Many are probably familiar with the wine archaeology done by Patrick McGovern. Here a pretty good youtube channel, Religion for Breakfast, applies his work to ponder What Would Jesus Drink:
So, anyone fancy trying a spiced and sweetened Amarone, maybe with a dash of seawater? Do share TNs if a braver person than I!
Interesting. By ‘black wine’, I would think malbec or aglianico, as those are quite dark.
What would really be cool for historical researchers would be to somehow map varieties of grapes that existed 2000 years ago in the Middle East. Not sure ho you would do it without some type of botanical evidence, but I would like to know what existed back then.
I would find that really interesting. Though I don’t know that the varieties at the time would correspond to anything that exists today in any way that is relatable.
For the marriage at Cana, Jesus turned water into wine…
Or not. If He were a Jedi or had really high midi-chlorian levels, it may have remained water and He just told all the people, “This is the wine you’ve been hoping for.”
He did make the wine…
A) He had to make the wine in the style that was appreciated at the time, so we would likely not like it as He was trying to please a period-specific group.
Or…
B) He’s freaking Jesus, so the wine would be perfect! In which case, it’s the wine we should all wish we could taste.
Or…
C) Each person’s experience of the wine was unique to that person and no tasting note would reflect what we might notice if we were to try the wine.
We never saw any follow up in the Bible about this. If the wine were all that great, you’d think people would have followed Him from the beginning!
Excellent points. The fact that there were no tasting notes or scores makes one wonder if it was possibly fake news. They’ve discovered a lot of scrolls but mysteriously no wine reviews on any of those.
From Pirke Avot, roughly Third Century: Rabbi Yose ben Judah a man of Kfar Ha-babli said: He who learns from the young, to what is he compared? To one who eats unripe grapes, and drinks wine from his vat; And he who learns from the old, to what is he compared? To one who eats ripe grapes, and drinks old wine. Rabbi said: don’t look at the container but at that which is in it: there is a new container full of old wine, and an old [container] in which there is not even new [wine].