The wine intervention: Dutch nuns appeal for help with booze glut

A Dutch convent is appealing to wine drinkers to support its endeavours as, thanks to an extremely hot and dry year, Sint-Catharinadal in Oosterhout has an excess of 64,000 bottles made from its vineyard.

“We had a lovely summer last year, warm temperatures, and it promises to be an excellent harvest of more than 60,000 bottles,” prioress Sister Maria Magdalena said in a video appeal.

With more knowledge of prayer than of online retail, they felt they had little hope of sharing the bumper harvest. But with the help of local farmers groups, the nuns are now offering for sale online – or for pickup – cases of their 2022 white blend of auxerrois, pinot blanc and pinot gris, or a pinot noir/gamay rosé, at €14.50 a bottle.

The convent in the southern Netherlands started its vineyard in 2014 to generate income for the maintenance of its buildings, recruiting about 130 volunteers.

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Biblical

“We didn’t find beer in a convent so appropriate,” the sister explained to Dutch media. “Wine fits better, it is biblical and it points to Jesus.”

Thibaud van der Steen, joint founder of Breda Maakt Mij Blij – which helps producers, farmers and growers sell excess goods – said that since the campaign began jointly with No Waste Army and Boerschappen on Wednesday, almost 5,000 bottles have sold.

“We started Breda Maakt Mij Blij in 2020 out of a need for positivity [during the Covid pandemic] as there was so much misery,” he said.

“When there were problems with export bans, and people couldn’t export their flowers, we made a video and photos of a flower grower and suddenly sold 300,000.

“In 2020, the nuns had wine that was intended for KLM, although there was no signature on the deal so it didn’t go through, and we helped.

Mistaken impression

“They called a few weeks ago saying: ‘It sounds crazy but it has never been as sunny and dry as in the last year, we have so much wine we don’t know what to do with it, and we are having problems with the energy crisis in a badly insulated building.’ So we made a video and set up a campaign for them.

“There’s a bit of a mistaken impression that Dutch wine isn’t tasty, but nowadays it is almost always good – and this is wine with a story.”

Previous harvests from the Dutch nuns have inspired decent ratings on the wine site Vivino. Meanwhile, if the campaign does not succeed quite as planned, the zusters have confessed that they do not mind a glass or two of the holy grape themselves. - Guardian