Is sacramental wine an Ontarian’s ticket to cheap booze? An atheist toys with the “province’s most glorious loophole”

“Sacramental wine may be the province’s most glorious loophole,” says Mark Schatzker in the Globe. He risked fire and brimstone recently by trying to buy wildly under-taxed vino from a religious supplies store near Pearson airport. The LCBO collects only 15 per cent on the 200,000 bottles of holy hooch sold each year—that’s one quarter its normal rate—making a three-litre jug of Burgundy ring in at $24.75. The catch, of course, is that the wine must be used for religious purposes; Schatzker, an avowed atheist, had trouble making up a scenario. “The bottom line, it quickly became apparent, is that without a signed letter from a deacon, rabbi or bishop, I wasn’t walking out with any wine.”