Guest Post: Historically Religious Origins of Wine, Beer, and Liquor

Michael Foley, Baylor University

Each year the holidays bring with them an increase in both the consumption of alcohol and concern about drinking’s harmful effects.

Pious drinking.
Walter Dendy Sadler via Wikimedia Commons

Alcohol abuse is no laughing matter, but is it sinful to drink and make merry, moderately and responsibly, during a holy season or at any other time?

As a historical theologian, I researched the role that pious Christians played in developing and producing alcohol. What I discovered was an astonishing history.

Religious orders and wine-making

Wine was invented 6,000 years before the birth of Christ, but it was monks who largely preserved viniculture in Europe. Religious orders such as the Benedictines and Jesuits became expert winemakers. They stopped only because their lands were confiscated in the 18th and 19th centuries by anti-Catholic governments such as the French Revolution’s Constituent Assembly and Germany’s Second Reich.

In order to celebrate the Eucharist, which requires the use of bread and wine, Catholic missionaries brought their knowledge of vine-growing with them to the New World. Wine grapes were first introduced to Alta California in 1779 by Saint Junipero Serra and his Franciscan brethren, laying the foundation for the California wine industry. A similar pattern emerged in Argentina, Chile and Australia.

Monks in a cellar.
Joseph Haier 1816-1891, via Wikimedia Commons

Godly men not only preserved and promulgated oenology, or the study of wines; they also advanced it. One of the pioneers in the “méthode champenoise,” or the “traditional method” of making sparkling wine, was a Benedictine monk whose name now adorns one of the world’s finest champagnes: Dom Pérignon. According to a later legend, when he sampled his first batch in 1715, Pérignon cried out to his fellow monks:

“Brothers, come quickly. I am drinking stars!”

Monks and priests also found new uses for the grape. The Jesuits are credited with improving the process for making grappa in Italy and pisco in South America, both of which are grape brandies.

Beer in the cloister

And although beer may have been invented by the ancient Babylonians, it was perfected by the medieval monasteries that gave us brewing as we know it today. The oldest drawings of a modern brewery are from the Monastery of Saint Gall in Switzerland. The plans, which date back to A.D. 820, show three breweries – one for guests of the monastery, one for pilgrims and the poor, and one for the monks themselves.

One saint, Arnold of Soissons, who lived in the 11th century, has even been credited with inventing the filtration process. To this day and despite the proliferation of many outstanding microbreweries, the world’s finest beer is arguably still made within the cloister – specifically, within the cloister of a Trappist monastery.

Liquors and liqueurs

Equally impressive is the religious contribution to distilled spirits. Whiskey was invented by medieval Irish monks, who probably shared their knowledge with the Scots during their missions.

Monk sneaking a drink.
Scanned from Den medeltida kokboken, Swedish translation of The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chartreuse is widely considered the world’s best liqueur because of its extraordinary spectrum of distinct flavors and even medicinal benefits. Perfected by the Carthusian order almost 300 years ago, the recipe is known by only two monks at a time. The herbal liqueur Bénédictine D.O.M. is reputed to have been invented in 1510 by an Italian Benedictine named Dom Bernardo Vincelli to fortify and restore weary monks. And the cherry brandy known as Maraska liqueur was invented by Dominican apothecaries in the early 16th century.

Nor was ingenuity in alcohol a male-only domain. Carmelite sisters once produced an extract called “Carmelite water” that was used as a herbal tonic. The nuns no longer make this elixir, but another concoction of the convent survived and went on to become one of Mexico’s most popular holiday liqueurs – Rompope.

Made from vanilla, milk and eggs, Rompope was invented by Clarist nuns from the Spanish colonial city of Puebla, located southeast of Mexico City. According to one account, the nuns used egg whites to give the sacred art in their chapel a protective coating. Not wishing the leftover yolks to go to waste, they developed the recipe for this festive refreshment.

Health and community

So why such an impressive record of alcoholic creativity among the religious? I believe there are two underlying reasons.

First, the conditions were right for it. Monastic communities and similar religious orders possessed all of the qualities necessary for producing fine alcoholic beverages. They had vast tracts of land for planting grapes or barley, a long institutional memory through which special knowledge could be handed down and perfected, a facility for teamwork and a commitment to excellence in even the smallest of chores as a means of glorifying God.

Historically, alcohol was seen to be promoting health.
Fritz Wagner (1896-1939) (Dorotheum) , via Wikimedia Commons

Second, it is easy to forget in our current age that for much of human history, alcohol was instrumental in promoting health. Water sources often carried dangerous pathogens, and so small amounts of alcohol would be mixed with water to kill the germs therein.

Roman soldiers, for example, were given a daily allowance of wine, not in order to get drunk but to purify whatever water they found on campaign. And two bishops, Saint Arnulf of Metz and Saint Arnold of Soissons, are credited with saving hundreds from a plague because they admonished their flock to drink beer instead of water. Whiskey, herbal liqueurs and even bitters were likewise invented for medicinal reasons.

And if beer can save souls from pestilence, no wonder the Church has a special blessing for it that begins:

“O Lord, bless this creature beer, which by Your kindness and power has been produced from kernels of grain, and may it be a health-giving drink for mankind.”

Michael Foley, Associate Professor of Patristics, Baylor University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Economic Liberty

In a David-and-Goliath case that pitted independent small businesses against state-supported oligopolists, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of David today.

In a 5-4 decision in the case of Granholm v. Heald, the justices split into rather odd coalitions. In the majority were Justice Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the Court's opinion) and Justices Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer. The dissenters were Justices John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas (who each wrote dissenting opinions), Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. This was not, in other words, a typical "liberal"/"conservative" split with Kennedy or O'Connor providing the swing vote.

At issue were laws in Michigan and New York and 22 other states that prohibit consumers from purchasing wine by mail-order or over the Internet from out-of-state wineries. It featured a clash between the Constitution's Commerce Clause and the 21st Amendment, which not only ended Prohibition but also granted states the authority to control the manufacturing, sale, and purchase of alcoholic beverages within their borders.

The Supreme Court today essentially found that the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce, trumps the 21st Amendment.

Here's how the New York Times summarized the arguments:

Today's decision, in the cases of Granholm v. Heald, No. 03-1116, from Michigan, and Swedenburg v. Kelly, No. 03-1274 from New York, had to do with interpretation of the Constitution, the intent of the 1933 Amendment that ended Prohibition and changing personal tastes in the age of the Internet.

When the case was argued before the justices on Dec. 7, lawyers for New York and Michigan asserted that the Prohibition-ending 21st Amendment to the Constitution gave states such wide authority over the importation of alcohol that it trumped the principle embodied in the Commerce Clause: that the states may not, without Congressional authorization, discriminate against one another.

New York's and Michigan's lawyers insisted then that the goals of preventing minors' access to alcohol and assuring that the states could collect taxes from out-of-state shippers justified their states' statutes. Solicitor General Caitlin J. Halligan of New York told the justices that the case "goes to the very core of the 21st Amendment."

Justice Kennedy responded - tellingly, it would appear from today's ruling - that "it also goes to the very core of the Commerce Clause."

Justice Kennedy wrote today that the real object of the Michigan and New York statutes was not protection of minors but rather to give in-state wineries a competitive advantage over those in other states. Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said New York and Michigan "provide little evidence for their claim that purchasing wine over the Internet by minors is a problem."

"The 26 states now permitting direct shipments report no such problem, and the states can minimize any risk with less restrictive steps, such as requiring an adult signature on delivery," the majority said. Moreover, the majority said, the states could devise tax-collection procedures without resorting to discrimination in interstate commerce.

"In all but the narrowest circumstances" the states violate the Commerce Clause if they erect barriers to help in-state business at the expense of outsiders, the majority said in describing the Commerce Clause as "essential to the foundations of the Union."

The majority observed that "the current patchwork of laws - with some states banning direct shipments altogether, others doing so only for out-of-state wines, and still others requiring reciprocity - is essentially the product of an ongoing, low-level trade war."

In his opinion for the majority, Justice Kennedy concludes:

States have broad power to regulate liquor under §2 of the Twenty-first Amendment. This power, however, does not allow States to ban, or severely limit, the direct shipment of out-of-state wine while simultaneously authorizing direct shipment by in-state producers. If a State chooses to allow direct shipment of wine, it must do so on evenhanded terms. Without demonstrating the need for discrimination, New York and Michigan have enacted regulations that disadvantage out-of-state wine producers. Under our Commerce Clause jurisprudence, these regulations cannot stand.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; and we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with our opinion.

Clint Bolick, an attorney with the libertarian public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, said in a statement that "this is the best day for wine-lovers since the invention of the corkscrew."

Juanita Swedenburg, the owner of a small winery in Middleburg, Va., was IJ’s lead plaintiff in the case (she sued the state of New York). Her reaction: "This opens up interstate markets just like our Founding Fathers envisioned. They wanted us to be one nation when it comes to trade -- not 50 states. This is a boon for America’s wine-loving consumers who like to have various wines from throughout the nation."

The Institute for Justice also represented the homeowners threatened by abusive eminent-domain actions in Kelo v. New London, which awaits a ruling by the Supreme Court. We can only hope that the Court continues down the path of economic and personal liberty it traveled in today's decision.