Wine & ritual
For all the talk of sweeping away stuffy wine rituals, we drink wine in the shadow of ritual.
For as long as there is wine there will be ritual. From ancient temples to the floors of Michelin-starred restaurants, wine has always carried with it an aspect of theatre and mysticism.
The intrinsic communal nature of wine – farming, gathering, producing, sharing – and its physical effects on us, lends itself to ritual meaning.
The impact of mind-altering substances has long been thought to have played a role in the evolution of our species.
They may have driven the development of civilisation itself.
In Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna proposed the ‘stoned ape’ theory. In this he argued that taking psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms gave our species an evolutionary edge as the human genus developed.
That particular idea never quite took off. A more accepted theory, however, explored by Edward Slingerland in Drunk, is that the development of verbal acuity, cult ritual and artistic expression in evolved human society were strongly influenced by the taking of intoxicants.
Less ‘stoned ape’ than ‘tipsy caveman’, perhaps?
The First Ritual
As we moved from hominid to hominin, the ability to fall so easily into an altered state of stupefaction must have created a sense of wonder – and terror. How could achieving such a state be anything but mystical?
It would not be surprising if, at first, wine was considered too powerful a magic for all to partake in.
So much so that its preparation and consumption was limited to the clan shamans that communed with the spirits. A purely ritual drink.
Imagine then, that, in time, these rites included communal cups. Now the whole group could share and consume the annual harvest they had all worked to collect and thin the veil between worlds together.
All suppositions of course. Unwritten cultural norms and customs leave little trace in the archaeological record.
But what we do find shows how strongly wine and cult were intertwined from the very beginnings of settled civilisation.
The Areni-1 cave site in Armenia is renowned as the ‘oldest winery’ in the world, dating back over 5,000 years.
However, artefacts found there strongly indicate that it was a multi-purpose site with important – though, sadly, unknowable – significance to the people who lived there in the Chalcolithic era.
‘This wine wasn’t used to unwind at the end of the day,’ the head archaeologist at the dig was quoted as saying at the time.
This was a winery with a sacramental animus.
Drink of the gods
But even 5,000 years ago, wine had already passed from the realm of pure ritual into a drink consumed for pleasure.
The tombs of Egyptian pharaohs from the same period frequently feature wine jars as grave goods. Even kings could not bear a heavenly eternity without the earthly delight of wine.
But wine was still intrinsically tied to ritual among the living. At the boisterous symposiums of ancient Greece, the host would dedicate each new jar of wine as it was opened to the great gods of the pantheon and heroes of ages past.
Wine was a central component of the pervasive ritual act of libation, an offering of wine to the gods known as spondê.
This happened daily, at events as private as morning prayers to the great public festivals where wine would be ostentatiously poured before an altar alongside the sacrificial oxen.
The ultimate ritual wine cult, of course, was that of Dionysus. This god’s jovial modern image is very far removed from the much more mercurial, darker, even violent figure presented in ancient Greek culture.
Again, it is the mind-altering state that wine engenders that is key here. Wine was central to the image and cult of Dionysus.
But Dionysus is not simply the ‘god of wine’. He is an avatar of wine’s effects; joy, ecstasy, madness, insanity, lust and epiphany. He is the great liberator, who loosens the bonds of care and societal restraint.
Any drunken party – be it joyful or debauched – can thus truly be said to have been touched by the presence of Dionysus.
In such circumstances, to consume wine is itself to invite the divine.
Fruit of the vine
If Christianity were polytheistic, Jesus might have been regarded as a ‘god of wine’.
Wine and viticulture are common motifs in his story. He called himself ‘the vine’, he turned water to wine, and he equated wine to his blood as the source of ever living life. In so doing, he cemented wine at the heart of Christian liturgy.
Christianity grew from minor cult to global religion, hand-in-hand with viticulture. Wine had its spiritual place in the mass and temporal one in society, where wine was viewed – as in ages past – as God-given.
We have entered a more secular age, but that does not mean wine has been separated from ritual by any means. This is no more obvious than in hospitality.
On the footlights of the restaurant floor, sommeliers dance the mysteries of their art.
The menu offering, the choice, the compliment, the presentation. The bottle is then sacrificed like an animal at an altar.
The foil of its neck is cut, its cork entrails removed. The body drained of its lifeforce, sampled, the omens divined.
Even at home we remain the inheritors of rituals past. The selection of wine for our significant feasts, anointing the new babe’s head, taking a glass of Madeira at teatime, toasting good news, friends lost, family gained.
Wine’s ur-pairing is human ritual. However, ritual need not lead to snobbery masquerading as tradition.
In the Dionysian sense, the drinking of wine brings with it the promise of release, subverting the control of authority not being bound by it.
As long as we continue to treat wine as an object of wonder, a living cultural inheritance rather than an ossified edifice, if our rituals foster community and fellowship, then we continue the tradition of the profound in which wine is rooted.
VPQ
This article was originally published in issue 19 of Fine Lees by Bibendum and is reproduced with permission.