Religion and Wine

Wine is a wonder-working substance, and is therefore linked to metaphysics and to ritual. At the heart of the miraculous qualities of wine is the alcohol it contains, and its capacity for quickly changing people’s feelings, for better or worse.

Wine itself, however, has a quite specific history and geographical distribution (see origins of viniculture). It is associated with the peoples who live round the Mediterranean sea, in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa; and within this huge Circum-Mediterranean super-region the place of wine in the local values has been affected by the major revolution in the area whereby the old order, which was apparently partly monotheistic, partly polytheistic, and which presumably dated back into prehistory, was replaced by Christianity and islam, rooted in the values of Judaic monotheism.