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Wine, and the vine are mentioned over one hundred-forty times in the Bible, and as I wrote about last week, it’s also used by the Lord himself for liturgical purposes in almost every chapter. The first vintner was our father Noah, and following his discovery, he was tempted by its charms. The question that I would like to look at today is, what was wine like in our savior’s time?
I’ve heard a lot of dismissible (Roman) Catholic theories that Jesus was a taster of wine, not a drinker. What an incredibly funny image to imagine, Jesus preparing the apostles for communion with a spittoon. Wine was used by the ancients primarily as a tool for day to day drinking. Water quality in Canaan, and other parts of the world was very poor at the time, and their knowledge of microorganisms was also very poor. Louis Pasteur wouldn’t rear his head for at least eighteen hundred ought years, after all.
Thus, a lot of communities in the ancient world were forced to drink wine over water. In fact, some may recall in Timothy 5:23, the apostle Paul warns Timothy to consume wine rather than water, due to his apparent stomach problems. Women and children at this time were mostly forced to refrain from drinking wine altogether, however.
Instead, must and wineskins were saved, and the skins were used to produce a drinkable beverage with water. Since the yeast and sugars exist on the outside of the skins, this being how wine is able to ferment so quickly, these would act as a filter to make water more drinkable, and turn the water into more of a fruit juice. The skins had antioxidants and alcohol to kill bacteria, and were used to keep wine and stop fermentation. By comparison, processes like chaptalization, and addition of sulfites today are used to change flavor in the wine, and stop fermentation.
Not all water in the area was undrinkable, it is important to note, just a lot of what was available en masse to larger cities in the day. Consuming wine was a safety precaution to ensure one wouldn’t be sick. The most common access to industrial water, or water used for farms at the time were fabricated cisterns dug into the bedrock. Usually nearby, there were wine treading vats, large cement structures that would run off into smaller yeqebs. Yeqebs are storing containers for fermentation.
Wine was not a luxury product as we see it today. It was essential, and every piece of the product was kept. Wineskins were added to the top of the wine to prevent acetic fermentation, the process that creates vinegar. Wines were stored underground in cool areas to ferment, usually in open vats with the wineskins left on for the whole period. The must would then be added, to stop fermentation. Wines were often fermented up to nine months. The exposure to air results in the majority of wines being oxidized.
Nine months is pushing the acetic maceration threshold, so wines would likely taste strongly of malic acid, on the cusp of becoming acetic acid. Because of their contact with the grape skins for so long, a necessary process again to stop acetic fermentation, and limit oxygen exposure, wines would have been strong, heavily tannic, and probably close to about 16%-18% alcohol by the time they were done fermenting - around the same as modern Port!
As such, this high alcohol content would have stopped the fermentation process naturally, so lots of residual sugar from the skins would also be left in the wine. They were often shipped around the Mediterranean for sale in Egypt, Rome, or Greece in ceramic containers, and wood storage vats. This would also contribute heavily to the overall flavor profile.
All around these would have been very strong, chewy wines. That is why they were often cut with water. Pliny the Elder famously created ratios for cutting wine. This practice was more common in Greece at the time. They are also regarded by the ancients as very poor quality. A lot of texts describe adding all sorts of taste agents to bad wine. Anything from tree resin, peppers, capers; raisins, dates, and myrrh.
The wine also became vinegar relatively quickly due to its exposure to air for long periods, though the rich at the time could afford closed vats to keep wine for longer than the commoner. Most wine at that time generally lasted a season, maybe a bit longer.
One other major difference is the lack of racking and clarification procedures at the time. There were no wines made to run off into separate vessels for clarity sake. It really wouldn’t matter anyway, as the must was used to stop fermentation, so sediment would be added back to the final product.
The most common word used in the Bible for wine is yayin. There are two types of yayin, one that was drink straight, often attributed to the wealthy of the time that had access to better quality wine, and one that was cut with water, much more common.
Yayin is one of the three types of wines available to ancient Israel. Another was Tirosh, a sweet wine fresh from that season’s harvest, and lower in alcohol, think Beaujolais Nouveau. Shemarim is the old, runoff, expired wine, nearly vinegar.
So where did this ancient industry go? Why isn’t the Levant a famous producer of wines anymore? Well, the caliphate ended Israel’s wine production, and forced a lot of its residents to flee for Europe. Alcohol consumption is forbidden in Islam.
In the 1880’s, in an effort to help his Jewish brothers resettle, and avoid the frequent discrimination in Europe, Baron Edmond de Rothschild began sending vine cuttings from France to bolster the wine industry in then Palestine. All of the wines were obviously French, largely Carménère, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc of poor quality.
No wines worth mentioning had come from Israel for a long time, though recently there are a few producers who have been working with indigenous vines to create bolder, fresher, and more exciting commercially available options. In 2007, Cremisan released their first set of wines using grapes more than likely available to Israelites of Jesus’ time: Dabouki, Hamdani, Jandali, and Baladi. Recanati Winery in 2014, also released a smashing dry white wine from Marawi, another ancient grape variety indigenous to the Levant, so there is a lot of hope for this blossoming wine region.
I personally recommend Cramisan’s Baladi. I think its warm, refined, well balanced, drinkable, and reminds me a lot of a good Spanish Garnacha, with excellent red fruit flavors and soft tannin. It is also reasonably priced at around $20/bottle, but tough to come by in the US. Due to modern wine making practices brought to the region courtesy of the late Mr. Rothschild, we now have no need for adding the tree sap, or capers to it. It also may well have been one of the varieties in the cup that was shared in the first communion, but only He knows that for sure.
That's all,
~K