By: Neil Xavier O’Donoghue, October, 25, 2025
I have always been interested in altar wine. Obviously, it is an essential element for the Eucharistic Liturgy and there can be no celebration without it. Yet it is something that we pay too little attention to. John Henry Newman, the soon to be proclaimed Doctor of the Church made this remark on the quality of the altar wine that he used in his time as an Anglican priest in Oxford:
“When I began early communion in St Mary’s in 1837, one or more communicants applied to me to the effect that the wine was strong and on account of its strength was unpleasant to them the first thing in the morning, and on that account I mixed water with it … It must be recalled that the so called wine used for the Anglican Communion used to be a strange composition … I think that the sacramental wine at St Mary’s was complained of, not so much as getting into men’s heads, as having an unpleasant taste in the mouth.”[1]
[1] John Henry Newman, Letters and Diaries, XXI, 76-7. Letter 11 March 1864 to William John Fitzpatrick, in Donald A. Withey, John Henry Newman, The Liturgy and the Breviary: Their Influence on his Life as an Anglican (London: Sheed and Ward, 1992), 13.
Nearly two centuries later, his complaint still resonates. For all our talk about noble simplicity and authenticity in liturgy, we rarely pause to consider the simple nobility of the wine we use. I am far from a wine connoisseur myself, but I do have some options on what I like and what I don’t like. Unfortunately in my inexpert opinion, most altar wine I’ve tasted in Ireland would, I fear, meet Newman’s description—something that leaves “an unpleasant taste in the mouth.”
There was a time when stories circulated about altar boys stealing the altar wine to get drunk on it. However, I cannot imagine such a thing often happening. But while some children stealing altar wine as a childish rebellion, might have taken place and in such instances the quality of the wine would be of little importance. But judging by the Irish examples I have tasted, I can definitively state that nobody could possibly drink the stuff for pleasure. While some US verities are a little better, nothing I have tasted there would be suitable for drinking with your dinner.
A few years ago I was very struck by Gisela H. Kreglinger’s The Spirituality of Wine. Kreglinger’s insistence on the physicality of wine and the fact that it is not wrong for the act of drinking it to be pleasurable was an eye opener for me. She even suggested that communities might use a better quality wine for solemnities or feasts.
his connection between the sensory and the sacred came to mind again when I read recent news reports regarding the use of altar wine in Kenya. Many news services reported how the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) has introduced a new, exclusive altar wine and mandated its use in all celebrations of the Eucharist in their region. This wine, simply called Mass Wine, is imported by the bishops from South African producers.
The reason for this new practice is that the previous wine became widely available in bars. A local, partly government-owned, company had taken care of its distribution and it was widely sold in bars, supermarkets and all other venues where alcohol was available. Additional counterfeit versions of this wine had also been appearing and this was of dubious quality (a particular concern given the sacramental requirements for valid celebration). This meant that the product had a wide secular distribution, outside of the liturgical life of the Kenyan Catholic Church.
It must be stressed that I have never been to Kenya and am no expert on their liturgical practices. There are probably many other aspects to the controversy that I am not aware of. However, I wonder what lessons we can learn from this controversy? Do we make our celebrations too banal or worldly? Are there dangers of aspects of our own liturgies becoming too profane? How can we improve our own liturgical experience? Are there aspects of our relationship to altar wine that we can improve? Ought we to reconsider the accessibility to the Eucharistic Chalice in our churches? Are we still struggling with the consequences of some challenges to our liturgical practices in the wake of the COVID crisis and what can we do to improve these? maybe even more importantly, if our worship is meant to be a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, should we not, perhaps, pay more attention to what that taste is like — even in the wine we pour into the chalice and distribute in the liturgical celebration?
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