After the invention of wine in the Caucasian mountains, its spread into Middle and Near East and then a glorious conquest of Europe in bags of Roman legionnaires, it seemed that no one could do more for this drink, but this impression was wrong. A new religion born on the turn of the millennia – Christianity, with its great potential overtook the Roman Empire at its dawn and in form of the Roman Catholic Church took wine under its care and protection and eventually helped to spread it worldwide.
The Bible itself proclaims wine as the Blood of Christ and bears many positive references towards it. Nevertheless the story of Noah mentioned in the first part of this article also warns the followers about the dangers of alcohol. So wine practically accompanied Christianity from the early days and the magic of wine was used to bless the faithful.
As for the practical side it is hard to underestimate the importance of Christianity in the history of wine. Wine was initially labelled as a holy drink and the Church was using it during many rituals including the most important one – Eucharist, so Church required a lot of good fermented wine. After the fall of Roman Empire the production of wine in Europe decreased and to keep satisfy its needs the Church started producing wine. After that countless monasteries across Europe started producing, perfecting and even inventing new wines. For centuries the monks worked hard on shaping the modern winemaking technologies and eventually made a huge contribution to wine in its modern form. A second important factor was the spreading of wine as a religious attribute in the newly colonized parts of the world. European colonists build vineyards and wineries in their new lands, just like the Romans centuries before them.
Nevertheless not all branches of Christianity have a positive attitude towards wine (the famous prohibition in the US was actually suggested and supported by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union). In Europe for example over the centuries the image of monk became a traditionally drunk person who is busy with producing some kind of alcohol, which became a disturbing thing for the whole religion. In addition to this industrialization of societies in the New and Old Worlds led to additional social pressure and due to new technologies the production of alcohol became easier and the alcohol cheaper. This led to a rise of drunkenness and forced Christianity to form its three current positions on alcohol – moderationism, abstentionism, and prohibitionism. Moderationism supports alcohol as a gift of God, but warns about its potential harm; abstentionism also views alcohol as God’s gift, but sees its consumption outside of church rituals as a not very wise decision and prohibitionism completely bans the consumption of alcohol. Moderationism is currently the most common position and today with a global availability of all kinds of alcohol the final judgment is left in the hands of believers and priests. Still apart from all the current conflicts Christianity as a religion played a huge role in the development of wine and over the centuries helped shaping it into its modern form.
