suppose I'm taking the sacraments in a parish church in staffordshire in England in AD789. from how far away did the red wine I'm drinking come? and how many hands did it pass through getting from there to here?

by grapp
Trinity-

"Britain is rich in grain and trees, and is well adapted for feeding cattle and beasts of burden. It also produces vines in some places, and has plenty of land and water fowl of divers sorts." Bede Ecclesiastical History of England trans. A.M. Sellar. (London: George Bell and Sons), Book I.

In the early eighth century it appears that Bede was well aware of some wine production in England but owing to his description it does not appear to have been terribly widespread. No doubt one should be cautious about such an assertion given we cannot know how familiar Bede would have been with such matters. He was famously wrong in his characterization of Irish wine-making (perish the thought) so we should be similarly cautious about accepting his depiction of English production. The source is perhaps worth considering nonetheless, particularly in this instance as it relates to the period you cited.

According to Tim Unwin "Three main sources have been used to suggest that vineyards were cultivated in the centuries between the collapse of Roman authority and the arrival of the Normans: (i) Bede's History of the English Churchand People, (ii) the laws of King Alfred and (iii) Anglo-Saxon charters." Tim Unwin, Journal of Wine Research 1(1) 1990, pp. 63. Sources are therefore rather limited for the period in question but we can make some provisional claims nonetheless.

Due to charter evidence and legal records it appears that English wine-making was becoming more common in the ninth century, and was become more regulated by authorities. This is however slightly after your period, but nonetheless you would likely have seen some early development in the English south even in the late eighth century as these endeavours took literal and figurative roots.

Therefore given the limited nature of Anglo-Saxon wine production until slightly after your lifetime as a parish priest it was likely that you would obtain your wine after it had made the journey from vineyards in France. Wine traffic across the channel was constant, and there were plenty of vintners in the northwest of France and further south into Bordeaux providing for English markets.

As for your final question about how many hands your wine would have passed through I would say that is simply not open to useful speculation but I welcome any other contributors who would like to challenge that.

Have a nice afternoon!