NPR Mocks Catholic Bishop for Putting Grapes in the Graveyard

June 18th, 2016 6:15 PM

The Catholic Church is always good for a laugh on Catholic-subsidized National Public Radio....not so much your local mosque. On their game show Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me on June 11, host Peter Sagal inaccurately presented as breaking news a “bold scheme to make money” in Oakland. That’s not quite right. But you can see the punchline potential in putting a vineyard next to a graveyard:

PETER SAGAL: The Catholic Diocese of Oakland has come up with a bold scheme to make money - to turn a local graveyard into a vineyard. It's called Bishop's Vineyard. It features 16 acres of a variety of grapes - the Pinot noir, both flavors of red, raspberry, Bing cherry and Bing Crosby. (LAUGHTER)

PETER SAGAL: Oh, that's where they put him. The Chardonnay is described as both fruit-forward and Aunt Ruth-forward. (LAUGHTER)

BRIAN BABYLON: So you just put the bodies in there and then...

PETER SAGAL: ...Yeah. I mean, like, the - you can be buried in the vineyard where they're growing the vines.

BRIAN BABYLON: But they're not putting you in a casket. They're, like, using your body as fertilizer?

PETER SAGAL: I would hope so. I would love to come back as, like, a decent, mid-priced bottle.

FAITH SALIE: That would be like... (LAUGHTER) That would be like a cool, like, Stephen King novel about...

PETER GROSZ: Oh my God.

FAITH SALIE: ...About the bodies that rise from the dead. And it would be called Terroir.

By contrast, the Carol Pogash news report on June 7 in The New York Times showed that this wasn't a money-making scheme, although it was a way to stop losing money:

HAYWARD, Calif. — For an additional $1,000, a family can have a loved one buried near the chardonnay vines glistening in the sun, or if they prefer, near the pinot noir vines at a cemetery here in an East Bay suburb of San Francisco.

The vines were planted 10 years ago as a less expensive and more water-frugal alternative to grass at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery here.

But this is California, the land of gold and grapes, and the ornamental grapevines are now producing prizewinning wines.

“It was kind of like Jesus’ miracle when he made water into wine,” said Bishop Michael C. Barber of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, which oversees 16 acres of grapes at this cemetery and two others. He became the bishop in 2013, when the wine was called Cathedral of Christ the Light before church officials came up with Bishop’s Vineyard, a snappier label for a larger market.

The grapevines serve another purpose. “The cemetery doesn’t seem like such a sad and fearsome place when you go there and see the vines,” Bishop Barber said.

These are challenging times for cemetery owners, who are struggling to cover their costs, primarily upkeep of the land....

“You just drive by cemeteries like they’re a museum,” said Robert Seelig, the chief executive of Catholic Management Services, which oversees the diocese cemeteries. “People are attracted to wine. It draws them into a cemetery and attracts you to a different story line."

This happened ten years ago, not just in the last few months. The original plan was just to make wine for the communion services, but then the quality turned out to be greater than expected. That was a happy plus:

Planting cemetery grapevines in 2006 was a small part of Mr. Seelig’s solution for a money-losing operation.

“I wondered if there was a disconnect where cemeteries were no longer relevant to the modern world,” Mr. Seelig said. “What I learned is that the model had changed.” The Catholic church’s model “needed to be updated,” he added.

He cut costs, bought a funeral home with a crematory and began marketing cremations with traditional burials to counter what he saw as “push-button fix for grieving.” The grapevines were a small part of the plan.

At $50,000 an acre for planting grass, Mr. Seelig wondered, “could we plant something else?” He thought about “the body and blood of Christ,” he said. “I wasn’t going into the wine business. I was thinking of the nice foliage.”

An acre of grapevines cost only $17,000 to plant.

NPR, a nonprofit radio system with all kinds of money-making products on the side, really left the wrong impression when charity is heavily involved in the Catholic bishop's plan:

This year, a Bishop’s Vineyard cabernet sauvignon won a silver medal at the Monterey International Wine Competition. Its cabernet and zinfandel won silver medals in the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

And so the cemetery wines have become a start-up business. Unlike most, it is a nonprofit, giving most of its products — 7,200 bottles of altar wine — to 45 churches. It has donated $35,000 in scholarships to parochial schools. Like most start-ups, it is not yet turning a profit, but the church is investing in the wine business and expects to break even this year. The annual costs run up to $150,000. Mr. Seelig considers it a good investment.

The diocese has a Bishop’s Vineyard website, a Facebook page and a blog, Grapes & Graveyards.