“I like to think of Jesus as wearin’ a Tuxedo T-shirt, ’cause it says, like, “I want to be formal, but I’m here to party too.” I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.”
– Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
A group of best friends gather for a boozy, wine filled party that involves confrontation, accusations, backstabbing, and betrayal. It’s Real Housewives: The Last Supper and shit is about to get REAL. Today is Good Friday and as we prepare for Easter there are deep meditative questions to ask ourselves about the nature of sin, forgiveness, and resurrection in the afterlife, and also…like…. what did Jesus drink to party?
All important questions, truly. And while we’re not going to jump into what happens after you die for this article (you’re just going to have to wait for our upcoming piece, “I tried the Beyonce Master Juice Cleanse For 7 days And You Won’t Believe What Happens To Our Souls After Death”). We can tell you what kind of wine Jesus probably drank at the Last Supper, and isn’t that just as juicy?
Recently, the wine app Vivino talked to experts to determine what kind of wine might have been served at the famous meal. And while I think MY Jesus is more of a Sauvignon Blanc guy, myself, it turns out that’s not at all “historically accurate”.
The gospels date the Last Supper as taking place around 30 A.D. and, as they were Jewish, it may have been a Seder meal. “The Last Supper most likely took place on the Thursday celebration of Passover, according to three of the four Gospels,” said Father Daniel Kendall, professor of Theology and Scripture at the University of San Francisco. “Since it was and is the most important of Jewish feasts, wine would have been part of the festivities.”
So that just leaves us wondering exactly what kind of wine Jesus would have favored. Dr. Sean Myles, an Assistant Professor of Agriculture Genetic Diversity at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, tells Vivino that we can’t know what kind of grape varieties were popular at the time, “It’s not until relatively recently in history, about 1,000 years or less, that we have any written evidence of named grape varieties,” he says, but what we do know is that wine making was a popular pursuit since at least 4000 B.C. So using clues from the time period, experts have been able to make an educated guess as to how and with what it would have been made of.
And Dr. Patrick McGovern, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, theorizes that the disciples might have been drinking something like a modern-day Amarone. It’s a wine that’s been around along time, and the process of making it would have been consistent with the times.
Amarone is a sweet, bold, dark wine made from dried grapes, has a high alcohol content, and includes flavors of black cherry, brown sugar, and chocolate. It’s super rich, and that follows what we know of the area. Jeruselum wines of the time were probably dark and strong with less dilution than the wines from other areas. “They may have also mixed in things like pomegranates, saffron and myrrh.” McGovern adds.
So now we know! Unfortunately, if you want to accurately recreate the last supper, Amarone is a fairly expensive wine to do so with. Even low end bottles will cost you $50-$100 dollars. So you might want to stick with that $7 dollar bottle of Barefoot Wine at Easter brunch and just say that you’re “representing that time Jesus walked barefoot next to you in the sand and carried you through my troubles or whatever.” That seems like it will track.
