The Spirituality of Wine

By Gisela H. Kreglinger and Eugene H. Peterson

In this book Gisela Kreglinger offers a fresh, holistic vision of the Christian life that sees God at work in all created things, including vineyards, the work of vintners, and the beauty of well-crafted wine shared with others around a table. Kreglinger begins by examining wine in the Bible, in the history of the church, and in the Lord’s Supper, and these reflections culminate in a theology of joy and feasting that celebrates the human senses as gifts for tasting the goodness of God.

In the second part of the book Kreglinger brings Christian spirituality and the world of wine together in new ways, exploring such matters as technology and wine-crafting, the health benefits of wine, alcohol abuse, consumerism, and soul care. Her discussion is enriched by interviews with thirty vintners from around the world as well as her own experience growing up on a family winery in Bavaria.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781467445313

Gisela H. Kreglinger

Gisela H. Kreglinger (PhD, St. Andrews) grew up on a winery in Franconia, Germany, where her family has been crafting wine for many generations. She holds a PhD in historical theology from the University of St. Andrews and taught Christian spirituality at Samford University before turning to writing full time. She is a public speaker and leads people on wine pilgrimages in France and Germany. Kreglinger is also the author of The Spirituality of Wine.

Book preview

9780802867896.jpg

Wine as a gift of God’s love, wine as a witness to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom of life and joy, wine as the drink that draws us more closely into the fellowship of Christ, and wine-making as our participation in the care and celebration of God’s good creation — these themes and many more besides are lovingly developed in this beautifully conceived book. Gisela Kreglinger opens up the gift and the mystery of wine in these pages so that we can taste God’s invitation to us to share in the divine love that heals the world and the deep joy that celebrates our life together.

— Norman Wirzba

Duke Divinity School

"I wept upon reading The Spirituality of Wine by Gisela Kreglinger. Our restaurant has received Wine Spectator’s Grand Award for twenty years, so how is it that I had only tasted the tip of this reality, only touched the knowledge of its gifts? Profound and potent, intertwined with practical and tangible application, this book has completely astonished me. Like an exquisite wine in a bottle, I’ve been transformed from within."

— Alice Canlis

Canlis Restaurant, Seattle

The Kreglinger Chalice was commissioned by Gisela Kreglinger’s

ancestors for a Franciscan church in Rothenburg, Germany.

(Photograph by Karlheinz Gisbertz)

The Spirituality of Wine

Gisela H. Kreglinger

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

© 2016 Gisela H. Kreglinger

All rights reserved

Published 2016 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kreglinger, Gisela H., 1967- author.

Title: The spirituality of wine / Gisela H. Kreglinger.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,

[2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015045473 | ISBN 9780802867896 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 9781467445313 (ePub)

eISBN 9781467444842 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Wine — Religious aspects — Christianity.

Classification: LCC BR115.N87 K74 2016 | DDC 261.5/6 — dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045473

www.eerdmans.com

For

Gertrud Kreglinger-Müller and Herbert Müller

and all those vintners

whose faith finds expression

in their fidelity toward the land

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Sustenance

1. Wine in the Bible:

God’s Gift and Blessing

2. Wine in the History of the Church:

Its Rise and Fall

3. Wine in the Lord’s Supper:

Christ Present in Wine

4. Wine and Communal Feasting:

The Joy of the Lord Is Our Strength

5. Wine and Attentiveness:

Tasting God, Tasting Wine

Part II: Sustainability

6. The Vintner as (Practicing) Theologian:

Finder or Maker?

7. Technology, Spirituality, and Wine

8. Wine and Its Health Benefits

9. Wine and the Abuse of Alcohol: Rescuing

Wine from the Gluttons for the Contemplatives

10. Wine, Viticulture, and Soul Care

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Hebrew and Greek Wine Terminology in Scripture

Appendix 2: Crafting a Church Service for the Blessing of the Grapes

Notes

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Index of Scripture References

Foreword

Dr. Gisela Kreglinger writes of growing up on a small family winery in Bavaria that has been in her family since the seventeenth century. It is a fascinating account of the craft of wine-­making and the implications of how it affects our lives. It is a very personal story and prompts us to think about our place in the great community of God’s creation.

Kreglinger talks with vintners in Italy, France, Bavaria, California, and Oregon. Her father, Peter, has a place in the story. And the Bible, of course, in which wine plays a major role.

It interests me that weddings (and, of course, the wine that goes with them) play a prominent role in the biblical narratives. In the story that John writes near the beginning of his Gospel, it is a wedding and wine that get the story moving. John has carefully organized his Gospel on a framework of seven signs that give witness to the nature of Jesus’ presence among us. Then, in the final four chapters of Revelation, also written by John, he picks up this celebratory beginning in Cana and brings it to a celebratory conclusion: for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready (19:7).

I have always delighted in the parallel wedding stories that John uses near the beginning of his Gospel and near the end of Revelation as the angel instructs him: Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. . . . Then I fell down at his feet to worship . . . (19:9-10). St. John loves weddings. Weddings play a significant part in his recapitulation of the life of joy.

This invitation is followed by the bride herself: And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne say, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men’ (21:2-3). A final mention of the wedding is generously welcoming: The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come.’ And him who desires take the water of life without price (22:17).

As Christ’s salvation work among us is completed and as the New Jerusalem is established, there is this confirming but unadorned comment: And its gates will never be shut (21:25).

Never? Really? That is what the text says. Jesus doesn’t want any of us to miss the joy.

Eugene H. Peterson

Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology

Regent College, Vancouver, BC

Preface

Two fields of experience and learning converge in the pages of this book: the field of Christian spirituality and the world of wine. I grew up on a small family winery in Franconia, Germany, a region that became part of Bavaria about two hundred years ago, during the Napoleonic Wars. Franconia had a long and independent history before then, and though the Romans seem to have brought vines to the area first, it was Benedictine nuns who first developed viticulture in our region, in about ad 600.

The winery was in bad shape after World War II, and my grandparents, together with my parents, worked very hard to rebuild it out of the ruins and plant vineyards. My mother and a wonderful group of women from the village were the workers in the vineyard. I spent the first three years of my life in a playpen at the bottom of the vineyard because my mother could not stay home to take care of us children. From our vineyards the views of the Main Valley are stunning. Friederike, an orphaned child, shared the playpen with me. One of our workers had taken her in and raised her. My father and the apprentices he trained performed the most physically strenuous work on the wine estate.

On rainy days I had to stay with my grandfather in the office. He was a gentle soul, and he did all the administrative work for the winery. I don’t think that he enjoyed the distraction of small children crying and whining, but on a small family winery everyone had to chip in to make it work. There were four of us children, all girls, and my father must have worried about who would take over the winery one day. When I was born, my grandmother could not resist pointing out that my mother had given birth to yet another girl (number three); on top of that, I had red hair.

Life on the winery was very unusual for us girls. When we were in school, my mother often felt sorry for us because, as soon as we would come home, my grandmother had a long list of chores that needed to be done at the winery. Even as fairly small children, we worked a lot. Our friends did not like to play on the family estate. Sooner or later we would all get sucked into the never-­ending hustle and bustle that makes up life on a family vineyard. I remember vividly having to crawl into the small opening of our wine vats and scrub them clean from the inside. It was dark, wet, and cold inside, and I could not wait to get out again. It was one of my least favorite chores.

The aroma of fermenting grape juice and other fruits such as pears, plums, and apples are some of the most powerful memories of my childhood. Dad not only made wine but also distilled spirits from the fruit of our orchards. I vividly remember my father shoveling the pressed and dried grape skins from a large pan onto a wagon that was then taken to a large compost heap. Sometimes we children were allowed to hold a small tasting glass under the winepress and sample the freshly pressed juice. The sweetest and most delicious grape juice danced on our taste buds and made us feel more alive. When the grape juice began fermenting, it had a lovely buzz to it. I had always marveled at how such intense and concentrated sweetness could come to be in such tiny grapes. It was a delight to be involved in something so beautiful, and while tasting the juice of those grapes, we could forget all the hard work for a moment.

The other vivid memory I have of growing up in a winery is the regular wine-­tastings we had in our rustic tasting room. Crowds of people would come to the winery and spend an evening tasting wine and listening to my father talk about our wines, the soil, the weather, and other things that I did not quite understand. What struck me most is the transformation that took place during the wine-­tasting. At the beginning of the evening the group would be quiet, reserved, and quite serious. As the tasting went on, however, the group would get livelier, faces would open up, and smiles would come more easily. The conversations became more engaging, and there was lots of laughter. There seemed to be a lot of joy when people tasted wine together. It was lovely to watch, and I was always amazed that this transformation would happen over and over again with each group that came. I felt that our wine-­tastings did something important: they gave people a joyful evening, and those people seemed more alive by the end of it.

Bavaria is mostly Catholic, but Franconia had an important role to play in the Reformation, and our village embraced the teachings of Martin Luther in the early seventeenth century. To this day, my family is deeply rooted in the Lutheran faith and the rich traditions that come with it. Though we all worked hard and had very little time to ourselves as a family, we knew how to celebrate. Eating and drinking around the table was and still is the ritual that keeps us bonded not only to one another but also to the family winery and the land that we cultivate. Life on the winery estate is very special, and I still consider it home — though I left many years ago.

I learned early that somehow our lives — the work that we do at the winery and our lives of faith — belong together. In the autumn my mother would always cut the most beautiful branches with thick ripe grape clusters from the vines and decorate the church altar for our annual harvest thanksgiving service. But it was only at my confirmation, when I was fourteen years old, that I began to glimpse something about the life of faith that haunts me to this day. Like baptisms and weddings, confirmations are very important in our family, and we celebrate them in grand style. My family invited all of our relatives to witness me affirm my faith and celebrate with us as a family. I had spent two years in confirmation classes, during which I memorized the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and Psalm 23, and I received my very own Bible verse to accompany me through life. Pastor Walz taught us about the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament that we would receive for the first time. I was nervous because I had to speak in front of the whole church, then endure a question-­and-­answer session, and finally partake of the Lord’s Supper for the first time in my life.

Pastor Walz taught that when we take the Lord’s Supper, we remember and receive the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins. I concluded from what I had learned that this was between God and me. But when the chalice came and I took a sip of the wine, it suddenly struck me that what I was drinking was the wine my family had made. The smell of the wine was so familiar, the taste so fresh and crisp, that it smelled and tasted like home. I remembered how much had gone into crafting this wine. I thought about all the people who worked for us: their lives and sorrows and our lives and sorrows. I thought about the fields and vineyards, the sun and the rain, and our daily listening to the weather forecast. During mealtimes my parents would always talk about the weather and how it would affect our lives on the winery. Would there be late spring frost that would freeze the buds on the vines? Would there be enough sun and rain? What if it hailed in the autumn and destroyed the grape clusters? When should we begin the harvest? I thought about all the family fights and generational tensions between my grandmother and my parents and between my parents and us children. Life is so full and complex, so beautiful and yet so difficult.

I had a little epiphany as I took my first sip from that chalice. Could it be that God wanted to redeem not only my life but also all the hustle and bustle that life on the winery brings? We work so hard to make a living from growing vines and crafting wine. Could it be that God cared about it and perhaps was even involved in it? This idea is not quite what I had learned in my confirmation classes over those past two years — but was it not true? Had Jesus not made wine as well? My questions about who God is and how he might or might not be involved in our lives is something that never left me. When I told my father that I wanted to study theology, he was not pleased. He called it breadless art (German: brotlose Kunst) and was concerned about my future. I did pursue theology, became a theologian, and in this book I explore the spirituality of wine from a Christian perspective.

Let the reader beware, however, that this is not an exhaustive exploration of Christian spirituality. The focus of the book is on wine, a theme that will take us into the heart of Christian spirituality and the importance of it for our everyday lives. Wine features prominently in the Bible, in the history of church, and has been of immense cultural value. In light of this I shall explore the theological and spiritual significance of wine for the life of the church and for our lives, and I shall seek a meaningful dialogue between the world of wine and the Christian faith.

As part of this project, and in my effort to create a thoughtful and informed dialogue, I interviewed thirty vintners from the Old Wine world and the New Wine world. I interviewed vintners from the Rheingau and Franconia in Germany and from Burgundy in France, representatives of the Old Wine world. The vintners I interviewed from the Napa and Sonoma valleys in California and the Willamette Valley in Oregon are representatives of the New Wine world.¹ Most of the vintners I interviewed have small wineries and oversee the whole process — from growing vines and the work in the cellar to engaging customers in their search for a wine worth drinking. I use the term vintner to speak of those who seek to craft wines that reflect a particular place and particular vintages; I use the term wine-­makers for companies whose primary goal is to mass-­produce wine without concern for particular places and vintages. The primary aim of the latter is to produce a stable and predictable product at an affordable price, and their use of modern technology is often highly invasive.

My hope is that this book will be read not only by pastors, priests, theologians, and lay Christians, but also by those outside the church who are interested in a spirituality of wine, including vintners and wine-­lovers. For this reason I have tried to stay away from Christian jargon and explain even basic theological terminology. This book — and each chapter in it — should not be understood as a definitive or final statement on the importance of wine for Christian faith and practice. Rather, it is introductory in nature. Given the relative neglect of this important subject matter, I hope that this book will open up a conversation that will enrich our understanding of Christian spirituality and the world of wine for many vintages to come.

Acknowledgments

The first seeds for this book were sown during my experience being raised on a family winery. It is my family and all our vintner friends with whom I grew up that I want to thank first for teaching me to love and respect our land, to appreciate the gift of wine and the blessedness of conviviality around the table.

Despite the enormous amount of information found on the Internet and the apps one can download in order to learn about wine, I still have found that the well-­read and experienced owners of small wine shops are the best people to expand my knowledge about wine. Thank you to Tony Meyers, of Classic Wine Company in Birmingham, Alabama, for his patience in teaching me about wines around the world — and Bordeaux wines in particular. Thank you to Peter Wood, of St. Andrews Wine Company in Scotland, for exposing me to so many different small wine producers. Jack Evans’s knowledge of wine and his ability to capture in words the exquisite beauty found in one small glass of wine has been a profound gift to me, and I thank him for sharing his wealth of knowledge and deepening my sense of wonder at the beauty of well-­crafted wines.

The Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, St. Mary’s College at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, welcomed me as a research fellow and generously provided me with an academic home. I was able to write most of this book in the tranquility of a medieval tower overlooking the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral. It is a truly inspiring and blessed place. I am grateful to the faculty and staff of St. Mary’s College for their support and convivial conversations. I would like to thank especially Michael Partridge, Bill Hyland, Mark Elliott, Gavin Hopps, and David Brown, whose comments on the text and conversations with me were insightful, encouraging, and full of wisdom. A generous research grant from the Selah Foundation made it possible for me to stay in St. Andrews to research and write this book. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I am very grateful to Eugene and Jan Peterson for their generous support.

I wish to thank friends whose comments on earlier versions of individual chapters have been invaluable: Jack Evans, Allen Ross, Piotr Malysz, Steve Innes, and Matt Jenson. Michael Summerfield, with his expertise in the geology and geography of wine, Phil Winn, with his expertise in neuroscience, David Sterns, with his expertise in the philosophy of technology, and Nicola Kreglinger, with her expertise in cardiovascular diseases — all were enlightening interdisciplinary conversation partners. To all of the above, and to many more whom I cannot name here, I am deeply indebted. I am also very grateful to my research assistant, Joshua Hays, who carefully worked over the whole manuscript and has patiently stayed with me throughout the writing of this book.

About thirty vintners took time out of their busy schedules to grant me an interview concerning the spirituality of wine. I am indebted to them for their willingness to share their wealth of knowledge and experience in crafting wine. I would like to thank especially Kurt Beitler and Paul Wasserman for helping me find and set up interviews with vintners in Sonoma Valley, Napa Valley, and Burgundy.

Finally, I would like to thank Ian Barnett and Tim Carlisle for allowing me to stay in their apartments right by the medieval harbor overlooking the North Sea during my time in St. Andrews. What view could be more inspiring for writing than sunrise over the North Sea? I am deeply grateful to both of them for their hospitality. And Jim Buttercase regularly supplied me with fish he had just caught off his boat. Thanks to Jim. The world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God.

Introduction

The term spirituality is in wide use today, meaning different things to different people. When I first began to interview vintners in California and Oregon about the spirituality of wine, several commented that the Christianity with which they had grown up was by far too small and narrow to account for what they experienced working with the land in their vineyards. This observation surprised me. I had grown up in a region where the world of wine and Christian faith had converged for centuries. Something seems to have gone missing along the way, with the result that Christians and those who grew up in the Christian faith are no longer able to see the rich connections between the life of faith, the work of the vintner, and the gift of wine.

In the pages of this book, I seek to contribute to the recovery of a vision of the Christian life that sees God at work in all things, even in the work of vintners and in the enjoyment of a well-­crafted glass of wine. Christian spirituality is a strain of Christian theology that pays attention to the way we live life in light of our Christian beliefs and our understanding of God. Its emphasis is on the lived experience of the Christian faith. It seeks to avoid the abstract; instead, it seeks to stay grounded in the everyday and the personal as much as possible. The Christian spirituality I espouse in the pages of this book is rooted in Christian Scripture and nourished by the wisdom of the rich Christian tradition of our ancestors, those who have gone before us in the faith. My inspiration and emphasis is a creation spirituality that sees human life in profound relationship to and engagement with the earth. As such, this book will touch on many theological themes. Questions related to areas such as anthropology, ethics, and practical theology will emerge quite naturally from the following discussion. A relational anthropology — who we are, how we relate to God, one another, and the rest of creation — will be an especially important issue. We need to reconsider our place in God’s creation and what it means to belong to it.

Talking about spirituality has its risks. The renewed interest in spirituality more generally speaking, and Christian spirituality in particular, has ushered in a time of fruitful and life-­giving conversations. Yet, talk about spirituality has been fraught with dangerous misunderstandings. There has been and still is the temptation to ally spirituality with various kinds of dualisms. While some versions of dualism still acknowledge the importance of matter to some extent, the tendency is to devalue matter and emphasize the spiritual to the detriment of the material. Another form of dualism divides life into sacred and secular. Here the tendency is to isolate and separate out certain times (such as a church service or morning prayer) and places (church buildings) as sacred, while ordinary times and places seem secular — and thus with little spiritual meaning. A decidedly Christian understanding of the spiritual life seeks to integrate faith into all spheres of life, including the material and the everyday.

This book presents an understanding of Christian spirituality that sees all spiritual dimensions of our lives and our world as deeply and thoroughly embedded and engaged in material things. But the spiritual is not solely material; all things have spiritual meaning in the Christian faith precisely because of our belief that God created the world in such a way that the spiritual and the material are profoundly intertwined. This fundamental character of Christian spirituality finds its climax in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, when God took on human flesh and lived among his people. The Lord’s Supper further challenges dualistic understandings of spirituality. In the Lord’s Supper we embrace, cherish, and practice the God-­given interconnectedness between spiritual and material realities; we learn to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. The use of seemingly ordinary things, such as bread and wine, in the Lord’s Supper challenges us to see that everyday aspects of our lives are imbued with spiritual meaning. The vintner’s life and work with the land and its fruit is no longer a secular affair but has spiritual significance. What attitude do vintners have toward their vineyards, and how do they cultivate the land? Creation is a gift from God, and the way a vintner handles it is of spiritual significance. When we read Scripture with this in mind, we will receive new understanding.

* * *

Wine is an important food and theme both in Scripture and in the history of the Christian church. The lack of attention to this important subject matter indicates a greater confusion within the church: the belief that matter is of little significance for Christian spirituality. The recovery of a spirituality of wine is thus an excellent way to overcome a dualistic spirituality that seeks to divorce the physical from the spiritual, to divide between secular and sacred.

How has this lack of attention to wine and what is material in Scripture come about? Christian spirituality has traditionally tended to focus on the introspective turn to the spiritual within, a very important — albeit limited — perspective. Richard Bauckham points out another important factor: he argues that the prevalent ideology of the modern West has influenced modern New Testament scholarship, an ideology that has understood human history as emancipation from nature. It no longer understands humans as embedded in nature, and it eclipses the profound interdependent relationship between human history and the rest of nature. Instead, it favors an assumed independence from and supremacy over nature. The way this perspective has influenced biblical theology is in its strong tendency to set history against nature and salvation against creation.¹

This ideology, whether consciously or unconsciously adopted, has profoundly influenced the way modern interpreters have read the Bible. Bauckham says:

References to nature in the New Testament, especially the Gospels, have been persistently understood from the perspective of modern urban people, themselves alienated from nature, for whom literary references to nature can only be symbols or picturesque illustrations of a human world unrelated to nature.²

Perhaps this, too, helps explain why the theme of wine in Scripture has received so little attention in the modern period. As we become more aware of these modern ideologies, we can take a step back and read the New Testament with fresh eyes, much more in continuity with the Old Testament. I hope that the following pages will reveal that a decidedly Christian understanding of the spirituality of wine does not lift us out of the natural world. Rather, it calls us to trust that God wants to heal our relationship with creation and the profound gifts that we receive from it, including wine.

* * *

The first part of this book explores and draws out the scriptural and theological foundations of a spirituality of wine. From Genesis to the book of Revelation, the theme of wine features rather prominently in Scripture. What is the role of wine in the Bible? Does it have a particular place in God’s creative and redemptive purposes? Exploring this theme opens up a vision of the Christian life that is far more encompassing and encourages us to reconsider our own place in the great community of God’s creation.

Wine has had an important role in the life of the church, including the early North American church. It is a history that is often forgotten and needs to be rediscovered, remembered, and celebrated. From the early church in the Ancient Near East to its growth in medieval western Europe and its expansion in Central and North America, the history of wine in the church is long and rich. Exploring how theologians throughout the history of the church have reflected on wine further enriches our understanding of the spirituality of wine. A whole tradition of Christian art emerged when artists began to depict Christ in the divine winepress. Exploring the role of wine in the history of the church also sheds some light on the historical roots of the rejection of alcohol by certain pockets of Protestant Christianity.

The use of wine in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper offers rich insights into the importance of wine for Christian life and practice. What do we celebrate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and what is the role of wine in it? Does the background of the Hebrew Passover meal help us understand its role? Understanding the spiritual significance of wine in the Lord’s Supper brings us to the heart of a decidedly Christian understanding of the spirituality of wine. It is an embodied and communal ritual and anchors our experience of the Christian faith in creation. The mark of a decidedly Christian spirituality is not a flight from creation but a faith-­filled embrace of it: thus wine used in the Lord’s Supper becomes a defense against lingering dualistic tendencies that tend to devalue the importance of creation for Christian spirituality. All Christian denominations regard the Lord’s Supper as a particularly sacred celebration. I will show how this sacred celebration can and should imbue celebrations — and feasting more generally — with added spiritual meaning.

Gratitude and joyful celebration are two important ways for Christians to respond to God’s exuberant gifts of creation and salvation. In the Hebrew world that Jesus and his disciples inhabited, feasts and celebrations were important ways for believers to cultivate their spiritual lives. In them they remembered God’s deeds of the past, embraced God’s faithfulness in the present, and fostered expectant hope for God’s redeeming intervention in the future. Rather than using feasts to escape the pain, suffering, and boredom of our lives, Christian feasting should become a place where we open up our lives to God’s love and forgiveness. It is a place where the generosity of God’s abundant love and grace forms — and transforms — us. From here we can go forth into the world with gratitude and joy, affirming life as a gift to embrace, treasure, and share. Joy as an expression of our gratitude to God should stand at the heart of a decidedly Christian understanding of the spiritual life. If this is the case, why is there so little joy in the world and especially in the life of the church? Joyful feasting has traditionally been an important way through which Christians have lived into and nourished a life of gratitude and joy. We need to recover a decidedly Christian understanding of festive play before God, and wine can play an important role in that. The film Babette’s Feast informs our search for a decidedly Christian understanding of feasting.

A spirituality of wine and the recovery of a decidedly Christian understanding of festive play before God invite us to ponder the importance of the five human senses. We humans experience the world, including the spiritual, through the five human senses and not apart from them. The church has traditionally had a rather ambivalent posture toward the senses of taste and smell in particular. Is this attitude justified? How important are the senses of taste and smell for human cognition and for our pursuit of the knowledge of God? Insights from neuroscience suggest a more positive role for the senses of smell and taste. Can we reclaim them as gifts from our Creator for Christian living? If we understand our spiritual lives as fully embodied and physical, can the senses of taste and smell not also become vessels for prayer and contemplation?

The second part of the book builds on the first part and seeks a mutually enriching dialogue between Christian spirituality and the world of wine. Can a spirituality of wine add meaning and purpose to vintners and their vocation of crafting wines? Can the experience and wisdom of the vintner shed light on and deepen our understanding of the spirituality of wine and help us grasp more fully the potent scriptural metaphors from the realm of wine for the Christian life?

As a gift from God, and in its place in the Lord’s Supper, wine teaches us that it is not secular matter without sacred meaning. If the vintner participates in crafting wine that is both a gift from God and the work of human hands, then his/her vocation has profound spiritual meaning. Is the vintner a finder or a maker? What do vintners do with what they find in the vineyard, and how much are they willing to work with such particulars as place, soil, and climate? Do they matter, and if so, why?

The role of technology in crafting wine is another important question today. The advances in modern technology have impacted all aspects of our lives, and we have to learn