Church in a Bottle

During my sabbatical I have taken part in some wine-tasting classes run by my good friend Dave Lawson from Chez Vin, Otley. Great fun, and I’ve discovered some gorgeous wines.

The other week, Dave was telling his class about French wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy. The red wines of Bordeaux are traditionally a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes, although each maker has their own ‘recipe’. And anyone who grows wine in the Bordeaux region has the right to call their wine ‘Bordeaux’ (and charge a lot of money for it) regardless of the quality of the wine itself. The red wines of Burgundy are predominantly Pinot Noir and, again, anyone who makes wine in the region can call it Burgundy.

However, the traditional Bordeaux and Burgundy wine makers are beginning to lose out to the New World Wines, and this is at least in part due to the fact that they refuse to label their wines clearly, and they refuse to change the way they have always done things. They would consider that, if you do not know what’s in a Bordeaux blend, or a Burgundy, you shouldn’t be drinking it anyway!
Don’t get me wrong. There are some gorgeous Bordeaux wines out there (although the expensive Burgundy we tried at Dave’s class was horrible). But it strikes me that there are some parallels here with the state of the church in the UK. Sometimes we are so hung up about the way we have always done things, that we forget to consider the people we should be trying to attract to our ‘product’. (I know that the Christian faith is NOT a consumer product, and I want to resist anything that looks like consumerism in church. But you get my point!)