[NRx]

It’s weird to think about, but a lot of the things we take for granted are almost shockingly recent inventions. The can opener didn’t exist until 1870—nearly a full century after canned food was first produced (people ate so much canned food that year, you guys). Doors have been around forever, but doorknobs weren’t invented until 1878 (and people were finally able to leave their houses). And grape juice?

Grape juice wasn’t a thing until 1869.

That may surprise you. There have always been grapes, and they’ve always had juice, right? Well, yeah...no...sorta. See, the thing about grapes is that their juice is loaded with sugar, and their skins naturally cultivate yeast, so the moment you squash a grape, the yeast gets in the sugary juice and starts turning it into alcohol. The label on that thousand-dollar bottle of cabernet you’ve got in your cellar might tell you otherwise, but, like most of Francis Ford Coppola’s career, winemaking is something a toddler could do by accident.

Prior to the post-Civil War era, if you wanted your grapes to last past next Tuesday, you only had two options: Dry them out and make raisins, or squash them to make wine—and since raisins are only useful for ruining perfectly good cookies, there was really only one option. This was okay, though, because—according to the psalmist, at least—wine is a gift from God:

He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:
wine that gladdens human hearts,
oil to make their faces shine,
and bread that sustains their hearts. (Ps. 104:14-15)

Christians generally recognized this as true—that is, until Methodists decided it wasn’t true sometime in the early 19th century.

[NRx]

Ooops. I posted what should have been the excerpt into the first comment block. Read the rest at the link.

[Drew68]

Interesting and entertaining. Thanks for posting.

[DouglasKC]

I did a sermon on this a couple of years back...very fascinating. The premise is why do we use wine instead of grape juice in a Passover ceremony...it’s because that’s what Christ HAD to have used himself...

[Jack Hydrazine]

Methodists on a grape jihad?

[Drew68]

See, the thing about grapes is that their juice is loaded with sugar, and their skins naturally cultivate yeast, so the moment you squash a grape, the yeast gets in the sugary juice and starts turning it into alcohol.

This also answered my question of why we make wine from grapes but not so much other fruits.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I have heard the Baptist evangelist Jack Van Impe preach more than once that “oinos” in the NT always refers to unfermented grape products, even jam. An interesting piece of revisionism.

[Fiddlstix]

Bookmark

[Fido969]

Difficult for me, a recovering alcoholic. When I visit a church, I always have to ask if they are going to use grape juice or wine.

[daifu]

Oral tradition was that unfermented Concord grape juice was a very small, niche market until Prohibition came along. Then there were thousands of small vineyards whose produce had almost all gone into the production of wine, and the market disappeared.

The growers formed a Cooperative, which began promoting Concord grape juice as a healthy drink, to create a market for their grapes. That is why we identify the flavor of Concord grapes as “grape” but virtually never see those purple grapes in the market.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I have read that back during Prohibition the bread yeast companies put a warning on each pack of yeast, something like this.

WARNING! “It is a violation of Federal Law to mix this yeast with grape juice, store it in a dark place for a few weeks and drink the product!”

[Reeses]

Yeast also mate and have sex in the grape juice. It's quite the drunken party until they run out of other people's sugar.