Avodah Zarah 73 - Lenient Opinions About Wine

Libation wine is prohibited for benefit. Some say that the same prohibition applies to today's regular wines, but others maintain that nowadays, since idolatrous libations have fallen into disuse, the ordinary wine of non-Jews is prohibited only for drinking but not for benefit.

A minute quantity of libation wine mixed with kosher wine makes the mixture forbidden for benefit. Again, some say that today this stringency does not apply, and kosher wine is permitted unless the new wine imparts its own flavor to the mixture.

Rabbi Yochanan said that if one pours libation wine, even all day, from a small pitcher into a cistern of kosher wine, each successive drop of libation wine is nullified, and the wine in the cistern is permitted. Not only that, but each nullified drop is now viewed as kosher wine and it turn nullifies subsequent drops of libation wine.

Earlier we learned that any amount of prohibited substance, mixed with its own kind, for example, wine into wine, prohibits the kosher substance. Some say, however, that this stringent rule is true only for libation wine, but for all other substances it is nullified if it is less than one-sixtieth.

Art: Edouard Manet - Boy with a Pitcher 1862