The priest drinks wine

I have to admit that the best part is when the priest announces: “Go in peace, may the Lord be with you”. I also love the moment of consecration of the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, when the sound of the small bell just below the altar (I think it is called a carillon) echoes. Sometimes I ask for help from the sacristan so that I can ring those two bells during the most solemn phase of the Mass, when the priest places his hands on the bread and wine, says “Take them all…”, and kneels before Jesus.

The third moment was the Eucharist. At that time (I don’t know if it’s still the case today), they taught in catechesis that we must not chew the host. After opening our mouths to the priest, we had to untie the host on our tongues and press it against the roof of our mouth so that it wouldn’t touch our teeth. It was awkward, a bit like taking a sip of newly brewed sparkling wine with a very fine foam. What made the Eucharist a special moment for me was not the sliver of wheat, but the mystery of the wine that the priest drank. What could it be? Was it really wine? First thing in the morning without food? Maybe just water or a soft drink, some liquid to push the host, I thought, still far from realizing that the priest, as a general rule, always drank the best – and, in the Douro, the best was the wine of the finest wine, the port.

Generally speaking, popular wines tend to be sweet and high in alcohol so as not to spoil. But this is not necessarily the case. In some areas of Brazil, for example, it is common for priests to use rosé wine for communion, some even made from American grapes. In Europe, in countries such as Italy, for example, white wines are also used, although the most famous is Vinsanto, a traditional sweet wine from Tuscany and Umbria made from the Trebbiano and Malvasia grape varieties. In Portugal, tradition also favors sweet wines. One of the most famous producers is Caves Primavera from Bairrada, which produces sweet popular wines for several parishes from white grapes. It is these institutions, not the Wine Committee, that are ultimately responsible for certifying the validity of the wines.

The rules are written in the document. The Sacrament of Redemptionwhich details what can be eaten and drunk during the liturgy. “Bread must be unleavened and made only from wheat. (…) Bread made from other substances, even if they are cereals, cannot constitute valid material for the performance of the Sacrifice and the Eucharist, even if it is mixed with substances other than wheat in quantities that would not constitute, according to the ordinary classification, wheat bread”; Wine “must be natural, made from the fruit of the grape, pure and within its shelf life, without any mixture of foreign substances. (…) It is completely forbidden to use any wine that is offered by anyone who has doubts about its authenticity or origin, since the Church requires the conditions necessary to determine the validity of the sacraments. Other beverages of any kind should not be admitted under any pretext, since they do not constitute valid subject matter ”.