Wine is an integral part of a Catholic mass, a physical representation of the blood of Christ present at the Last Supper. It’s not clear if that connection is the origin of Vin Santo, Tuscany’s “holy” wine. What is known is that the good friars of Europe planted vineyards to have a ready supply of highly alcoholic, mildly sweet wine for liturgical services and to dole out to the sick for its “miraculous” healing power.

The process to make it pre-dates the Roman era, a time when grapes were often left on the vine to dry before fermentation, a practice common in the eastern Mediterranean and the Greek islands. In the Middle Ages air-dried wines were called “straw wine” because they were left to dry on straw mats for months. That’s still the basic idea behind Amarone, the Sicilian dessert wines I wrote about recently, and passito wines made in Italy and elsewhere.