are “the fruit of the vine and work of human hands,” the comingling of manual labor and God’s windfall within the vineyard. A bottle of wine itself invites relationship: It is simply too much for one person, nevertheless it provides the right amount for 2 or three gathered together. Its vintage is a memorial of a moment of time, its appellation transports the imbiber to a selected region and vineyard. The winemaker and wine drinker are intrinsically connected to the earth, our common home, in a novel way.
In a single view, the sniffing, swirling, savoring, the descriptions of primary and secondary tastes, the naming of obscure aromas in a glass, all comes across as uptight and snobbish. Yet in one other light, the careful attention paid to the symphony of tastes and smells, the indulgence in “oh, sure, another glass,” are the popularity of those small joys that lift us as much as take part in the lifetime of the divine. “Wine,” Pope Benedict said in a homily in 2005, “expresses the excellence of creation and provides us the feast during which we transcend the boundaries of our each day routine.” The church has long understood that asceticism and fasting are paths to spiritual enlightenment—but we also worship a savior who got here that we might need life, and have it more abundantly.
“On the one hand…we live an austere, easy life,” Abbot Paul Mark mused during our conversation. “However, we rejoice the advantageous things of life as well. The perfect beers, the most effective liqueurs, the most effective wines on the planet, are frequently related to the Catholic or Christian monastic world. That’s not an accident. It’s a press release of how we live our lives.”
At the very least in spirit, wine and Catholic life are inextricably linked. And just as we Catholics rightly feel some sense of pride for our contributions to architecture, music and art, our hearts must be gladdened after we walk through a vineyard or right into a wine bar, considering, our ancestors helped construct this. And we must always discern how we will keep constructing it. Catholics will proceed to tend the vines, drink it at our dinner tables and transform it at our altar tables. Wine has been, is now and can proceed to turn out to be our “spiritual drink.”