The Last Supper

At the dawn of civilization, a gesture, a request, an Alliance

These lines have been written in response to the questions we are regularly asked by our customers – I should say our guests – who sometimes very kindly come to share a bottle with us. In response to their expressed need to know the history behind this central figure that is wine.

What stands behind our attachment to this beverage? Why is it so deeply embedded in the collective unconscious, maybe as rice in Asia?

♦

It all began with an incredible adventure. That of a man, or a God made man for Christians, who came to earth, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, a little over 2,000 years ago. His name: Jesus. And that of the last meal he shared with his disciples before his death. And his Resurrection.

Perhaps you have already contemplated the representation of this ancient meal that Leonardo da Vinci immortalized with his brushes in his famous fresco, The Last Supper? 

This meal during which Jesus reveals to his disciples his imminent death, his passion, after the betrayal of one of them and the denial of another, Saint Peter.

The Gospels say that, during the meal, while they were eating, Jesus took the bread; and after giving thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat, this is my body that is given for you. You will do this in memory of me”.

Then he took a cup of wine and, after giving thanks, gave it to them, saying, “Drink it all, for this is my blood, the blood that guarantees the covenant of God and is shed for a multitude of people, for the forgiveness of sins. I declare to you: from now on, I will no longer drink this wine until the day I’ll drink with you the new wine in the Kingdom of my Father.”

“You will do this in memory of me.”

A handful of words and gestures that irrigate a culture, found a civilization, shape attitudes and sensibilities, and set a tone: that of welcoming, listening and sharing.

It is out of fidelity to the Covenant sealed at this meal that Christians the world over have, for 2,000 years, reproduced these gestures of sharing at every mass. Sharing the holy bread and wine. 

Two ancient gestures commemorating a 2000-year-old divine covenant, to which Christians the world over have remained faithful. 

These words are engraved in the collective Christian unconscious. They form the basis of our relationship with wine.

Look how alone this man seems, isolated in intense reflection, absent from his apostles who are wondering about the meaning of what He has just announced to them: the betrayal of one of them, the denial of another and his coming Passion. This will take place the next day, on what Christians call “Good Friday”.

Harmony – embodied by the number 12 – cannot be separated from disaster. The presence of our loved ones does not spare us from loneliness. Just as life and death, intimately linked, cannot exclude each other. History, in its essence, is tragic.

This might seem to take us away from our subject, the history of vines and wine, but no, look, they’re intimately intertwined. Look at the label of a French producer of Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine.

(Dr.FX)