With the church’s blessing

ThrougH all the years of planning and building the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, one of Cardinal Roger Mahony’s primary design objectives was to “bring into the cathedral the spirit and the influence of the early California missions.” One day, Mahony got a bright idea -- even he wouldn’t call it divine inspiration -- while reading a newspaper story about Christian Navarro, a partner in Wally’s wine shop in Westwood and a personal wine consultant whose clients include Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito.

“I knew the cathedral would have mission bells, fountains, a courtyard and colonnades, all in the mission style, and I knew that the color of the cathedral was going to be the color of the original adobe that was used in the missions,” Mahony says, “so I thought, ‘Why not do even more with the mission concept? Missionaries started wine-growing in California. Why not sell California wine in the cathedral gift shop?’ ”

Thus was born what Mahony says is “the only cathedral gift shop anywhere in the world that I know of that sells wine -- certainly the only one that sells wine under its own label.”

Mahony called Navarro, and Navarro designed the label and arranged the tastings to choose the gift shop wines. Mahony himself wrote the message on the back of the bottle, describing the winemaking history of the early missionaries and making the connection between them and the wines in the gift shop.

The wines -- two Cabernet Sauvignons, two Chardonnays and a white Zinfandel -- are displayed right inside the front door of the shop. In recent weeks, in preparation for Easter, they’ve also been included in the shop’s various Easter baskets.

“I’d rather have the basket carry wine, which is deeply rooted in the history of the state and its missions, than some chocolate duck,” Mahony told me.

Although we were sipping fruit juice at the time -- it was early afternoon, and he’d just finished celebrating a Mass -- Mahony says he drinks wine with dinner most every night. He enjoys Italian reds -- “especially Barolo, my all-time favorite.” But he drinks primarly California wines. He especially likes Cabernets from Freemark Abbey, Chateau Montelena and Zaca Mesa, old-vine Zinfandels from Lodi and “my absolute favorite white, Patz & Hall Chardonnay.”

The cathedral wines are made by San Antonio Winery, a couple of miles north of downtown Los Angeles -- the last of more than 100 wineries the city once had. The grapes come from vineyards in Northern and Central California, but all are bottled and aged at the winery.

Mahony says he’s been “absolutely floored” by how briskly the wines are selling in the gift shop.

“I had no idea what to expect,” he says. “Before we opened in September, when I was told they were sending us 700 cases, I figured that would last several years. But we’ve sold them all and ordered more. Some people buy a bottle, some buy a case. Most people buy it to give as gifts. But some ... buy it just as a souvenir of their visit to the cathedral and they want to keep it, not drink it.”

Mahony grinned as he recalled what he’d told several such patrons. “Get a foil cutter and cut the foil off carefully. Then take the cork out, enjoy the wine, put some very inexpensive wine in the bottle, re-cork it and glue the foil back on. Then you’ve had a nice wine with your dinner, and you still have your souvenir from the cathedral.”

Just how “nice” is the cathedral wine? Well, the San Antonio Winery isn’t Chateau Margaux. Or even Chateau Montelena. But the winery, long known for its cheap jug wines, has significantly upgraded much of its line in recent years. Of the 400,000 cases San Antonio produces annually, about 150,000 -- including the wines sold in the cathedral gift shop -- are in the “fine wine” category, bottled under separate labels and sold mostly to restaurants.

“They’re good wines for the money,” Navarro says.

Indeed, the cathedral wines are also sold in some retail outlets (often at slightly lower prices) under the company’s San Simeon and Maddalena labels, created in large part to avoid the San Antonio identification-cum-stigma. The 1998 Cabernet, made with grapes grown in the Sonoma Valley, sells in the cathedral gift shop for $29.99. The 2000 Chardonnay from Monterey County is $24.99. The gift shop also sells non-vintage Cabernet and Chardonnay for $10.99 each and a white Zinfandel for $6.99.

Most cathedrals either don’t have gift shops or stock them only with religious souvenirs, so Mahony may be right about the uniqueness of his venture as a holy vintner. He says he’s been in more than 100 cathedrals here and abroad and has never seen wine for sale in any of them.

Some abbeys and monasteries in Italy and France do sell wine, and some even make them. But abbeys and monasteries are one thing; cathedrals are quite another -- and at least in France, selling wine in any house of worship is problematic.

“You have to get a special -- and expensive -- license to sell any kind of alcoholic beverage in France,” says Jean Duchesne, secretary to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger in Paris. “No church is likely to sell enough wine to make this profitable.”

In California, a retail wine license costs only $100 -- with an annual renewal fee of $167 -- so wine sales in the gift shop became profitable early on.

“We give them a great deal, a special price, on the wine, and we expect them to generate a profit on it,” says Steve Riboli, vice president and marketing director at San Antonio. “But we don’t do this primarily to make a profit, and we know they don’t either.

“The church is, in a sense, the root of who we are, the foundation of our existence,” Riboli says. “Our winery began in 1917, and when Prohibition came along in 1920, we would have had to close our doors if it hadn’t been for the five local parishes that bought sacramental wine from us.

“We’ve been supplying sacramental wines to churches ever since,” he says, including 500 or 600 cases that go to the cathedral.

The sacramental wine the cathedral uses is a rose and, like all sacramental wine, would certainly not be considered a “fine wine,” Riboli says. But it serves its purpose.

Riboli is the grand-nephew of Santo Cambianica, who came to Los Angeles from Italy in 1912.

“He was a devout Catholic,” Riboli says, and most of the founder’s family have followed his lead -- as winemakers and as churchgoers. On the wall outside the offices on the second floor of the winery, where various family members continue to run the business, is a photo of Riboli’s mother and father and Pope John Paul II.

Although Mahony is clearly proud of the partnership between the Catholic-run winery and the cathedral, he makes a point of noting that the gift shop is not in the cathedral, but across the plaza. “As you go through the bronze doors, into the cathedral,” he says, “you’re beginning a journey of faith, and the last thing we wanted was for commercialism to distract you and interrupt your journey.”

Of course, if gift shop visitors want to buy some made-in-California Cabernet, as well as the shop’s made-in-Belgium tapestry of the baptism of Christ or its made-in-Poland, gold-plated rendering of the Last Supper, the cashier will be happy to take their cash, checks or credit cards.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw @latimes.com.