Sacramental wine
alcoholic drink served to commemorate the Eucharist
Sacramental wine, Communion wine, altar wine, or wine for consecration is wine obtained from grapes and intended for use in celebration of the Eucharist (also referred to as the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion, among other names) and the blood of Christ. It is usually consumed after sacramental bread (the body of Christ).
History
Wine was used in the earliest celebrations of the Lord's Supper. Paul the Apostle writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16:
The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread.
In the Early Church, both clergy and laity received the consecrated wine by drinking from the chalice, after receiving a portion of the consecrated bread. Due to many factors, including the difficulty of obtaining wine in Northern European countries (where the climate was unsuitable for viticulture), drinking from the chalice became largely restricted in the West to the celebrating priest, while others received communion only in the form of bread. This also reduced the symbolic importance of choosing wine of red color. The twentieth century—especially after the Second Vatican Council—saw a return to more widespread sharing in the Eucharist under the forms of both bread and wine in the Latin Catholic Church.
The public source identifies “Sacramental wine” as alcoholic drink served to commemorate the Eucharist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sacramental, wine and alcoholic.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q958011. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sacramental wine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.