Sacramental Wine

I took a look at a bottle of the wine that my church (Episcopal) uses for communion wine. It is purchased from a local Roman Catholic supply store. The label has a logo which incorporates the words "Mont La
Salle Altar Wine". Everything else on the label is simple text in various size fonts, all in upper case with one exception as noted. It reads:

Pure California
Tokay (in script letters with the largest font on the label)
Approved for sacramental use
Alcohol 18.0% by volume
Cellared and bottled by
Mont La Salle Altar Wine Company
Sanger, California

The color of the wine is similar to a tawny Port and it is sweet.
Anyone have a clue as to what this is? It is obviously a fortified wine, perhaps made in a manner similar to the way a Port is made but using some variety of white grapes. I suppose that, like Burgundy, etc., there is no prohibition against using the word Tokay, but it's kind of meaningless. Perhaps some coloring is also added.

I'll not include any tasting notes here.
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AFAIK, any wine is OK. Which makes me wonder what the "approved for sacramental use" means on the label I referred to in my original posting. Approved by who? Remember, I'm talking about Episcopalians purchasing wine from a Roman Catholic supply store.
I grew up in Mississippi when the sale of any kind of alcoholic beverage (except beer in some counties) was illegal. That didn't mean that it was not available. It just meant that it cost more than it would have otherwise. The whole arrangement made the bootleggers and
Baptist preachers happy because the former raked in the cash and the latter could brag to their congregations about what they had accomplished.

Do I detect a note of cynicism in your posting?
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At one time in the US, "Tokay", "Port", "Sherry", and "Angelica" were fortified wines made from just about any cheap grape available. Before
Thunderbird and such came along, the cheapest versions of the mentioned wines were often associated with street bums, because they offered the cheapest drunk available. The high sugar content even had a little food value, although very unbalanced. There were a few drinkable wines with the mentioned names made that sold at a higher price, but all of the cheap, nasty wine sold under these names did not help sell the few drinkable examples.

??? Now you have confused me, Ian. Are you saying that someone in Europe who produced Zinfandel there should not call it "Napa Valley" or "Napa
Valley Zinfandel"? Either is a bit unlikely I'd say. Do Europeans even grow something sold as Zinfandel, or could that now be considered to be a
California proprietary name?

LOL! Good one. :^D

Actually, I think the blasphemy - if it be such - is more in

Blasphemy requires deliberate intent to blaspheme, which is a very high standard to obtain. I doubt that the average parish priest is at all aware of the European sensitivity about use of their place names in such fashion, so this doesn't count as blasphemy. Those who are (aware) probably consider it a very venial matter indeed, and not at all relevant to whether wine thusly labeled should be consecrated. The overriding consideration is whether the wine in question _tastes_ good enough to be worthy of consecration.

Salut/Hi Michael Pronay,

Chuckle. From what I've seen of the grape, it needs a LOT of sun, so perhaps even in Krems, the grape is underexposed. Of course it could also be a simple matter of young vines too.

Reminds me of a comment made by an Episcopal priest regarding the bread often served with the wine: "I never had any trouble believing that it was the body of Christ. I just had trouble believing it was bread".
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Oh dear! that is a bit of a problem isn't it? Better to stick to lambasting
Christ's tears (Lacryma Christi) than any other more substantial portions.

Heh. Probably not in Moslem countries. Just look what they tried to do to
Salman Rushdie for merely writing a novel!

I'm not 100% positive about this, but AFAIK _any_ parish priest can bless wine. Not quite the same as with kosher wine, which has to be produced under rabbinical supervision using only kosher cellar supplies.

Many years ago (~40) there

That's old hat. The rubrics were revised to permit the use of white wine for communion, as well as crystal glassware (rather than the traditional gold lined chalice). The switch to white wine was a strictly practical matter: red wine stains are too difficult to remove from the linens.

I've always thought the protestants were cheated a bit on that score for the sake of temperance. Jesus didn't turn water into grape juice at Cana, and you can be darn sure He and the apostles didn't drink unfermented grape juice at the Last Supper!

Salut/Hi Tom S,

Primarily the former, because Napa Valley is a geographical entity in the
USA, and as such it should not be used as if it were a wine type. If someone in Europe used clones of Californian Zin and made a good wine from it, I don't really see that they should - or could - be prevented from calling it
Zinfandel.

I'd certainly hope so, though calling a European Zin "Napa Valley" is exactly parallel to calling an Alsace Pinot Gris "Tokay" or a Californian
Altar wine "Tokay" (extending the argument to Champagne, Burgundy, and all the rest of the wines to which I've referred ad nauseam).

Does it? I didn't know that. I wonder if that's the same everywhere.

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Salut/Hi Vino,

Factually? No idea. However it sounds very much like the liquids sold as
"Tokay" in the Rutherglen area of Australia, though some of these are very agreeable as wine.

Apart from the fact that it's yet another example of US names using European area names as if they were generic, possibly not. It may not be illegal in the USA, but I would argue that it ought to be. Just as I would argue that it ought to be illegal (and probably is) in Europe to use the name "Napa
Valley" for - say - Zinfandel.

Very sensible, as transubstantiationalists would probably regard it as blasphemous! Actually, I think the blasphemy - if it be such - is more in using a morally reprehensible name for something that is destined for a holy purpose.

Salut/Hi Vino,

I know you don't, Vino, and in fact I think most of us on this forum are in more or less complete agreement. We may not agree 100% on the level to which consumers are deceived (or if they are at all), we may not agree 100% on whether _today_ winemakers (ab)using geographical names do so with deliberate intent to deceive, but I think that pretty well everyone agrees that it would be better if wines were sold under their _own_ merits.

When the US FDA allowed the interchangeability of "zinfandel" and "primitivo" based on the DNA near-identicality of the two grapes the Italians began legally to label what had been only allowed to be called "primitivo" as "zinfandel" for importation into the US.
There are now "Primitivo" wines from California, and "Zinfandel" from Italy and (of course) Australia, to name just two of them.