“Puritanism: strictness and austerity especially in matters of
religion or conduct” The favorite one liner wine professional
like to do is the ‘wine’s just a beverage, a simple agricultural
product’ mantra trying to make wine easier for people
intimidated by the number of crus within a radius of kilometer
in Côte de Beaune. I’ve used that catch phrase more than my
share. But as it happens, if you put emphasis on the history,
wine’s not just an ordinary beverage. Though certainly mostly
used for everyday consumption, it’s been utilized for religious
purposes for quite some time. Its ties with things considered
sacred are tight as a knot. We need to rewind couple of
thousands of years back to see the big picture. Though the
initial connection of wine and religion is very much unclear for
obvious reasons we do know that when primitive religions
gradually evolved into monotheistic redemption religions with
scriptures, wine already played an important role in them. In
the first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianis