TEMPEST IN A COMMUNION CUP
Can strong convictions over equally valid but conflicting principles reach an agreeable resolution? Not easily, it appears.
My married life is under a bit of stress righjt now and it’s all because of differences my wife and I have over our church communion wine. We have had several “frank exchanges of views” – as the news media report when the world’s superpowers face off over, say, nuclear disarmament – with little reconciliation. Proposals have been made and deflected. Discussions have been fitful. Resolution has been elusive.
Here’s our dilemma as best as I can impartially describe it:
A few years ago, one of my wife’s duties at our Presbyterian church here in northern Virginia was to coordinate our monthly communion services. “Coordinate” included maintaining a list of volunteers to bake or buy the communion bread, scheduling trips to the supermarket to buy wine and grape juice, and setting up the monthly communion table before the Sunday service. (In our church we frequently pass the bread and wine elements down the pews serving communion to each other from circular trays. The circular communion trays hold thimble-size cups of wine in the outer ring and grape juice – for minors and non-drinkers – in the inner rings.)
So, it was normal that one day I would be with my wife at the supermarket when she was food shopping for home and buying wine for the church. Our conjugal conflict first emerged when she sent me off to get the wine while she headed to the produce section.
When I showed up at her shopping cart with four bottles of a local Virginia wine, her immediate reaction was, “How much do those cost?”
“About $15.00 a bottle, I said.
She gave me a stern look. “Take them back! I forgot to tell you to pick out the California wine that comes now in 3-litre boxes. One of those boxes costs $30 for the same volume of wine as four of those standard 750 milliliter bottles that total to $60.”
I did her bidding but it gnawed at me to the point that I later had to speak up. You see, while she was serving on the church worship committee, I was participating on a church task force looking at how to make our church ‘greener’ and its operations more environmentally friendly. Stuff like, installing thermal windows and energy efficient lighting, and recycling of Sunday service bulletins. The goal of our task force was to identify ways to reduce our church’s ‘carbon footprint.’
So, over dinner one evening I raised the subject of how to reduce the environmental cost of the communion wine. “Ya know, the California wine you purchase for the church has to be trucked all the way across the country or shipped by rail. That transportation creates a lot of environmental pollution. It’s sad, ‘cause Virginia produces some very good wines, that are available right here practically at our doorstep. We’ll do a lot less damage to the environment if we buy our church wine locally.”
“Yes, but the Worship Committee gives me a pretty tight budget to work with,” she countered. “I need to be frugal. Find me a Virginia wine that competes in price with the California brand we now purchase and I might consider it. Besides, I don’t think the California wines are that much more polluting.”
“They are, I said, and I’ll show you. I accept your challenge!”
Over the next few weeks, I conducted an Internet keyword search using “wine” and “carbon cost,” and learned that California wines generate twice as much greenhouse gases than Virginia wines do when the relatively high-carbon transportation impact of the California product shipped across the country is factored in. That’s according to the authoritative Journal of the American Association of Wine Economists. (Yes, there is such an association and publication. It’s been active for a couple of decades.)
In a 2007 AAWE article, “Red, White and Green: The Cost of Carbon in the Global Wine Trade,” authors Tyler Colman and Pablo Paster reported that California wines delivered to the U.S. east coast had more than twice the ‘carbon cost’ of those wines produced and sold locally. More, even, than French wines shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.
For that part of our debate, I felt I had a strong case.
More difficult was finding a local Virginia wine that was equal or less in price – in the communion cup – when compared with its California competition. I contacted the Virginia Wine Marketing Board, based in Virginia’s state capital, Richmond, for help. I was surprised to learn that Commonwealth of Virginia is quite a wine producer ranking nationally only behind California, Oregon and Washington state.
However, in comparison to their competition in other major wine producing states, Virginia wineries put a much smaller share of their production on supermarket shelves. Instead, the Virginia Marketing Board says, many Virginia wineries choose to market themselves as destination wineries for tourists and for wedding receptions and other events.
Still, the Wine Marketing Board reported, there are a few Virginia brands that sell for under $10.00 a bottle.
Over the next few months on every shopping trip I made, I looked until I found one Virginia wine that sells its 750 ml bottles of wine at $7.50. That’s $10.00 per liter, or the same per-unit price as the $30.00 3-liter boxes of California wine my wife was purchasing!! And without the adverse environmental impact of its California rival!
Gotcha, wife!
But when I proposed the cheaper Virginia wine to her, she turned me down flat.
“I’m told that local $7.50-a-bottle rot-gut stuff is really bad wine,” she insisted. “I’d hear about it from some of our parishioners, for sure. They’ve got taste. They know quality.”
“Yah, and they’re also the parishioners who complain the pew cushions aren’t soft enough,” I retorted. “Look, going to church is not about being comfortable or a connoisseur. A common thread in our pastors’ sermons is that in today’s troubled world it’s not possible to be both comfortable and a good Christian!”
“Yes, but I don’t want to be the first person in over two millennia of church history to have been banished from a Worship Committee because of bad wine. I’m going with what I know.”
So there we were, at a stand-off. She, the conservative traditionalist determined to be a responsible steward of church money. And me, forward thinking environmentalist, firmly committed to good stewardship of the planet.
I was not going to be defeated. I waited a few weeks until I developed a plan that I felt was strong enough to win her over.
“Look,” I began again. “This is going to sound a bit far out at first, but I’m convinced it’s a break-through for both us and for the church. I want you to propose to the church Worship Committee that … that we produce our own communion wine in the church basement.”
“WHAT!?”
“Yes. I’ve thought it through carefully. I’ve even watched a few YouTube videos on wine making. It’s not that hard from the looks of it. We can make it a church project.”
I started to run down my talking points. “First, we can repurpose the commercial-size kitchen we have in the church basement; you know, the kitchen that years ago the church set up and used when we were running a children’s day-care program. It’s idle now but an ideal location for wine making. It has a huge dishwasher unit perfect for sterilizing bottles, and the large stainless-steel tubs that were used for washing pots and pans can be repurposed as fermentation tanks.
“The church basement is cool enough to be just right for storing and aging what we produce. It’s gotta stay cool all year long because it’s beneath the sanctuary where the church organ sits. That organ requires strict temperature and humidity controls, just like in those European wine-aging caverns.”
The look of skepticism had not yet left my wife’s face. I pressed on.
“Finally, by making our own wine we’re making a statement that we care about stewardship of both the church budget and the environment. We can involve all ages in the church, the youth in particular. They’re particularly environmentally friendly.
“We probably can find some pro bono help from the Virginia Agricultural Extension Service or some nearby professional vintners in selecting the best grapes. It’s not like we’re producing a lot of wine for ourselves. We’re not selling any … yet.”
“Look,” she said. “I’ve heard enough for now. I’ve got to get ready to go to church choir practice.”
She was clearly sending a subtle message of how far apart we were on my church wine project. The choir practices on Thursdays. We were talking on a Tuesday.
A week later I attempted to throw the weight of church history behind my case.
“Producing our own wine, we’re doing nothing new,” I tell her. “In fact, religious sects have been producing their own wines since the Middle Ages. Just think about all those ancient European monasteries and convents. They didn’t get their communion wine from any supermarket shelves. We’ll be drawing on centuries of religious tradition when we produce our own wine. That should appeal to the more conservative members in our congregation.”
She shifted her glance toward the ceiling, and I thought I could detect a quivering in her lips. I decided I should back off and not press further at that moment.
“Ya know,” I began again a few days later, “we could actually make a little money for the church by producing some surplus wine to sell. According to the Virginia Wine Marketing Board, they got some legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly that requires all the state liquor stores to stock Virginia wines, and only Virginia wines, on their shelves. No competition from wines from other states. I checked out our neighborhood state liquor store and it does stock bottles of Virginia wines. I also learned that the Marketing Board could help us arrange with a few of the State’s 300 store outlets to carry our wine. Almost a captive sales market. Sure thing. It’s a no-brainer!”
“Well, now that is something we both can agree on,” she interrupted. “Your church wine production scheme definitely is a ‘no-brainer’!”
I tried to lighten up our discussion a bit. “I’ve developed some descriptors to go on the bottle labels. Would you like to hear them? What do you think about, ‘evokes velvety notes of spiritual harmony’ or ‘earthy tones of Old Testament tannins’ or ‘a robust ecumenical blend of forbidden fruits?’ That’s just for starters. I’m sure our Sunday school kids to come up with a brand name and a picture or drawing for our label. I want everyone in the church to get involved.”
I thought I saw a smile – or was it a smirk - cross her face. I pressed ahead.
“I’m also thinking we can save money and help the environment by recycling and using wine bottles. We’ll put a collection bin near the church kitchen door. It’s in a discrete enough place so that no one will know which church members make the most frequent visits to deposit empty wine bottles.” That suggestion elicited a knowing giggle from her.
“And think about this. When we have our church name on the wine bottle, we get visibility. Name recognition. It puts our church ‘brand’ out there for all to see.
“We might even enter our wine in some annual wine competitions for more exposure. Maybe, I could get the Virginia Wine Marketing Board to set up a special wine competition category for us: ‘Wine Produced by Houses of Worship.’ We’d be a sure winner ‘cause there’d be almost no one competing against us.
“We won’t need to worry about the Mormons, Methodists or the Baptists; that’s for sure. Maybe the Catholics will try to move in and capture some of the market share if our church winemaking enterprise really takes off. That’s OK. I’d welcome the Catholic’s competition; it’s validating. We might even get a few converts.”
I had one more arrow in my debate quiver.
“The publicity we get might just appeal to the younger hipper generation we’re trying to attract into the church. You know as well as I that one of our church goals is to encourage new members to pass through our doors. Our reputation as a quality communion wine maker could expand our demographic reach. I think my home-brewed wine project is a win-win-win for the church budget, membership team, and the environment.”
I could detect a look of revelation cross her face as she struggled to respond.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?!”
I waited patiently for a full five minutes while she tried to regain her composure through spasms of laughter.
Finally, between gasps for air, she spoke … “LET ME TRY TO UNDERSTAND! … YOU WANT TO PROMOTE OUR CHURCH … BY PUTTING ITS NAME ON A WINE BOTTLE!? …. IN A LIQUOR STORE!? …. GOOD LUCK ON GETTING THAT APPROVED BY THE CONGREGATION!!”
I dug in. “You can’t discourage me. It won’t take me more than a couple of days to put together a business plan that you can take to the Worship Committee.”
“YOU can take it to the Worship Committee. Just keep me and my name out of it!”
***
A year has now passed, and my wife has rotated off the Worship Committee and become engaged in other aspects of the life of our church. We also now have an Earth Care Team that is following up our audit with recommendations for making our church more environmentally friendly. Locally sourced communion wine is not yet on the Team’s list of priority actions.
I still hold onto my dream of our church producing environmentally-friendly award-winning craft wine. I’m just waiting for the right moment when I can formally present my business plan to the congregation and can expect it to get a friendly reception. I certainly got none at home.
What I’m going to do right now, however, is pour myself another glass of my favorite Virginia cabernet franc. These contentious communion wine talks have been brutal. ###
While I was reading this I was laughing as hard as your wife was… and I’m firmly behind her! But good writing though.
— J.T. Calvin