Faith & Writing
Faith · Honest Reading

Did Jesus Make Wine, or Welch's?

What the text says, before we decide what we want it to say

A common teaching holds that the "wine" of the Bible was really unfermented grape juice, so that Jesus never made or drank alcohol. It is usually well-meant, and the concern behind it, the real damage drunkenness does, is right and serious. But the teaching does not survive the text. The words used, the wedding at Cana, and the repeated warnings against drunkenness all assume real, fermented wine. This page is not an argument for drinking; Scripture condemns drunkenness plainly. It is an argument for honesty: reading what the Bible says rather than reshaping it to fit a position we brought with us.

The word means wine

The Greek word is oinos, the ordinary word for fermented wine in the Greek world, and the New Testament uses that same word both for what Jesus made at Cana and for what Paul warns about: "be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess" (Ephesians 5:18). You cannot get drunk on grape juice, so the warning only makes sense if oinos is alcoholic, and it is the same word throughout. The Hebrew yayin works the same way across the Old Testament. The text is not using a special word for "safe" juice in the nice passages and a different word for the dangerous stuff; it is one word, and it means wine.

Cana

At the wedding, Jesus turns six stone jars of water, well over a hundred gallons, into wine. And the master of the feast, tasting it, gives the line that settles the question:

John 2:10 · KJV

Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

The custom he describes, serve the good wine first, the lesser wine after the guests "have well drunk," only works with wine that affects people. It is a remark about real wine and a lot of it, and Jesus made the good kind.

The warnings only make sense for wine

Scripture's caution about wine is itself the proof that wine is alcoholic. "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging" (Proverbs 20:1); the long, vivid warning of Proverbs 23:29-35 describes exactly intoxication; drunkenness is named among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:21). At the same time the Bible calls wine a gift: it "maketh glad the heart of man" (Psalm 104:15), and Paul tells Timothy to "use a little wine for thy stomach's sake" (1 Timothy 5:23). God even told Israel they could take their tithe money to the feast and spend it "for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth" (Deuteronomy 14:26), hardly the words of a God who forbids it. And the new-wine-and-wineskins saying turns entirely on fermentation: new wine has to go into new skins because, as it works, it expands and would split the old, brittle ones, "else the new wine doth burst the bottles" (Mark 2:22; Matthew 9:17). Grape juice bursts nothing. None of this fits an unfermented drink.

Use, not abuse

So the Bible's actual line is not abstinence versus drinking; it is use versus abuse. It blesses wine as a good gift of God, at the table, at a wedding, at the Lord's Supper, and it condemns drunkenness without flinching. The grape-juice reading erases that careful distinction by erasing the alcohol altogether, and in doing so it has to make the warnings meaningless and the blessings odd. The honest position keeps both: wine is a gift, drunkenness is a sin, and a believer is free to abstain entirely and many wisely do, especially where it would harm them or others.

A telling detail

"Welch's" is not ancient; it is younger than the argument it is used to support. Thomas Welch, a Methodist and a temperance man, first pasteurized grape juice to stop it fermenting in 1869, specifically so churches in the temperance movement could put juice in the communion cup. Grape-juice communion is a 19th-century innovation. Reading it back onto Cana is the same move we see elsewhere: deciding the conclusion first, then making the text fit it (compare the relocation of "outer darkness" on the Security page). Honesty with the word has to come before defending a tradition.

Where this lands

Jesus made wine, real wine, and a great deal of it, and the Bible treats wine as a gift to be received with thanks and never abused. You can hold a personal conviction to abstain, and that can be wise and good. What you cannot do, and stay honest with the text, is rewrite "wine" into "grape juice" to get there. The point is small on its own, but the habit it guards against is not: once we start bending the plain words of Scripture to protect a position, we will do it everywhere.

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

Scripture quotations from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub. Greek oinos / Hebrew yayin noted. Historical note: T.B. Welch pasteurized grape juice for communion in 1869.