Altar wine for Pope Leo's Córdoba Mass comes from Maipú

The altar wine for Pope Leo XIV's Mass in Córdoba on 10 November will come from Rodeo del Medio, a Salesian winery in Maipú, Mendoza, where students and staff make a sweet fortified wine called Don Bosco Licoroso Especial.

Leo XIV is due in Argentina from 8 to 11 November 2026. Córdoba takes up one day of that schedule: according to Perfil's timetable of the visit, the Mass is set for Tuesday 10 November at 10:00 on the grounds of the Military Aviation School, and he flies back to Buenos Aires the same afternoon.

The choice of wine became public in early October. Los Andes and Diario UNO reported it on 5 October, and Infonegocios named Father Javier Verdenelli as the Salesian who confirmed that the Archdiocese of Córdoba had asked the order to supply it.

A wine built not to stain the linen is a product designed entirely around its single use.

How this altar wine is made

Don Bosco Licoroso Especial is sweet and fortified, with a bright orange colour. Both traits are deliberate. The colour is meant to show less on altar linen if a drop is spilled, and the sweetness keeps the taste gentle. Cadena 3 adds that it is milder than a Malbec or a Cabernet.

María Laura Peregrinelli, communications manager of the Don Bosco Faculty of Enology and Food Sciences at the Universidad Católica de Cuyo, described it to local media as a sweet, very pleasant wine. Students at secondary, tertiary and university level take part in the production alongside the winery's own staff.

That makes this altar wine a teaching product as much as a liturgical one. The winery sits inside the faculty, which Diario UNO presents as the first of its kind in Latin America.

None of the reports published so far gives a vintage, a bottle count or a special label for the Mass, so those details remain open.

A Salesian cellar with 125 years behind it

The Salesians date their winery to 1901, when the first Mass wine was filtered at Rodeo del Medio, which is why 2026 is being marked as the 125th anniversary. Local reports describe Don Bosco as the wine used by almost all the churches of Córdoba, which makes the papal choice an extension of habit rather than a new contract.

It is not the only Mendoza wine on the papal programme. Diario UNO reports that the Mass at the Basilica of Luján will use a fortified rosé from Cabrini, a producer in Luján de Cuyo that has made ritual wine since 1939. For a wider look at what the province and its neighbours pour, see Jujuy's solar wine train.

The Mass is five weeks away. The vintage and the volume are the figures still missing.