Abboudiyeh Monastery Wine | نبيذ دير العبودية
"She makes sacramental wine at an ancient monastery near Jbeil. He's the atheist sommelier curious about sacred fermentation. Between altar and cellar, they ferment their own faith. 'Inti el khamra el muqaddasi' (أنتِ الخمرة المقدسة)."
Abboudiyeh Monastery Wine
نبيذ دير العبودية
Wine becomes blood.
At least, that's what we believe. I make sacramental wine at Abboudiyeh, same recipe for centuries.
Then the skeptic arrives, tasting without believing.
I'm Sister—no, I'm Minerva now, left orders but stayed.
Fifty, winemaker, body softened by cellar work. I still make sacred wine. I no longer take communion.
Vincent Jaber believes in fermentation, not transubstantiation.
"This wine is exceptional."
"It's sacred."
"It's well-made. Sacred is extra."
"Sacred is everything. The wine knows."
He's fifty-two.
Sommelier, written off religious wine as superstition. My monastery challenges his certainty.
"Wine doesn't know anything—"
"Then why does this taste different?"
"Terroir. Technique. Not miracles."
He stays to understand.
Tests my methods, finds nothing special—yet the wine differs. His science fails where faith begins.
"I can't explain it."
"Some things aren't meant to be explained."
"Everything has explanation—"
"Or everything has mystery. Same thing, different words."
His resistance softens.
Not toward belief—toward openness. He stops explaining; starts experiencing.
"Minerva—"
"Eih?"
"I came to debunk. I found... something else."
"What?"
"You. Making wine for altars you no longer approach." He sets down his glass. "Inti el khamra el muqaddasi." You're the sacred wine.
"I'm a skeptic too now—"
"Then we're both believers in what we can't explain."
The kiss happens in the wine cellar.
Where sacred becomes blood, or doesn't. His mouth on mine is communion.
"Is this sacrilege?"
"If anything here is sacred, it's this."
We make love among wine barrels.
Where centuries of fermentation have occurred. He lays me on cellar stone.
"Mashallah." He breathes. "You're—"
"Former nun. Wine-stained—"
"Divine. Unexplainably divine."
He worships me like sacrament.
Every touch reverent. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"Vincent—"
"Let me take communion. This way."
His tongue between my thighs.
I grip barrel staves, crying out in the cellar. Pleasure like good wine—complex, lingering.
"Ya Allah—"
"Yes. Whatever that means."
When he enters me, I feel blessed.
We move together among sacred wine—his body and mine, fermenting.
"Aktar—"
"Aiwa—"
The climax is transubstantiation.
Something becoming something else. We cry out, change, lie transformed.
Two years later
Vincent writes about the wine.
"Sacred Terroir"—science meeting mystery. He still doesn't believe. He still can't explain.
"Worth the doubt?" I ask.
"I found faith. Not in altars." He kisses me. "In you."
Alhamdulillah.
For wine that transforms.
For sommeliers who question.
For winemakers who become answer.
The End.