In attempting to describe the knowledge that wine imparts, we look for features of our actual world, features that might be, as it were, epitomised, commemorated and celebrated in its flavours. Hence the traditional perception of fine wine as the taste of a terroir: where that means not merely the soil, but the customs and ceremonies that had sanctified it and put it, so to speak, in communion with the drinker. The use of theological language here is, I believe, no accident. Although wine tells no lies about a transcendental realm, it sanctifies the immanent reality, which is why it is so effective a symbol of the incarnation. In savouring it, we are knowing — by acquaintance, as it were — the history, geography and customs of a community. 

Since ancient times, therefore, wines have been associated with definite places and been accepted not so much as the taste of those places, as the flavour imparted to them by the enterprise of settlement. Wine of Byblos was one of the principal exports of the Phoenicians, and old Falernian was made legendary by Horace. Those who conjure with the magic names of Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhine and Moselle are not just showing off: they are deploying the best and most reliable description of a cherished taste, which is inseparable from the idea and the history of the settlement that produced it.

And here we should again return to the religious meaning of wine. At the risk of drastically oversimplifying, I suggest that there are two quite distinct strands that compose the religious consciousness, and that our understanding of religion has suffered from too great an emphasis on one of them. The first strand, which we over-emphasise — this, too, being part of our puritan legacy — is that of belief. The second strand, which is slipping away from modern thought (though not from modern reality) is that which might be summarised in the term "membership", by which I mean all the customs, ceremonies and practices whereby the sacred is renewed, so as to be a real presence among us, and a living endorsement of the human community. The pagan religions of Greece and Rome were strong on membership but weak on belief. Hence they centred on the cult, as the primary religious phenomenon. It was through the cult, not the creed that the adept proved his religious orthodoxy and his oneness with his fellows. Western civilisation has tended in recent centuries to emphasise belief — in particular the belief in a transcendental realm and an omnipotent king who presides over it. This theological emphasis, by representing religion as a matter of theological doctrine, exposes it to refutation. And that means that the real religious need of people seeks other channels for its expression: usually forms of idolatry that do not achieve the refreshing humanity of the cult.