wine-msg - 1/14/08
Medieval wines. Spiced wine. Dandelion wine.
NOTE: See also these files: mead-msg, fruits-msg, p-bottles-msg, wine-cooking-msg, brewing-msg, beverages-msg.
************************************************************************
NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
************************************************************************
From: haslock at rust.zso.dec.com (Nigel Haslock)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: How sweet were medieval wines?
Date: 29 Jun 1993 18:27:27 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - DECwest Engineering
Greetings from Fiacha,
Gunwalt said:-
> Considering some of the concoctions I've been offered, I suspect
> that anything with alcohol would be consumed.
I suspect that you are mistaken.
I suspect that most medievals distrusted the hygenic safety of water as a
drink and considered that either the alcohol or the fermentation purified
the water used to make it. I suspect that the alcoholic stuff was not
druck to get drunk but to avoid getting sick.
The other aspect is that of sweetness. In early period sugar was rare and
expensive even more so than honey which was also rare and expensive. Thus
sweet things to eat and drink would have been prized.
I suspect that Ale and Small Beer were the period equivalents of Soda Pop and
were drunk accordingly. Overly sweet wines could provide a rare blast of
sweetness or could be diluted to purify more suspect water.
I suspect that taking a sweet substance and converting it into a non-sweet
liquid would have been viewed as a failure. A dry wine or mead would be
neither sweet nor vinager and so have no saving graces.
Fiacha
AnTir
haslock at zso.dec.com
From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: How sweet were medieval wines?
Date: 29 Jun 93 20:09:28 GMT
Organization: The Rialto
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn. Fiacha recently said,
>I suspect that taking a sweet substance and converting it into a non-sweet
>liquid would have been viewed as a failure. A dry wine or mead would be
>neither sweet nor vinager and so have no saving graces.
While you are right that sweetness was considered a good thing, this claim
would seem to suggest that it was the only one. A study of period recipes
does not support that view. The picture that emerges both from their works
on health and from their recipes is one that values balance and variety.
Herbs and spices are combined deliberately to balance flavors (according to
the theory of the humors); dishes of one nature are deliberately juxtaposed
against dishes of another.
Also, as I posted in commenting on Russell's Boke of Nurture, three kinds of
wine were recognized: red, white, and sweet. The suggestion, surely, is that
red and white wines are _not_ sweet, at least by medieval standards, and yet
are also _not_ failures.
The view is also supported by the existence in Digby of recipes for mead
that, when followed, produce a dry beverage.
BTW, what's supposed to be so great, from a medieval point of view, about
vinegar? The name is just "vin aigre" -- sharp wine; it's also sometimes
called "broken wine". Sure, they used it for flavoring (and for salad
dressing), but not as often as they used wine. There are specific processes
to produce it (and recipes for them); it's not just wine that went bad (at
least not always). But I see no reason to suppose that the vinegar was more
the _point_ of the exercise than the wine, however dry.
But you're certainly right about not necessarily using fermented beverages to
get roaring drunk.
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: haslock at rust.zso.dec.com (Nigel Haslock)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: How sweet were medieval wines?
Date: 29 Jun 1993 22:00:20 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - DECwest Engineering
Greetings from Fiacha,
I will admit that I might have gotten a little carried away in denigrating
non-sweet wines.
After writing, it occurred to me that wines were perhaps the only way to
preserve fruit juices beyond the end of the fruits season and that high sugar
and high alcohol combined to deter corruption. Again, this is unsupported
imagining.
Given this mindset (which may be imaginary) separating wines from preserved
fruit juices would make a certain amount of sense. Wines are to be drunk as is
while the other stuff gets used in a variety of ways. Vinegar also has a
number of uses rather than merely being drunk unadulterated.
The real point of all of this is that today we have a wide variety of things
to drink and ample supplies of sweetener that is very cheap. Thus we no
longer value the sweetness of either ale of wine. In fact, we now have little
interest in sweet beer or sweet wine.
The same logic could be applied to distillates too. Instead of valueing
drinks for the sugars they contain we value them for their alcohol and
seek for ways to increase the alcohol content.
Had sugar prices dropped by Sir Digby's day? Were his dry meads a function of
the ready availabilty of sweeteners?
With respect to the other posting about making mead from honeycomb washings,
the are references to using an egg as a hydrometer, judging the gravity by
the amount of shell above the surface. Thus I believe that period brewers
made consistent brews.
Fiacha
AnTir
haslock at zso.dec.com
From: cav at bnr.ca (Rick Cavasin)
Subject: Re: How sweet were mediev
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 93 13:22:37 GMT
Greetings to the good folk of the Rialto from (hick) Balderik.
So far, much of what has been posted regarding the behaviour
of yeast has been essentially correct, but there are a few
details missing which can make a difference. (I'm not a
microbiologist so no flames please - this is just the brewing
wisdom I've absorbed over the years. Some fiddly details may
not be entirely correct).
1) Different strains of yeast have different alcohol tolerances.
Champagne yeasts (and possibly Sherry yeasts - not sure) have
the highest tolerances to alcohol. Ale strains tend to have
much lower tolerances. Generic wine yeasts are somewhere
inbetween. When the alcohol level of the fermenting wine/mead/
ale exceeds the tolerance of the strain being used, the yeast
dies. A judicious choice of yeast strain can make it easier
to hit a target of alcohol level X and sweetness Y, but the
tolerance of each strain is not a hard limit. It's difficult
to know what strains were used historically. Digby mentions
the use of 'mother of wine (presumably yeast sediment from a
batch of wine)', ale barm, and in several cases, naturally
occuring yeast from the air (again presumably).
2) Different strains of yeast differ in how 'attenuative' they
are. An attenuative yeast will ferment a high percentage of
the fermentable sugar in the must, while an unattenuative
strain ferments a lower percentage. Champagne yeast is
attenuative, Epernay yeast is less so. You can enhance
the residual sweetness of a beverage slightly by choosing
a less attenuative yeast, without boosting the alcohol
content to the point where the yeast is poisoned. This
requires a certain amount of care since even a slight
contamination with a more attenuative strain can lead to
fermentation restarting in the bottle and the 'glass grenade'
syndrome.
3) Yeast is a living organism, and its life cycle is a little
more complex than 'eat sugar, excrete CO2 and alcohol'.
Fermentation is not the yeast's prefered mode of feeding.
Yeast would much rather breath in oxygen, and convert the
sugar to water and CO2 the way we do, but in a pinch they'll
switch over to fermentation when oxygen is unavailable.
It is this ability that the brewer exploits to good advantage.
Since fermentation is a less efficient mode of operation,
the yeast is sometimes unable to continue fermenting until
all the available sugars are consumed. I've never heard a
completely satisfying explanation for the phenomenon, but
a fermentation will sometimes become 'stuck' ie. stop
prematurely. It will can just as inexplicably start
up again, sometimes with disasterous results.
Two factors which seem to contribute to stuck fermentation
is a lack of oxygen during the early stages of fermentation
and a lack of the various trace elements that yeast require
to live and reproduce.
The first factor is easy to remedy. Once the must has cooled
to pitching temperature, you agitate the must by either
repeatedly pouring from a height (this is actually mentioned
in several of Digby's recipes), or by shaking the must
in a partially empty container. The oxygen allows the yeast
to go through a respiration phase which makes for a more
vigorous fermentation which is less likely to 'stick'.
The second factor can be somewhat problematic when making
mead. Compared to ale wort, honey must is deficient in
a number of trace elements needed by yeast. The addition
of fruit to the must can help alleviate this problem.
Without these nutrients, fermentation can be slow (compared
to what you get with ale), and the yeast will sometimes
produce off flavours that take a great deal of aging to
'mellow out'. This is why some people speak of mead making
as taking several years. The addition of fruit/spices can
also help to mask the off flavours making the mead drinkable
at a younger age. In the worst case, the fermentation may
become stuck. Adding nutrient can result in very quick
fermentation, but some people claim that the nutrients
contribute their own off flavours that take just as long
to mellow out. I like melomels (fruit meads), so I don't
bother with the nutrients (I also try to avoid the non-
period cheats whenever possible).
Cheers, Balderik (who's trying to find time to hit the strawberry
fields to stock up for a big batch of his strawberry ambrosia
From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Cheese questions
Date: 25 Nov 1993 04:59:30 GMT
Organization: The Rialto
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
Fiammetta Adalieta writes,
>A similar question: what sort of wines are period? I'm mostly interested
>in those that would be used in cooking; hyppocris, the other period use
>I make of wine, disguises flavors enough that I just follow the advise in
>_Pleyn Delite_ of picking the cheapest red wine without a nasty aftertaste.
>I would guess that period wines would be likely red and possibly on the
>sweet side, but I have no good evidence to back that up at all. Anyone
>have any suggestions?
They classified wines as red, white, and sweet. There is list of wines of
all three sorts in John Russell's _Boke of Nurture_. There are recipes that
call specifically for red, some that call for white, some that call for
specific sweet sorts (wine greke, vernage, etc.). I infer from this that
period wines were not all markedly sweet, or they would not make the largest
distinctions in that area. As to what the ordinary wines were like, I
really don't know. I normally use a wine whose flavor I like, since the
point is largely to inbue with flavor.
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: habura at rebecca.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Non-alcoholic period brews
Date: 3 Jan 1995 19:42:54 GMT
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Tangwystl writes about carbonation technology.
If memory serves (I can't fine the reference, drat it!) the first truly
"sparkling" wines--Champagne--were introduced in the 17th c. with the
invention of bottles that could take the pressure. (The inventor was a
monk--Dom Perignon, to be precise.) Earlier wines might have had small
amounts of residual CO2 but were not as fizzy as the beverages we think
of as carbonated.
Alison MacDermot
From: HPGV80D at prodigy.COM (MISS PATRICIA M HEFNER)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Medieval French wines
Date: 26 Feb 1995 00:47:47 -0500
Organization: The Internet
-- [ From: Patricia Hefner * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] --
Does anybody know where vintages called "salinato" and "repeto" came
from? They were the wines of choice at the College de Sorbonne in the
thirteenth centuries. Where would Parisians have gotten their wines,
from the Champagne area? I don't know a at %&* thing about medieval
drinks. Would somebody care to enlighten me on the subject? ----Yours
in Service, Isabelle
From: Ric Sweeting <richardleon at delphi.com>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Medieval French wines
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 95 22:23:19 -0500
Organization: Delphi (info at delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
The Salinato come from Italy, NW of Parma. It is still made in a modern
fashion. I can look for a simular vintage. In 13 C paris wine came from every
except for English areas, namely bordoeux. Champange as we know and love did
not exist yet. I believe that most wine came from Burgundy?
From: derek.broughton at onlinesys.com (DEREK BROUGHTON)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Medieval French wines
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 95 22:00:00 -300
Organization: Online Systems Of Canada
LS>For some info on Med. French wines, see Johnson, _Vintage: The Story of
LS>Wine_, New York: Simon & Schuster (1989) and Seward, _Monks and Wine_,
LS>New York: Crown Publishers (1979). Also, Williams, _Bread, Wine & Money_,
LS>Chicago: U.Chicago Press (1993).
LS> -- Esclarmonde de Colloure
I second Esclarmonde's recommendation, but that's where I went when the
question about Salinato and ? arose, and he didn't mention them. Too bad.
From: david.mcdonald at prostar.com (David Mcdonald)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Medieval French wines
Date: 18 Mar 95 09:50:41 PST
Organization: ProStar Internet Gateway
Also try The Medieval Wine Trade. Sorry bibliographic info in the cold
garage and I am in the warm house. This is an excellent document about
which wines were imported where and when.
Eduardo Lucrezia, AnTir
From: jtn at newsserver.uconn.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 24 Aug 1995 20:57:09 GMT
Organization: University of Connecticut
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
Gregria de la Croix asks:
: I'm trying to come up with the definitive egredouce recipe. (By
: definitive, I mean one that is "authentic" and tasty in equal measures.)
: I'm using the recipe in _Pleyn Delit_ as my starting point, but no matter
: what changes I make it comes out tasting harsh. I think it's either the
: wine or the vinegar I'm using.
: Now the recipe calls for red wine. I've tried jug burgundy, and
: lambrusco, with not too much success.
Three comments on wine. First, there are lots of period recipes for
egredouce. You might try looking at several, and playing around. Second,
much as I revere Hieatt and Butler, the proportions in their version of
the recipe aren't sacred. They made them up. The original just says
things on the order of "some". You might try altering the proportions,
if this balance is not to your taste. Third, the point of wine in cookery
is to provide taste, not (as a rule) alcohol. Hence the right move is
to use, not the worst, but the best wine you can get your hands on, within
reason and the constraints of your budget. Find a soft wine that you like
to drink, and try making it with that. (They had lots of different wines
in period, and there is no particular reason to suppose that you can
reproduce the particular wines that were used in the recipe, so the most
sensible thing to do is choose something you like.)
Also, my usual experience is that people screw up with vinegar at least
as often as they do with wine. In middle english, "vinegar" (and things
spelled differently but pronounced about the same ;^) refers explicitly
and exclusively to wine vinegars (red or white). (The word originates
from "vin aigre", i.e. "sharp wine.") There are separate words for cider
vinegar ("eisel") and malt vinegar (I forget, off the top of my head).
(There is no word for white distilled vinegar, because they didn't use it,
which was wise, because it is nasty, and fit only for cleaning windows
or dying Easter eggs. ;^)
If you are not using a decent quality wine vinegar, try changing to one.
Good luck!
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: maunche at aol.com (Maunche)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 25 Aug 1995 21:56:45 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Greetings unto you gentle folk, and to Lord Gregria de la Croix in
particular, who inquires about period wine. Good Lord, The recipe for
Egurdouce was from the Forme of Cury, written for Richard II towards the
end of the 14th century. The recipe (as printed in Pleyn Delit) calls for
'rede wine'. The wine you want to use would be a young Claret/Bordeaux,
or a Beaujolais, light red in color, and almost no oak characteristics. To
quote from _Scum_
... By the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) the trade in French wine had
reached amazing proportions. Ships of that time were rated at the number
of tonnes (252 gallon casks of wine) they could carry. To this day, we
speak of ship "tonnage" when we refer to ocean freight transport. The wine
fleet would sail for France in late autumn, returning before Christmas
with "new wine". They would sail again after Easter in the spring, and
return with "rack wine" of the same vintage. In 1372, the wine fleet
consisted of some 200 ships, with average tonnage well over 50 tonnes per
ship, for a total cargo of over 3 million gallons of wine that year.
The English even had their own name for much of this wine. The French used
the term clairet to refer to the light red wine of Bordeaux, before it was
blended with heavier, darker red wine from elsewhere in France. It was
this that the English came to call Claret.
- Lord Corwin of Darkwater, "A Good Familiar Creature", Scum #8
... By the mid 13th century, three fourths of England's royal wine came
from Bordeaux, at a freight charge of 8 shillings the ton. The wine fleet
convened twice a year; in October for the "vintage" shipping, and in
February for the "rack" shipping of wine drawn off the lees. We have