wine-msg - 10/31/19

Medieval wines. Spiced wine. Dandelion wine.

NOTE: See also these files: fruit-wines-msg, mead-msg, fruits-msg, p-bottles-msg, wine-cooking-msg, brewing-msg, beverages-msg, berries-msg, plums-msg, cherries-msg.

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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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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

-- [ 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

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

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
Bordeaux's export figures for seven years of the early 14th century,
averaging 83,000 tonneaux of 12 score and 12 gallons each. England took
about half of this, and when the new wine arrived, last year's was halved
in price, or even just thrown away. These wines were the common drink,
lower in status the Mediterranean and Rhenish wines, but they were
plentiful and cheap. Bordeaux made three kinds of wines: white, red , and
clairet. Until about 1600, clairet meant a light colored wine, ranging
from yellow, as distinct from white, to pink. To get the desired pink
color, called "partridge-eye", red and white wines were often mixed. Red
wines then would have been very light. They were only on the skins one
day, and absorbed little color and tannins. After the wine was drawn off,
the remainder, redder and coarser, was used for tinting wine, or sold
cheaply as "vin vermeilh" or "pin pin". This amounted to about 15% .
 - Lord Alistair MacMillan, "Wine", Scum #16

For those who may wonder about Scum (as I do myself at times), it is
(ahem, blush) the best brewer's newsletter in the Known Worlde. Contact me
(Corwin) at Maunche at AOL.COM or c/o Douglas Brainard, 45 Southwind Way,
Rochester, NY 14624 for more potable details.

Corwin
Scriba fermentatoris, Fermentator scribae!


From: jtn at newsserver.uconn.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 26 Aug 1995 03:50:45 GMT
Organization: University of Connecticut

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Corwin responded to Gregoria:

: 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_

and quoted a longish passage describing importing of wine from France.
I only have three suggestions.  First, the passages described importing
both old and young wines; so either might be appropriate here.  Second,
I have seen receipes that call directly for claret.  Were this one,
I would agree that young wines _might_ be preferred; but it isn't.
There were certainly red wines that weren't young.  Third, by the 14th
C, there are _recipes_ for clarrey -- and it isn't (always) young wine
any more.  Sometimes, it's spiced wine.

Also: modern claret is a Bordeaux.  (That is, don't confuse modern and
medieval claret.)

In any case, a young wine is certainly an option.  Given that you complained
of "harshness", you would want to be careful to pick a good young wine, that
is light and fruity, and not sharp.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: maunche at aol.com (Maunche)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 26 Aug 1995 20:43:52 -0400

Greetings from Corwin of Darkwater

Angharad makes some interesting comments about period wines. Here are some
further points.

The most popular wines in the 14th century were (in order of preference)
sweet Mediterranean wines, white Rhenish wines, and Claret. The red wines
of Burgundy were highly prized, and could still be drunk after two years,
but were scarce and more difficult to obtain in England. Claret was
definately a young wine, when a new vintage arrived from Bordeaux, the
price of the previous vintage was usually cut in half (or the old wine was
simply discarded).

I would be interested in learning of recipes for 'clarrey', and recipes
that use claret. The earliest recipe that I have for imitation claret
dates from 1621, and uses Clary flowers. 

Corwin of Darkwater
Scriba fermentatoris, Fermentator scribae!


From: jtn at newsserver.uconn.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 27 Aug 1995 02:20:19 GMT
Organization: University of Connecticut

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Corwin of Darkwater writes:

: I would be interested in learning of recipes for 'clarrey', and recipes
: that use claret. The earliest recipe that I have for imitation claret
: dates from 1621, and uses Clary flowers. 

Here are a few references, based on some work I've been doing on tracking
ingredients in recipes from the 13th to 15th C.  I've just begun on the
15th C, so this is very far from complete, even for that time period.

Recipes for clarre, clarrey, or similar names (all recipies for spiced wine):

	1.  In the earlier Anglo-Norman collection edited by Constance
	    Hieatt and Robin Jones in _Speculum_, 1986: a recipe called
	    claree, from about 1290.

	2.  In the collection of miscellaneous recipes that they titled
	    Goud Kokery (number V) in _Curye on Inglysch_, edited by
	    Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, two recipes from about
	    1380 (GK 4 and 6) titled Potus clarreti pro domino and A pype
	    of clarrey.

	3.  From Forme of Curye, using the Hieatt and Butler edition, 
	    recipe number 205 fo Clarrey, dated around 1390.

None of these call for the herb clary.  

Recipes that call for clarrey or claret as an ingredient: mostly, I can tell 
you "white, red, or sweet"; but occasionally I noted when particular wines 
were called for.  I found the following two, both from Austin's _Two
Fifteenth Century Cookery-Books_.

	1.  Recipe number 5 in the Leche Vyaundez section of Harleian
	    279 (page 35 in Austin), for Leche lumbarde, says "take
	    clareye, & caste [th]er-on in maner of a Syruppe" ("[th]"
	    represents a thorn).  This suggests that the thing intended
	    is not young wine, but sweetened spiced wine.

	2.  The 94th recipe (but they are not explicitly numbered) in
	    Harleian 4016 (page 86-87 in Austin), for Gely, specifies
	    "take good white wyn, that woll hold colloure, or elles 
	    fyne claret wyne".  Note: this recipe reproduces recipe
	    number 109 in the Potage Dyvers section of Harleian 279
	    (page 25, Austin) for Gelye de chare almost precisely;
	    but the version in Harleian 279 specifies only white
	    wine.  Notice that this probably is young wine, and not
	    spiced wine -- but notice also that it is offered as an
	    alternative to _white_, not red, wine.

My experience with recipes suggests that there are actually two very
different things pronounced roughly "CLAIRIE".  One, most often
spelled "clarre" or "clarey", is spiced wine.  The other, most often
spelled "claret", means a young red.  I don't think the medievals
confused them, but we certainly tend to.

It's my impression, Corwin, that your information is drawn from the
commercial import trade.  Is that correct?  If so, it's worth
noticing that that may not reflect all, or even most, of the story.

First, there is some reason to believe that the great households may
have imported much of their wine directly, rather than going through
merchants.  If that is the case, then as the primary users of racked 
as opposed to young wines, their "invisibility" from the trade record 
would greatly skew it.  Second, there are many kinds of wines specified 
in recipes quite early, including wyne greke, vernage, and several 
others, that Corwin's remarks don't reflect, but that are clearly 
assumed to be available.

Also, there was substantial domestic wine production in England in
the middle ages, that is not reflected in those records at all.

Anyhow: there are a few recipes.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: maunche at aol.com (Maunche)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period wine?
Date: 29 Aug 1995 23:38:56 -0400

Salutations from Corwin of Darkwater

First of all, thanks to Angharad ver' Rhuawn for the detailed references
to clarrey, claret, etc. They have been most helpful. (In fact, I see a
new article brewing for Scum)

Angharad asks:
> It's my impression, Corwin, that your information is drawn from the
> commercial import trade.  Is that correct?  If so, it's worth
> noticing that that may not reflect all, or even most, of the story.

Indeed, much of the information that I posted was based on commercial
records, but it was not my intent to imply that that was the whole story. 

> Also, there was substantial domestic wine production in England in
> the middle ages, that is not reflected in those records at all.

Very true. The Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror
mentioned 42 English vineyards. By 1509 there were 139.  Again, thanks to
Angharad for filling out the story.

Corwin of Darkwater
Scriba fermentatoris, Fermentator scribae!


From: PHIRSCHE at email.usps.gov
To: markh at risc.sps.mot.com
Subject: Re[2]: Wine
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 08:19:45 -0500

     I happened across an excellent book in Barnes and Noble:

     Johnson, Hugh.  Vintage:  The Story of Wine.  Simon and Shuster:  New
     York, 1989.

     Richard le Pochier


From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 12:19:03 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Dandelion Wine

Dyane McSpadden wrote:

> A member of my local group asked me to ask if anyone out here has a recipe
> for dandelion wine they can post and/or send, it seems he has a backyard
> full of the little buggers :)

From Jocasta Innes' "The Country Kitchen":

DANDELION WINE

Another flower classic. Pick the dandelions on a hot day, and use only
the petals, pinching them off and discarding the centres and stalks.

2 litres (4 pints) dandelion petals
5 litres (1 gallon) water
1 kg (2 lb) sugar
225 g (8 oz) raisins
3 oranges
1 lemons (or 7 g/ 1/4 oz citric acid)
150 ml (1/4 pint) strong tea or 8 drops tannin concentrate
2 rounded teaspoons all purpose wine yeast
1 level teaspoon yeast nutrient

The method is exactly the same as for gorse wine.


GORSE WINE

<ingredients snipped>

Put the flowers into the fermenting bin immediately. Boil up half the
water, half the sugar, and the chopped sultanas together for a minute or
two, then pour over the flowers. Thinly peel the rind from the oranges
and the lemons, and add to the bin. Squeeze out the juice and add that
too. Add the cold tea, or the tannin, stir thoroughly. Make up to 5
litres (1 gallon) with cold tap water, or cooled boiled water if you
prefer. This should give you a tepid mixture, about right for adding the
yeast from the starter bottle. Add the yeast and the yeast nutrient,
stir well, cover. Ferment for one week, stirring daily. After two ot
three days, when fermenting well, add the remaining sugar, stirring to
dissolve. Strain through a hair sieve or cloth and siphon into a 5 litre
(1 gallon) jar. Fill up to the neck of the jar with  cool, boiled water,
if necessary ( the less surface area exposed with all wines, the
better), fit an airlock or secure a plastic bag with an elastic band
over the neck of the jar. Rack when clear, bottle and keep for six
months.
*****************************

Me again. Just a few comments directed at any beginning
cooks/brewers/vintners:

1) I strongly recommend you use the metric measurements or recalculate
the American measurements correctly. They are vague approximations at
best  and are significantly off.

2) Change any specific recipe references to reflect the fact that the
method is intended for a different recipe. So, for sultanas, read
raisins, etc.

3) This is not a period recipe. It calls for non-period ingredients
being used in a non-period way. Substituting the tea for the tannin,
etc., will not change this fact. There may be a dandelion or other
flower wine similar to this in Sir Kenelm Digby, but then he's not a
period source, either. If you have no problem with this, then neither do
I.

4) I recommend that any aging instructions given in almost any British
alcoholic beverage recipe be increased by a factor of 50%, but not to
exceed a year, except in the case of things like an especially heavy
stout or very strong mead. 

All that said, have a good time and enjoy.

I, for one, will stick to my kvass!
Adamantius


From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 13:32:31 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Dandelion Wine

Peters, Rise J. wrote:
> Just to bring up a kind of gross point, every time I've looked closely at
> dandelions, they've been inhabited by little bugs (I think red ones), I
> assume some kind of mites.  Do they just go in the wine and get filtered out
> at the end, or is there some kind of process for getting them off the
> flowers, or am I the only one who ever got that close to a dandelion to
> worry about it?

All of the above (more or less). I wonder if that's why the recipe I
posted says they should be gathered on a hot day...

Adamantius


From: Uduido at aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 16:45:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - Dandelion Wine

In a message dated 97-05-12 13:28:11 EDT, you write:

<< Just to bring up a kind of gross point, every time I've looked closely at 
 dandelions, they've been inhabited by little bugs (I think red ones), I 
 assume some kind of mites.   >>

They are a type of thrip. They are harmless to the wine and to people. Since
you have to remove the green part of the dandelion flower and good kitchen
technique would include a rinsing of the petals after they were picked and
cleaned, the vast majority of these thrips are eliminated. I also throw my
petals into a wire strainer while removing the green parts from them which
allows the thrips and other sources of potentially valuable protein  8-) to
slip through the holes.

Lord Ras


From: "PHYLLIS SPURR" <PSPURR at r03.tdh.state.tx.us>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 13:23:32 -0600
Subject: Re: SC - Dandelion Wine

> A member of my local group asked me to ask if anyone out here has a recipe
> for dandelion wine they can post and/or send, it seems he has a backyard
> full of the little buggers :)
> 
> Brigid O'Brien
        
You can also use Dandelions to make a melomel.

Pick your dandelion flower heads - remove as much of the green stem 
as possible and clean free of pests.

5 lbs honey
1 gal of water
4 pints of dandelion flowers
1 orange
2 sticks of cinnamon
1 oz of fresh ginger, chopped
1 pkg of yeast, I've used Cote des Blanc with good results

Place your clean dandelion flowers in a sterilized jar that will hold 
at least 1.5 gal of fluid. Heat your water and add honey, stirring 
constantly until dissolved.  Do not boil as the honey may burn and it 
can drive away the essence of the honey.  It won't ruin the must if 
it boils, but the honey will lose some of its flavor.  Skim away any 
scum that rises.  When no more scum rises, add the cinnamon, ginger, 
and squeeze the juice of the orange into the mixture, slice and add 
the orange (peel and all).  Additional scum will rise at this point.  
Skim away scum until no more rises.  At least five minutes.

Remove the must from heat and pour over the dandelion flowers.  Allow 
to steep until the temperature of the must is about 70 degrees 
Fahrenheit.  Strain through cheesecloth to remove the solids from the 
must.

At this point, you may determine the specific gravity using a 
hydrometer.

Add your yeast to the must and place in a carboy under fermentation 
lock.  In about 2-3 weeks, you will need to rack the must off the 
settled yeast into another carboy.  Allow to continue working, until 
the melomel is clear, racking into a clean carboy as the yeast 
settles.  This may take a couple of months.  Rack off into bottles.  
Cork.  Store and allow to age.  This is a still melomel, in that 
there is no carbonation.  Just be sure that your must is finished 
working before bottling, you don't want your bottles to explode.

This is really sweet, almost syrup-like after a year.  By the way, 
the above was made by me last June and this past weekend, it won 2nd 
place in a brewing competition.

Phyllis L. Spurr
aka Eowyn ferch Rhys, Elfsea


From: Lasairina at aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:51:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SC - Re: Dandelion Wine

From the book, "How To Make Wine In Your Own Kitchen," by Mettja C. Roate...

Plain Dandelion Wine

1st Week:
4 quarts of dandelion flowers, cleaned of all their green
4 quarts of boiling water

2nd Week:
4 oranges cut in 1/4" slices
4 lemons cut in 1/4" slices
1 cup white raisins, finely chopped
6 cups sugar
1 package dry granulated yeast

Put the dandelion blossoms in canner kettle and pour the boiling water over
them.  Let stand in a warm place for one week.  Stir twice a day if possible.

At the end of the week, strain the blossoms through a jelly bag, squeezing
the pulp very dry to extract all of the liquid and flavour.  Return the
liquid to the canner kettle and add the sliced oranges and lemons, and the
raisins.  Stir in the sugar; be sure to stir long enough to dissolve every
grain.  Sprinkle the dry granulated yeast over the surface.  Set in a warm
place to ferment for two weeks.  Stir every day, inverting the fruit which
rises to the surface.

At the end of this two-week period, strain through several thicknesses of
cheesecloth, and return to the canner kettle to settle for two more days.
 When the wine has settled, siphon off carefully into clean sterilized
bottles.  Put corks in lightly until all fermentation is over ( it has
stopped when small bubbles no longer cling to the sides of the bottles.)
 Then tighten the corks securely and dip in hot paraffin.  Let the wine age
at least 6 months; it is best at the end of a year.
- --------------------

I have not personally made this one (never could come up with that many
dandelions) and there are several other interesting titles - Dandelion
Pineapple Wine, Dandelion Rhubarb Pineapple Wine, and Dandelion Elderberry
Blossom Wine are some.

Hope this helps!
Lasairfhiona


From: Uduido at aol.com
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:16:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SC - Grapes

<< There is a HUGE Concord Grape vine(s)  growing in my new backyard. I was
 told by neighbors that it yielded gallons of grapes last year.
 Does anyone know of anything within period that these could be used for?
 All the talk of cordials/liqueurs has me hoping. Same neighbor made 23
 bottles of wine from them.
 
~Lady Irissa
  >>

 Sorry. The Labrusca (concord) grape variety is New World no questions, do
not pass go, do not collect $200.oo. :-) More appropriate varieties would be
Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Grigio, Gewurtzraminer, Zinfandel (questionable),
Sauvignon Blanc, Valipolicella (species unknown to me), Riesling, Chardonnay,
Sangoivese, Chamborcin, Merlot, etc.

The Labrusca grapes (e.g. Concord, Catawba, Niagra) are without exception New
World varieties and were not used in Europe until the late 1800's C.E. They
were then only used (as they still are) for root stock on which to graft the
European varities to prevent further dessicration of the vineyards by the
Phyloxera plague. (Which by the way is currently destroying the vineyards in
California at an alarming rate). 

More to the point the foxy taste of New World labrusca varieties is totally
alien with regards to the flavor of Old World varieties and can not be
satisfactorily substituted under any circunstances.

Lord Ras (Uduido at aol.com)


Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:01:52 -0500
From: roger boulet <boulet.roger at mcleod.net>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Period grape varieties

For those interested in the history of grapes and wine I reccommend this 
book "DIONYSIS, A Social History of the Wine Vine" by Edward Hyams, 
Sedgwick & Jackson, London 1987 ISBN 0-283-99432-0. The author attempts 
to trace the histroy of grape growing from it's beginning to modern 
times using archeological evidence and genotype information.

It's been some time since I read the book but I do remember that several 
varieties still cultivated trace to pre roman times including the Pinot 
Noir. He also deals with new world vines.

Roger


From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 09:54:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - Foods that I won't eat

  I would have said that a majority of the surviving medieval recipes which
  call for sweetener call for sugar rather than honey.  In particular, our
  favorite mulled wine (hippocras) recipe uses sugar.

Agreed so far:
  
I note, however, that your redaction uses boiling wine, when the original
calls for mixing with regular wine.

I have had hippocras made both ways (a friend has a source that involves
pouring the wine through a pile of spiced sugar, without boiling). I have
found that, overall, the taste of unboiled hippocris is superior.

Your mileage and tastes will vary, of course.

  "and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart of wine" [original]
  "sugar to 2 quarts of boiling wine" [redaction]

	Tibor


Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 09:33:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ladypeyton at aol.com
Subject: SC - Rose Hip Wine Recipe

I used dried Rose Hips, but I included all the information for using fresh
that I could find in my books.  Note: the only period recipes I could find
was from either Apicius or Pliny and used only Rose Petals.  The recipe makes
1 gallon.  If you are using a larger carboy then just multiply the
ingredients accordingly.

- -1 gallon water
- -6oz dried rose hips soaked overnight (keep the water) or 2 lbs fresh make
sure they are unsprayed
- -1 1/2 lbs white sugar + 1/2 lb brown sugar or 3 lbs light (read table) honey
- -1 tsp acid blend + 1 squeeze lemon juice or juice of 1 lemon
- -1 tsp yeast nutrient
- -5 drops pectic enzyme (liquid) or 1/2 tsp (powder)
- -1 cup white grape juice concentrate (I used Welch's)
- -1 packet Wine Yeast (I used Premier Cuvee)
- -OPTIONAL 1 Campden Tablet (I never use campden tablets because I don't like
sulfites in my wine A LOT of people are allergic to sulfites and don't
realize it therefore assuming they can't tolerate wine when it is an (I
believe)unneeded additive they are reacting to.)

*Acid blend, yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme, wine yeast are all available at
your local wine making supply store.  There is probably one in your area if
you really look.  I was surprised to find I have more than 4 within a half
hour drive.  On the other hand I live in Philadelphia.  If you absolutely
cannot find a supplier there are several mail order catalogs available and
several suppliers on the web. *

Rinse and pick over your rose hips.  If your rose hips are dried soak
overnight & drain (save liquid) if they are fresh then coarsely chop them in
a blender.  Put the rose hips in a jelly bag or a nylon straining bag.  Place
in the bottom of your primary fermenter.  Mash them with your sanitized
hands.  Pour sugar over bag.  Pour hot water (not boiling) over bag and sugar
and stir until the sugar is dissolved .  If you use honey then do boil the
honey & water together for  at  20 minutes (breaks down the honey & helps your
finished product to clear quicker & easier).  Cool slightly before pouring
over rose hips.  When tepid add acid, yeast nutrient, grape juice & if you
use one the campden tablet.  If you do not use the campden tablet then must
cools add pectic enzyme & wine yeast.  If you do use campden tablet then wait
12 hours then add pectic enzyme 12 hours later add yeast.  Cover tightly &
fit with an air lock.  Stir daily squishing the bag for a week.  After 2
weeks siphon into a glass carboy & fit with an air lock.  After 4 more weeks
rack to a clean carboy (I usually siphon into my primary fermenter, clean the
carboy I've been using all along & siphon back into the carboy)  I top off
the carboy with the soaking water I saved at the beginning of the procedure.
 You can also top off with white grape juice although the added sugar will
extend your fermenting process.  After 2 more weeks you should be able to
bottle your wine.  1 gallon must makes about 4 bottles wine.     

A primary fermenter is a pail with a cover that is made out of food grade
plastic.  It is available at your wine making supply store for  at  $10.  A
carboy is a glass container that looks like the top of a water cooler upside
down and is  at  $5 to $15 depending on the size. Air locks are little water
locks that fit into rubber bungs that fit into 1)the hole drilled into the
top of the primary fermenter cover (small bung) & 2) the opening in the
carboy (larger bung).  You will need 2 rubber bungs (1 of each size).  Air
locks & rubber bungs are  at  $1 each.

You must always sanitize your equipment before starting.  There are
sterilizing agents sold at supply stores or you can use the same bleach
mixture used to wash dishes at events.  I use a compound called  "One Step"
no rinsing is needed with this compound as it cleans with oxygen.  At any
other time you MUST rinse your equipment after it is sterilized.  Please be
strict with your sterilization.  Don't even so much as use a spoon to stir
the must if you haven't prepared it.  Same with your hands.

I just had Adrian, who is wine making illiterate, read over this to see if
I've left anything undefined and he said it was pretty easy to understand.
 However, he may have picked up some of the lingo by osmosis so if I've left
anything unclear, undefined or unexplained please let me know.  I'm preparing
to teach an introduction to wine making class and am still trying to work the
lingo out of my presentation.  I'm pretty nervous as this will be my first
expedition into teaching.

By the way the Apicius recipe went:  Make rose wine in this manner:  rose
petals, the lower white part removed, sewed into a linen bag and immersed in
wine for seven days.  Thereupon add a sack of new petals which allow to draw
for another seven days.  Again remove the old petals and replace them by
fresh ones for another week;  then strain the wine through the colander.
 Before serving add honey sweetening to taste.  Take care that only the best
petals free from dew be used for soaking.  

Lady Peyton
Ladypeyton at aol.com    


Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 14:04:46 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - kegs and barrels

>According to the catalog these barrels are "lined with parafin for water
>tightness", so it sounds as if they have been designed to hold liquids.  As to
>whether or not brewers pitch is period I am not sure.  I have been looking for
>it to use to seal the interior of leather bottles and mugs.  I do know it is
>made from natural pine tar.
>
>Noemi

"...But it may also be proper to give an account of the method of preparing
wine, as Greek authors have written special treatises on this subject and
have made a scientific system for it -for instance Euphronius,
Aristomachus, Commiades and Hicesius.  The practice in Africa is to soften
any roughness with gypsum, and also in some parts of the country with lime.
In Greece, on the other hand, they enliven the smoothness of their wines
with potter's earth or marble dust or salt or sea-water, while in some
parts of Italy they use resinous pitch for this purpose, and it is the
general practice both there and in the neighbouring provinces to season
must with resin; in some places they use the lees of older wine or else
vinegar for seasoning...  In some places they boil the must down into what
is called sapa, and pour this into their wines to overcome their harshness.
*** Still both in the case of this kind of wine and in all others they
supply the vessels themselves with coatings of pitch... *** The method of
seasoning wine is to sprinkle the must with pitch during its first
fermentation, which is completed in nine days at most, so that the wine may
be given the scent of pitch and some touches of its piquant flavour..."
Pliny , Natural History, c. 77 A.D., Book XIV, section XXIV, pp. 265-269.
(Excerpted from "A Sip Through Time", p. 244.)

Cindy Renfrow
renfrow at skylands.net
http://www.alcasoft.com/renfrow/


Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 01:01:58 EDT
From: melc2newton at juno.com (Michael P Newton)
Subject: Re: SC - birch

A recipe recently found for birch leaf wine (Actually a leaf wine in
general recipe; since I live in Oak Heart, I am going to do the oak leaf
wine this next spring): Pick 4 qts. of very young oak or birch leaves in
the early spring when the leaves are the size of a mouse's ear. Pour four
pints of boiling water over the leaves, let stand for a day, and then
strain. Warm the liquid to dissolve two lbs. of sugar ( I think I'm going
to use honey instead and make it a oakleaf mead). Add one half cup lemon
juice and when cool, one tablespoon of yeast. Add water to make a volume
of one gallon, and ferment. 

Lady Beatrix 


Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:10:15 +1100
From: Meliora & Drake <meliora at macquarie.matra.com.au>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu, sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Rhenish Wine??

At 03:07 PM 6/01/98 -0500, Margritte wrote:
>Hope this isn't a stupid question, but I'm far from being a wine maven...
>
>If a recipe calls for "good Rhenish wine", what should I use?
>
>>From "A Queen's Delight":
>
>To make Rasberry Wine.
>Take a Gallon of good Rhenish Wine, put into it as much Rasberries very
>ripe as will make it strong, put it in an earthen pot, and let it stand two
>dayes, then pour your Wine from your Rasberries, and put into every bottle
>two ounces of Sugar, stop it up and keep it by you.
>
>-Margritte

I've done this recipe with a cheap flagon of Rhine Reisling and the results
were fantastic.  I never had one complaint about the brew.  You could
probably use other wines and it would matter that much as the Raspberries
are the dominant flavour.  Some brewing tips though:

1)  Don't add 2oz of sugar per bottle other wise you will end up with
grenades, a maximum of 1tsp of sugar per 750ml bottle.

2)  Use Beer bottles or Champagne bottles (with corks and WIRES).  If you
use wine bottles then the pressure will ease the corks out of the bottles.

3)  Add just 1-2 grains of yeast to each bottle.  Modern wine is so finely
filtered that it is hard to get a fermentation going again to gas the
bottles.  The recipe is one that is meant to be 'windy' or carbonated.

4)  If you reduce the raspberries with a little sugar to a syrup and then
filter the syrup and then add the syrup to the wine then your will get a
finer product.  Don't activate the pectin in the raspberries or you will get
a haze in the wine you can't clear.  If you do get a haze the Pectinase from
the Home-Brew shop will clear it.  Even better,  I can buy (here in
Australia) raspberry syrup which goes great in brewing recipes.

5)  Good luck, it's a very tasty and easy recipe and I applaud you good
judgement in choosing this recipe.

Drake Morgan,
Lochac.


Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:07:29 -0600 (CST)
From: "J. Patrick Hughes" <jphughes at raven.cc.ukans.edu>
To: sca-arts at listproc.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Rhenish Wine??

Lady Peyton asked "I was under the impression that this [a blight that
caused the vines to be rooted to American stems] was true for most of
Europe's wine regions is this true?"

Yes, in the 1870s the insect phylloxera attacked and destroyed most
European vineyards.  Virtually every vine in Europe was then only saved by
being grafted to an American root and stem.

Again, the Ladey commented: "As for the question of taste changing.  My
research shows that period wines were fermented for a much shorter period
and hardly aged worth mentioning compared to modern wines which would
result in a sweeter end product.  Which is why I recommended a Reisling as
the best substitute."

You are again correct.  My research also shows that most wines in Germany
and France were drunk much younger and were not as alcoholic as modern
wines. (They often watered the wines to make them go further.) There was
also much less scientific processing and control than in modern wines.
The result was that many of the recipes that we have from period on how to
spice or doctor wine.  The original request was regarding one such recipe.
If the person involved does not wish to start from scratch and do the
vintning (the people in period that used the recipe did not) then you were
right to suggest a Reisling as that is the favored grape in the Rhineland
(there is a modern taste for Sylvaner).

My caution that the taste would vary from period is best summed up in a
quote from Hugh Johnsons World Atlas of Wine: "German wines of the last
century would be scarcely more familiar to us.  It is doubtful whether
any of todays pale, rather sweet, intensely perfumed wines were made.
Grapes picked earlier gave more acid wine which needed longer to mature in
cask.  People like the flavour of oak - or even the flavor of oxidation
from too much contact with the air. Old brown hock was a recommendation,
whereas today it would be as rude a remark as you could write on a tasting
card." Of course the 19th century was very into aging as opposed to the
Middle ages where they tried to get the wine to the drinker before it
turned vinegar.

The bottom line is that if one were to attempt to recreate the German
wines of period it would be necessary to do oak barrel fermenting rather
than bottle fermenting (out of period practice) and look for a younger,
deeper colored, less bouquet characterized, Reisling. I have found the
number of people in the society willing to do a period style wine and
people willing to develop a period pallet are vanishing rare.

Note that wines fermented from other fruits without the grape base are and
were known in Germany.  They were called "hexen" wines and were looked
down on as the product of "the old witches in the Black Forest that could
not produce true wine." But the recipe indicated that what was intended
was a doctoring of a grape wine not a fruit wine.

Charles O'Connor
jphughes at raven.cc.ukans.edu


Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 08:24:01 -0500
From: "Norman White" <gn-white at tamu.edu>
Subject: SC - When did they start aging wine?  -Reply  -Reply

Jin Liu Ch'ang here:

David/Cariadoc asked in a post on June 29th about the history of aging wine.  It took me awhile to remember to pull out the copy of William Turner's 1568 book, "A Book of Wines" which I have checked out from the library.  Apparently, from what I can gleam from the words of William Turner, aging of wines was well known in England in his time period.  Apparently, however, most people drank wine still in the act of fermenting and freshly fermented
wine which he called (and what I believe is still called) must.  I guess this is much like the many people who go to their liquor store in the present and buy fresh (1-2 year old) wine and, rather than placing it in their wine cellars, drink it right away.  In his capacity as an medicinal herbalist and scientist, he considered this to be wrong and stated reasons against this and quoted earlier writers including Galen and Aloisius Mundella in his
arguments.  He quoted Galen as defining wine not five years old as new wine, wine 5-10 years old as middle aged and wine over 10 years old as old aged.  As would probably occur in present times, he found that experts disagree on the times for aging wines as Aloisuis Mundella considered the dividing age between new and middle aged wine to be six years.  He also discussed the varieties of wine available in England from the wine import trade naming
them by where they originated, their color, age, taste, and smell.  As a physician/herbalist, he also delineated wine by their dry/moist and cold/hot character.  All wine was considered hot to some degree.  An old wine was considered hotter than a new wine and yellow and red wines were hotter than white wines.  The dryness was accorded to the degree of heat along with sweetness.  In his opinion, young people being naturally hot should not drink
wine as all wines are hot to some degree.  If they were to drink, as the young are hot and moist they should drink dry white wines while the older people being more cold and dry should drink sweet red wines which are more hot and less dry.

From his discussion, it is apparent that aging wines was quite common in 16th Century England and a variety of wines were available for consumption, although like present times most wines were not aged to the degree that the wine makers would have preferred.  His complaints about the drinking of too young wine are very similar to views I have hear from modern commercial vintners who complain about people buying their wines and drinking them right
away instead of aging them properly.

Norman White
a.k.a. Jin Liu Ch'ang
gn-white at tamu.edu


Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:21:42 -0400
From: "Marilyn Traber" <margali at 99main.com>
Subject: Re: SC - When did they start aging wine?

>At 1:31 AM -0600 6/29/98, Stefan li Rous wrote:
>>The young, small ale drunk
>>by the majority of folks in period will likely lose out to the fine,
>>aged wine drunk by an extemely small portion of the populace.
>
>I was recently reading a biography of Pepys (late 17th century). The author
>said that the use of corks was just coming in at the time, and associated
>that change with the introduction of aged wines. Of course, wines could be
>aged earlier in the cask, but the implication semed to be that it was only
>with the introduction of corked bottles that long aging, concern about
>vintages, etc. appeared.
>
>Does anyone know what the facts on this are? Is the "extremely small
>portion" actually zero in our period?
>
>David/Cariadoc

My take on the subject is a bit skewed. Could it be interpreted to mean that
the rich who could afford to buy wine in the cask to age and the invention
of corked bottles allowed us common scum to buy just a little bit of wine in
a more affordable form to age? I buy single bottles of promising wines to
age and the 17 litre boxes to use for immediate drinking and cooking. If I
had to buy 17 litres of a more expensive wine, I wouldn't. The cost would be
prohibitive, and I would soon run out of the small amount of room that I
have suitable for aging wines.

margali


Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 22:11:24 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Period wine-French

The following French vineyards have produced wine since the Middle Ages with a
few dating from 279 C.E. using the grape varieties still grown in and used
today.

Clos de Beze
Corton-Charlemagne
Le Romanee
Clos de Vougeot
Merseult
Montrachet

These vineyards were controlled by the Church in the Middle Ages.  The wine of
these vineyards was much sought after by medieval gourmets as they are in the
current middle ages.  The wines of these houses were called 'wines of
Auxerre,' then later 'wines of Baeume' and finally in the 1400s the 'wines of
Burgundy' by which name they are still referred to.

French grape varieties grown in the Middle Ages included Granache, Cabernet
Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot along with Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc,
Chardonnay and Gamay.  The last four being some of the most ancient
varieties.

For more authenticity, and if you can afford them, you might try wines from
Le Romanee-Conti or Le Mussigny.  These two vineyards are among a handful that
still grow there vines on native stock instead of getting their grapes off
from vines that have been grafted onto phylloxera resistant American root
stock.  I would remind you that, contrary to popular opinion, the stock in no
way has any affect whatsoever on the vines that are grafted onto them other
than providing protection from phylloxera.  Taste, flavor or the resulting
wine is the same as those vines growing on native stock.

Ras


Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 23:50:47 -0500
From: Marilyn Traber <margali at 99main.com>
Subject: Re: SC - gingerbrede

Max was by tonight and was very pleased to get the brewing recipes,
and he concurs that the oak leaf brew was something to fake out oak cask aging
for a wine.
.
margali

gwin dail derw - oak leaf wine
for each gallon:
a quantity of clean brown withered oak leaves gathered from the tree on a dry
day, bruised piece of whole giger, 4 lbs white sugar, 1 lb chopped rasins,
1/2 oz yeast

place the leaves in a china or earthenware vessel and pour sufficient boiling
water over them to cover. infuse for 4-5 days, then strain off through muslin.

Boil this liquid, adding a piece of bruised ginger and 4 lbs of sugar. After 20
minutes boiling, allow to cool to luke warm and return to the earthenware
vessel. Now add the 1 lb of chopped rasins and 1/2 oz yeast.Cover well and
allow to ferment for 16 days, then strain and bottle. 

The wine will be ready to drink in three months but improves with keeping.


Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 09:20:46 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - gingerbrede

Marilyn Traber wrote:
> Max was by tonight and was very pleased to get the brewing recipes,
> and he concurs that the oak leaf brew was something to fake out oak cask aging
> for a wine.
> margali

Oak leaves may also have been added to provide tannin as a yeast
nutrient. You still occasionally find it being added in pure form to
modern mead recipes.

Markham's Strong Ale recipe calls for leafy oak branches to be added at
the end, while the wort is still hot, IIRC. It certainly does give the
stuff an oaky flavor, but it's not necessarily the specific effect they
were after, if you know what I mean.

Adamantius


Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 15:41:53 EST
From: melc2newton at juno.com
Subject: Oak leaf wine (was Re: SC - gingerbrede)

On Tue, 29 Dec 1998 23:50:47 -0500 Marilyn Traber <margali at 99main.com> writes:
>Max was by tonight and was very pleased to get the brewing recipes,
>and he concurs that the oak leaf brew was something to fake out oak cask aging
>for a wine.
>margali

>gwin dail derw - oak leaf wine
>for each gallon:
>a quantity of clean brown withered oak leaves gathered from the tree on a dry
>day, bruised piece of whole giger, 4 lbs white sugar, 1 lb chopped rasins, 1/2
>oz yeast

Well, this is curious! the Oak leaf recipe I have calls for new oak
leaves, not bigger than a squirrel's ear, and no rasins!?! Mine is from
_Beer and Wines of Old New England_, Where did Max find his?
I used a quart of squirrel's sized oak leaves, and steeped, as for tea,
and then added 2 1/2 lbs of clover honey ( the recipe called for 2 lbs of
sugar, but I thought a oak leaf mead would be more interesting), for a
gallon's worth. I think the yeast I used was a wine yeast; I'd have to go
find my brewing notebook to find out which one, tho'.  Since it was a
mead, rather than a wine, I'm waiting a year, before I try it .

 Beatrix
Oakheart/Calontir
Springfield, Mo


Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 18:24:26 -0500
From: capriest at cs.vassar.edu (Carolyn Priest-Dorman)
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: liquers/cordials

>Does anybody have a source for period liquer/cordial recipes?
>Morgaine of Glastonbury

|   AUTHOR: Arnaldus, de Villanova, d. 1311.
|    TITLE: The earliest printed book on wine,
|    PLACE: New York,
|PUBLISHER: Schuman's,
|     YEAR: 1943
| PUB TYPE: Book
|   FORMAT: 44 p., facsim. ([30] p.), incl. front. (port.) 1 col. illus. 26
|           cm.
|    NOTES: Translation and facsimile of Der tractat Arnoldi de Noua villa,
|           von bewarug vn beraitug der wein, 1478, Wilhelm von Hirnkofen's
|           version of the Tractatus de vinis.
|           "Limited to three hundred and fifty copies."
|  SUBJECT: Wine and wine making.
|           Wine -- Therapeutic use.
|    OTHER: Hirnkofen, Wilhelm von, called Renwart, fl.1478, tr.

The reference, Arnaldus of Villanova's book about wines and
winemaking, also contains several medicinal cordial recipes.  Mainly they
involve steeping herbs in wine for various health reasons.  There are no
SCA-style sweet cordials in the book, but there is one that I'm very fond
of, called something like "wine that's good for the whole body."  It's wine
boiled with sugar, rose water, and some spices, and you're supposed to drink
a few ounces of it at a time.

Carolyn Priest-Dorman                 Thora Sharptooth
capriest at cs.vassar.edu                Frostahlid, Austrriki


Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 19:48:20 -0500
From: "Daniel Phelps" <phelpsd at gate.net>
Subject: Re: SC - hypocras question

From: Terri Spencer <taracook at yahoo.com>:
>So, does anyone know what kind of wine would have been used for
>hypocras?  And the best modern equivalent?

While admittedly no wine expert, my readings suggest that the wine used was
what was generally available thus the wines used were probably nothing
special.  I suspect that until quite late in period that such wines would be
what we would consider rather rough unaged wines.

>From "Vintage the Story of Wine".  "Maturity was not a factor that the
medieval wine critics concerned themselves with, except as it affected the
drinker's comfort.  Drinking wine so new that it is still, in the French
phrase, "trouble" can lead to severe "collywobbles".  If it was older than a
year, the chances were that the wine was spoiled.  The choice was distinctly
limited."  page 127.  From the same source in 1302 Petrus de Crescentiis of
Bologna in his "Liber Commodorum Ruralium" said that the right age for wine
was neither new (first year) nor old, which according to the "Vintage's"
author suggests that he preferred one or two year old wine best.  The author
goes on to state that the majority of critics held that it was better simply
to wait until fermentation was over and drink up.  "The more northern (and
weaker) the wine the more important to drink it quickly."  Further reference
suggests Burgundy of high quality was drinkable at two years and according
to the author,  "The only known reference from the Middle Ages to any wine
being especially good at as old as four years was, remarkably enough, the
exceptional Chablis vintage of 1396."

The author says that according to the Catalan author Eiximenis "...the
French like white wines, Burgundians red, Germans aromatic, and the English
beer."

I suggest that you use what ever table wine, red or white,  you want as it
is probably at least as good as they would have used in period and probably
better.  Realizing that your average A/S judge would probably spit out a
"period" tasting wine as offensive to his modern palate, I would just chose
a wine that tasted good to you to as my base to start.

As a side note the use of sulfur was permitted in wine in Germany by royal
decree in 1487.  If you want to go to the trouble you can find "organic"
wines in which no sulfides or "additives" are used.

Such is, in my humble opinion, what I would suggest.  We will now see what
storms of controversy result.

Daniel Raoul le Vascon du Navarre'
Shire of Sea March, Kingdom of Trimaris


Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 01:18:12 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Wine-a continuation

pug at pug.net writes:
<< For an A&S competition, I wouldn't care unless I wanted the recipe for myself.>>

This is an interesting statement mainly because the flavor would be very much
wrong, sort of foxy tasting, if Lambrusco based wines are used. These wines
are not at all like anything available in the Middle Ages and their use would
produce a product which would not have tasted like anything  they would have
ever tasted in the MA leading me to express the opinion that a careful
selection of wine type would be very much a criteria for an entry into an A &
S competition. Type of wine (e.g. grape variety) would play a very large part
of the criteria of judging such an entry.

BTW, a 'foxy' taste is considered to be a 'bad' trait if it is detected in
wines, which is why varieties like Niagra and other Lambrusco types are
continuously being improved.

Ras


Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 11:49:13 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - rice wine

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> A couple of questions:
> 1) Rice was known, and I believe grown, in Europe in period. Is there
> any evidence that it was ever brewed into a beverage?

In Europe? I doubt it. Rice was grown in places that had too much
respect for grapes even to make regular ale or beer, let alone rice beer
_or_ wine.

> 2) Why is it called rice "wine"? It really sounds more like rice "beer"
> to me. I think I may have asked this before but right now I'm trying to
> figure out whether to place this recipe in my beer-msg file or in my
> wine-msg file. Since everyone seems to call it a wine, I think that
> is where I will place it since that is where folks would probably look
> for it.

You probably should just place it with the wines. Yes, it's made from
grain, but there the similarity to beer, modern or otherwise, pretty
much ends. It is often not made by malting the grain, never hopped, and
made with entirely different yeast strains.

It's a clear, almost invariably still (not carbonated) beverage,
sometimes, but more often not, flavored with herbs. Sometimes consumed
warm. It has easily as much right to be called wine as, say, dandelion
wine or a number of others, and only the French, in an attempt to
protect their export trade, have had the temerity to claim that such
non-grape products cannot be called wine.

Which reminds me, it's time to put up the cherry wine and bottle last
year's batch. Excuse me. ;  )

Adamantius


Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 20:40:30 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Need help with "Compost"

macdairi at hotmail.com writes:
<< So the Greeks mark their resinated wines as such?  I'd hate to
accidentally kill myself trying them out...

 Cadoc >>

Yes, They are labeled 'Retsina' if they have been stored in casks lined with
pine pitch. BTW, they are much like Scotch in that they are an 'acquired'
taste. Once you come to appreciate them they are actually rather good when
served with Greek food. Who woulda' thought? :-)

Ras.


Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 16:03:28 EST
From: ChannonM at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Grapes & Yeast

Can this action of the yeast be applied to ancient recipes of wine making?
The recipe in particular is from Columella is found in the Flowers and
Rosenbaum translation of Apicius

Here it is, could I have some interpretation of what properties this wine
might have,
Thanks, Hauviette

Mago gives the following directions how to make the best passum, and I have
made it myself like this. Gather early grapes when they are fully ripe,
aremoving mluldy or damaged berries. Fix in the ground gorks or stakes 4 feet
apart to support reeds and join them together with poles. Then place the
reeds on top and spread your grapes in the sun, covering tehma night so they
do not get wet from the dew. Then, when the have dried, pick the berries off
the stalks and put them in a cask or wine-jar and poor the best possible must
over them so that the berries are completely covered. When sturated put them
on the sixth day in a wicker basket and presss them in the wine press and
extract the passum. Next tread the grape-skins, having added freshest must
which you have made from other grapes that were lseft to dry in the sun for
three days. Mix together and put the whole mash through the wine-press , and
this passum of the second pressing put immediately in vessels which you seal
so that it does not become too rough. Then, after 20 or 30 days, when it has
ceased fermenting, strain it into other vessels, seal their lids with gypsum
immediately, and cover with skins.
If you wish to make passum from the “bee” grapes gather the whole grapes,
clear away damged berries  , and throw them out. Then hang them up on poles.
See to it that the poles are always in the sun. As soon as the berries are
sufficiently shrivelled pick them off and put themwithout stalks in a vessel
and tread them well with your feet. When you have made none layer of them
sprinkle old wine on and tread another layer of grapes over it and sprinkl
this also with woine. Do the same with a third layer and after having added
wine, leave for five days. Then tread with your feet and press the grapes in
a wicker basket. Some people prepare old rain-water for this boiling it down
to a third of its volume , and then when they have made raisinns in the
manner described above, they take the boiled-down rain-water instead of wine,
doing everything else in a manner where there is plenty of wood, and in use
it is even sweeter than the passum dexcribed above.


Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 17:37:19 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Grapes

ChannonM at aol.com writes:
<< So unless we are getting the addition of a yeast we will have a sweet vs
dry wine?

 Hauviette >>

Not exactly. :-) Some yeasts work better at converting sugars to alcohol than
others.  There are also temperature factors and a myriad of other things
considered by the vintner including ripeness of the fruit, whether it was
harvested during a wet, cold or hot spell, what type of soils the vines are
grown in, the age of the vines that produced the grapes, weather during
blossoming and fruit setting stages, etc. Variety of grape and strains of
yeast are only 2 things that effect the final beverage.

However, the strains of yeast used for the production of champagne tend to be
vigorous and strong growers and consistently convert more sugars to alcohol
than some other strains might. The more sugar that is converted the dryer the
wine. Sweet wines are usually produced by either adding sugar to the must,
using super ripe or late harvested varieties of grapes or, as in the case
with sauternes, disease organisms that cause an unusually high sugar content.
Also the production of sweet wines sometimes includes stopping the
fermentation process at an early stage before all of the sugars can be
converted to alcohol. A quick glance at the label of different wines will
show that sweet or semidry wines usually have an alcohol content of 8.5 to 9
per cent while dry wines tend to be in the 11-13.5 per cent group. Super
sweet wines such as cream varieties have sugars added after fermentation is
completed or, in the case of vermouth, aperitifs, sherries and ports, their
alcohol content is increased by the addition of brandy or other spirits.

The entire study of viniculture and it's attendant beverage production is a
fascinating study that would entail years of research.

Ras


Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 09:13:18 -0800
From: "Crystal A. Isaac" <xtal at sigenetics.com>
Subject: RE: SC - Christmas Dinner and Gifts/Fig Brandy

Lady Katherine McGuire writes:
>  Was Fig Brandy available in our "period"? If so does one use "dried" figs
> or fresh?

The short answer is No.

Fruit was cheap and distillates very expensive. As near as I can tell, it
simply never occurred to medieval/renaissance people to put the two
together. I've been looking for a primary source for fruit-in-hard alcohol
reference for more than three years and have not found one. The only
fruit-in-wine documentation I have been able to find is in a very late
English book* (written by an elderly Italian remembering his youth)
referring to the Italian practice of soaking peaches in wine to render them
edible, with a humorous comment that nobody throws away the wine afterwards.

Source:
*Castelvetro, Giacomo (1546-1616) _Brieve racconto di tutte le radici, di
tutte l'herb et di tutti i frutti, che crudi o cotti in Italia si mangiano_
c. 1614.  Translated by Riley, Gillian. _The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of
Italy_. Published by Viking Penguin Inc., New York. 1989 (excellent text of
Italian/English foods eaten in late period, many just post-period pictures,
while written in Italian the intended audience was English, excellent for
late period vegetarians)

Crystal of the Westermark


Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 17:51:29 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - 16th Century recipes a few questions. . .

Varju at aol.com wrote: 
> 1. In recipe number 89, To make a strawberry tart, the recipe says "Next let
> it bake a short while, pour Malavosia over it and let it bake a while, then
> it is ready. "  What is Malavosia?

A sweet wine along the lines of a tawny port or sherry. A.k.a. Malmsey,
as in, "a butt of", reputed final bath and beverage of George, Duke of Clarence.
 
Adamantius


Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 08:52:30 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - 16th Century recipes a few questions. . .

> I have been looking through the translation Das Kochbuch der Sabina
> Welserin for recipes and have a couple of questions
> 
> 1. In recipe number 89, To make a strawberry tart, the recipe says "Next let 
> it bake a short while, pour Malavosia over it and let it bake a while, then 
> it is ready. "  What is Malavosia?
 
Malavosia is malmsey.  You will probably find it in under the name Malvasia
( or possibly Malvoisie, depending on vintner) at your wine dealer.  It is a
sweet, light gold colored wine.  It was difficult to find in Norman, OK,
when I did this recipe.  

Bear 


Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 08:58:26 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - 16th Century recipes a few questions.

> > it is ready. "  What is Malavosia?
>  
> Adamantius was right, it's a sweet red wine. Not being a much of a
> wine drinker, I had wondered if port or something of that sort would
> do. I think port would be easier to find.
> 
> Valoise

In my opinion, port is a little too strong for the strawberries.  A sweet
sherry would be closer.  A German May Wine would probably do reasonably
well.

Bear


Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 11:22:47 -0600 
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - 16th Century recipes a few questions

> Okay, I'm going to display the depth of my ignorance of wine, but
> since Sabina Welser specifically mentioned a sweet red wine for the
> strawberry tart wouldn't it make sense, if Malmsey or Malavosia was
> hard to find, to substitute another sweet red wine? Would using a
> sweet white wine make a big difference in the outcome? 
> 
> Valoise

In your translation, I see nothing to suggest a sweet red wine.  In each
case, I have found where wine is mentioned, you have left the type or name
of the wine in place.

Modernly, Malavosia is a white wine with a nice golden color and a delicate
but full flavor.  This wine has been known by versions of the name Malvasia
for centuries.  Malmsey is a recent name, thanks to the British.  True
Malvasia from Madeira is hard to find, but there are some California
vintages made from Malvasian grapes.

If Sabina Welser refers to a sweet red wine as Malavosia, she is probably
using the term as a synonym for Madeira, a generic term for wines produced
in the Madeiras.

Bear


Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 00:36:20 +0100
From: Thomas Gloning <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
Subject: SC - Malvasier

I told my computer to search for the occurrences of "Malvasier", to see,
if the texts suggest alternatives. The machine found 35 occurrences,
most of them in cookbooks, some in medical texts, a few in travelogues
and other text types.

In addition, "Malvasier" is mentioned in the "Wein-B¸chlein" of Samuel
Dilbaum (1584) with the subtitle "Beschreibung der Wein/ welche inn
Teutschen Landen bekant sein" ('Description of the wines that are known
in Germany'). He mentions Malvasier in the first place:

"EJN Maluasier der Edlest wein/
Kˆndt stercker nicht noch besser sein/
Der gibt mit seiner eygenschafft/
Den Gsunden frewd/ den Krancken krafft"
'A Malvasier the most noble wine,
could not be stronger or better,
This wine with his properties gives
joy to the healthy people and power to the sick'.

The occurrences in the cookbooks mention "Rainfal" most often among the
alternatives to Malvasier, e.g. in the cookbook of Philippina Welser:
"so geus ain halb achtlin malfasyer oder ranfel dar ein" ('pour some
malvasier or Rainfal into it'). Now, Dilbaum in his winebook writes
about "Rainfal":

"Der Reinfall ist allweg der best/
Vnder den s¸ssen Weinen gewest".
'Rainfal has always been the best
among the sweet wines.'

Using these occurences, it seems to me, that three aspects are prominent
in the use of Malvasier: (1) it is a good, a 'noble' wine; (2) it is a
sweet wine; (3) it is a strong wine (see one of the Seitz-quotations).

Thus, if you look for alternatives, look for a noble, a sweet and a
strong wine.

Best,
Thomas


Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 19:01:31 -0800 (PST)
From: Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: SC - 16th Century recipes a few questions

> Could someone sort through the rest and tell me what they are in
> particular. I thought icewein was made from frozen grapes, is it
> either red or white or both?
> 
> Valoise

If I am not mistaken, most German wines are white.  I
am sure that there are a few exceptions that I am not
aware of, but mostly they are white.  Kabinet is made
from a grapes picked at the regular harvest time. 
Auslese was picked later, allowing more natural grape
sugars to form.  Berenauslese means very late harvest,
meaning that it is even sweeter. Trockenberenauslese
means very very late harvest, meaning that it is still
more sweet.  It tastes very raisiny.  Eiswein is made
from grapes that are still one the vine and have just
gone thru a cold freeze.  This can happen at any time
in Germany.  The grapes are picked while the frost is
still on the grapes and pressed right there in the
field to get that special taste frost brings to
grapes. The grapes are not allowed to defrost before
they are pressed, nor are the grapes frozen after
picking.  It is rare to find an eiswein and fairly
expensive.  But I do own several bottles and only
drink one at special occasions.  This is according to
Pieroth, the German winemaker I deal with the most.

Maywine is a special occasion wine made only in May in
Germany. It is a sweet dessert wine that has been
infused with the flavor of woodruff during the
fermentation period.  Woodruff is a sweet-scented
herb, if I am not mistaken, and it creates a different
flavored wine.  Not everyone likes Maywine.  

Huette


Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 19:46:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>
Subject: SC - German wines

- --- LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> ahrenshav at yahoo.com writes:
> << Kabinet is not a dessert wine IMHO.  It is light but
>  semidry.  You may be thinking of an auslese, which is
>  definitely sweet.
>  
>  Huette >>
> 
> This is correct. Kabinet type wines vary considerably from dry to semidry but 
> cannot be defined accurately as 'sweet' as sweet. Auslese is considerably 
> sweeter. And, as you pinned out, the berentrachens are sweeter still. 
> Unfortunately, Americans have for the most part been 'educated' into thinking 
> bitter and dry are the ideals in wine flavors so most of the excellent sweet 
> wines are hard to find in the US unless you live in a wine making region.
> 
> Ras

There is a German wine maker/dealer who sells wine in
a very old-fashioned way [and may even be a period
fashion].  Pieroth sells its wines by winetasting
parties, either at a hotel conference room rented for
the purpose or by a specially arranged showing in your
own home.  I have had several of these.  They expect
you to invite at least 4 or more people and they will
bring sampler bottles of their latest offerings.  If I
remember correctly, they charge $50 for the sampler
set, but it is worth it IMHO when you get to know
exactly what you are buying.  Pieroth makes a
Meister's Cuvee sparkling wine [i.e. champagne. 
France will not allow any European winemaker to call
their sparkling wines "champagne".  The US and other
non-European winemakers haven't agreed to such and are
free to call their sparkling wines "champagne".] that
is to die for.
It is the best "champagne" that I have ever had. I
took some to a New Years party, where the host
provided some very expensive French champagne [Dom
Perignon].  I also brought a bottle of Meister's Cuvee
as a gift for the host.  He opened it up right away
and shared it with the rest of the guests. It was a
very smooth, with just a hint of sweetness.  Every
liked it much better than the Dom Perignon that he
served at midnight.

Also, Pieroth teaches how to read a German wine label.
'Taflwein' is ordinary "table" wine.  'Qualit‰tswein'
means quality wine.  'Qualit‰tswein, mit predikat'
means the absolutely best quality wine, with
distinction.  Also all German wines that are good
wines must have an appellation number, meaning that it
passed the government German wine inspectors.  

Quite a few years ago, I went to a fine restaurant
here in Los Angeles, which offered haut cuisine.  I
ordered pheasant and decided that I wanted a German
wine with it.  I asked the somalier for his German
wine list.  Everything on the list was listed as being
"Qualit‰tswein".  I asked him if this was all that he
had, because I wished to have better wines then this. 
He said that these were the finest German wines.  I
informed him that these couldn't be, because they were
not "Qualit‰tswein, mit predikat" and that his wine
broker was not selling him the finest.  He went away
to verify what I had said.  When he came back, he
thanked me for the information and told me that the
wine was on the house, because it wasn't "up to his
standards".  I went back some time later and he had
made the appropriate changes to the list.

Huette


Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 19:25:00 EDT
From: ChannonM at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: was Duke's powder now wine in Northern Europe

<< I don't know that the Norse, at least in their home countries, drank
 wine or hippocras (spiced wine), though. I would think that beers and
 meads would be much more likely. The wine would have to be imported
 and hippocras often seems to have been made from the lower quality
 wines. Why import low quality wines? >>

I'm not sure about Denmark, but Ireland was importing wine in great 
quantities in the 12th C according to several sources;

From the written account by Giraldas Cambrensis or Gerald of  Wales, comes a 
description of the riches of Ireland in 1187,
The island is rich in pastures and meadows, honey and milk, and also in wine, 
although not in vineyards. Bede, indeed, among his other commendations of 
Ireland, says, "that it does not lack vineyards"; while Solinus and Isidore 
affirm, "that there are no bees." But with all respect for them, they might 
have written just the contrary, that vineyards do not exist in the island, 
but that bees are found there. Vines it never possessed, nor any cultivators 
of them. Still, foreign commerce supplies it with wine in such plenty that 
the want of the growth of vines, and their natural production, is scarcely 
felt. Poitou, out of its superabundance, exports vast quantities of wine to 
Ireland, which willingly gives in return its ox-hides and the skins of cattle 
and wild beasts.

And;

Tolls charged in Dublin in 1233 by Henry the III, Lord of Ireland, for goods 
describes a limited variety of items  although it is suspected that the list 
is incomplete. The list includes; wheat, oats, horse or mare, ox or cow, hogs, 
sheep, wine, grain, salt, fat, cheese, honey, butter, herrings, and salmon 
amoung other merchandise.

Hauviette


Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 11:34:44 +1000
From: "Craig Jones." <craig.jones at airservices.gov.au>
Subject: SC - Retsina

>I read somewhere that Greek wine was a sweet white wine made in a
>resin lined barrel, (pitch I believe) giving it a pine taste to some
>degree. Anyone have any input to this?
>
>Hauviette

What you are describing is Retsina, a white wine preserved with pine
resin.  I found it not to my tastes, resembling disinfectant in aroma
and taste.  The resin can be found at a good Home Brew shop if you
want to make your own.

Funny thing,  there are lots of goodies I use in my cooking that I
find at the home brew shop such as:
Concentrated Grape Must, Hop Root Cuttings (for Hop Shoots), Dried
Elderberries, Malt, Isinglass, Gelatin in Bulk, Food Acids in Bulk,
Pectinase, Non-sulpher sterilizers (for cordial bottles).

Drake.


Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 19:12:29 EDT
From: CBlackwill at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Re: Compost variations

ekoogler at chesapeake.net writes:
> However, in doing this recipe, I gathered from the notes
> in the book that this may not have been what was being referenced, but, as I
> indicated, a sweet Italian wine.  I felt I did not know enough to go against 
> the author's notes in the glossary, so followed what they said.  I knew that, 
> given the very distinctive taste of Retsina, that it would definitely modify 
> the taste of the finished product.

How about Vin Santo, an Italian sweet wine (from Tuscany) made from dried 
grapes?  It is a very sweet dessert wine, and may be more along the lines of 
what you are looking for.  Marsala is actually a fortified wine, and didn't 
arrive until the late 1700's (1770, if I am not mistaken).  I am not sure 
when Vin Santo was created (though sweet dried grape wines have been around 
for a loooong time).  Anyone?

Balthazar of Blackmoor


Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 21:21:13 EDT
From: ChannonM at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: Re: Compost variations, early wine of dried grapes

CBlackwill at aol.com writes:
<< I am not sure 
 when Vin Santo was created (though sweet dried grape wines have been around 
 for a loooong time).  Anyone?
 
 Balthazar of Blackmoor >>

I can speak for a Roman wine that is made from sweet dried grapes mentioned 
as passum:  Flower & Rosenbaum suggest using a sweet Spanish wine and 
describe passum as a specially prepared cooking wine used to sweeten 
sauces.They confer with Pliny who adds that it is not only sweeter than 
defrutum,  but has a different flavour*. Palladius even says that one can use 
it like honey. Columella gives two elaborate recipes for the preparation of 
passum:

Mago gives the following directions how to make the best passum, and I have 
made it myself like this. Gather early grapes when they are fully ripe, 
aremoving mluldy or damaged berries. Fix in the ground forks or stakes 4 feet 
apart to support reeds and join them together with poles. Then place the 
reeds on top and spread your grapes in the sun, covering tehma night so they 
do not get wet from the dew. Then, when the have dried, pick the berries off 
the stalks and put them in a cask or wine-jar and poor the best possible must 
over them so that the berries are completely covered. When sturated put them 
on the sixth day in a wicker basket and presss them in the wine press and 
extract the passum. Next tread the grape-skins, having added freshest must 
which you have made from other grapes that were lseft to dry in the sun for 
three days. Mix together and put the whole mash through the wine-press , and 
this passum of the second pressing put immediately in vessels which you seal 
so that it does not become too rough. Then, after 20 or 30 days, when it has 
ceased fermenting, strain it into other vessels, seal their lids with gypsum 
immediately, and cover with skins.

If you wish to make passum from the "bee" grapes gather the whole grapes, 
clear away damged berries  , and throw them out. Then hang them up on poles. 
See to it that the poles are always in the sun. As soon as the berries are 
sufficiently shrivelled pick them off and put themwithout stalks in a vessel 
and tread them well with your feet. When you have made none layer of them 
sprinkle old wine on and tread another layer of grapes over it and sprinkl 
this also with woine. Do the same with a third layer and after having added 
wine, leave for five days. Then tread with your feet and press the grapes in 
a wicker basket. Some people prepare old rain-water for this boiling it down 
to a third of its volume , and then when they have made raisinns in the 
manner described above, they take the boiled-down rain-water instead of wine, 
doing everything else in a manner where there is plenty of wood, and in use 
it is even sweeter than the passum dexcribed above.

I have contacted the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and began to search for 
a wine that made from raisins. What I found was a plethora of knowledge and 
information and a wine that matches. It is called a 
Amarone valpolicella DOC  Classico $20-$30 per 350 ml
or as a substitution
Malivalpolicella -Ripaso which can be found at $13.85 (Villa Girardi 
Valpolicella 1995)

Hauviette


Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 08:06:06 -0500 
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Re: Compost variations

> How about Vin Santo, an Italian sweet wine (from Tuscany) 
> made from dried grapes?
> 
> Balthazar of Blackmoor

Try Malvasia (Malmsey).  It is specificly mentioned in Sabina Welserin
(1553).

Bear


Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 08:05:20 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - fortified wines

A fortified wine is one which distilled alcohol, usually brandy has been added.  Since distilled alcohol is approximately 14th Century in origin, fortified wines are late in SCA period. It is worth noting that wine from both Malvasian grapes and Marsala grapes were known in Antiquity and were apparently not fortified at that time.  

So it is worth asking, when did these wines become fortified?

Bear
> Ras declared:
> > Malmsey is also fortified as are the sherries, both of 
> > which are period. Fortification does not in itself automatically mean it is > > not period.
> 
> So, what exactly is a fortified wine? I know it is one in which the
> alcohol content has been enhanced, but it is done by adding a distilled
> alcohol to it? If so, what is generally used? Or is it done by partially
> distilling the wine itself?
> -- 
> Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra


Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:49:43 EDT
From: CBlackwill at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Poppa's mustard

KallipygosRed at aol.com writes:
> A sommiliar (is that right, Wine afficionado?) friend of mine is fond of 
>  saying, "the taste is in the roots" meaning that the wine takes attributes 
>  from the ground, so perhaps. I know that he likes a particular vintage of 
>  wine from France because of where it is grown and the "spicy" smell the 
>  grapes give off they pick up from the soil.

There is some truth to this, and I am sure that Ras will want to comment as 
well.  The elements which make up the earth the vine is planted in are taken 
up by the root system, and the flavor components are transmitted, in some 
degree, to the grape.  Vines planted in or near almond orchards or orange 
groves do pick up a faint aroma/flavor of those fruits.  Likewise, vines 
planted alongside (or in plots previously occupied by) various other berries 
also take on some of those flavors.  

Balthazar of Blackmoor


Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 11:30:55 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Poppa's mustard

CBlackwill at aol.com writes:
<< I am sure that Ras will want to comment as well.  >>

Not really. But I will. :-)

I have met people in the trade that claimed to be able to pinpoint the 
vineyard that a particular grape came from by 'tasting the earth' in the 
grape. Outstanding sommeliers also appear to have this ability. The soil 
makes the grape. The same variety grown in different soils will display 
different flavors, flinty, steely, earthy, barnyard, etc. White grapes 
exhibit herbaceous flavors differently on different types of soil parsley, 
celery, grassy come to mind. chardonnay grapes may taste of apricots, apples, 
citrus depending on the soil they are grown on. These are the characteristics 
that make vintning, wine tasting and service an art form. These 
characteristics are what make wines produced from the same grape variety 
grown a hundred yards apart taste like 2 different wines.

Ras


Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 23:51:43 -0500
From: "RANDALL DIAMOND" <ringofkings at mindspring.com>
Subject: SC - Re: Poppa's mustard- mighty morphin cookers(daa da da, da da)  LONG

To the statement >  "New wine" likely would be wine 
that had not yet fermented long, ergo closer to 
grape juice than to modern wine.  It would be sweet 
and very lightly alcoholic with a touch of yeast bite to it. <

Balthazar repied:
>>>I think the term "New Wine" implies just that;  wine 
which has only recently been completed (i.e. fully 
fermented), but has not yet had time to age and 
mellow.  Some wines are meant to be drunk "new", 
as their maturing qualities are not good.  As a modern 
reference (though I would not suggest that it is 
appropriate for the recipe), *white zinfandel* is a wine 
which is best imbibed *new*, because it will not keep 
and mature nearly so well as some of the finer reds and 
whites.<<<

I'm afraid I will have to disagree with both interpretations
(at least in part).  Firstly, I think period references to "new"
wines refers to a fully fermented wine, a completed wine.
I think it would definitely not be necessarily sweeter, "closer
to grape juice", nor lightly alchoholic.  I think this would refer
to casks (they didn't bottle then) which were broached very
soon after fermentation.  I'll agree with the "slight yeast
bite" as there was probably some residual (and active) 
yeast still present.  

I am in complete accord therefore with Balthazar's initial 
conclusion about the age of "new wine".  However, period
wines almost never had a chance to "age and mellow" as
an appreciation of vintage wine is almost exclusively a 
post-period phenomena made possible by glass bottles
and the use of cork stoppers.  Sparkling wines like 
Champagne were yet undreamed of. Fairly all wines in 
period would qualify as of a "not good maturing" type.  By
Michaelmas, most period wines were beginning to deteriorate
and by early summer, were likely unpalatable, being astringant
and even vinegary.  In response to another post very recently about
which grape are period varietals: yes, absolutely period grapes
are still in common production and are clones from grafted
copies of the originals.  However,  the tastes of modern wine made
from these grapes probably are very different from the original
wines as the methods of maturation are substantially different
as well as the modern practice of blending wines.  Of course,
if you vint yourself or have access to wines at the estate at
the time of bottling, you will be somehat closer to period taste.
Also you must admit the use of various settling agents and
sulfide levels will affect the taste as well.  I recall recently
the recall of Italian and French wines because some
idiot thought that antifreeze added a sweet taste to the
vintage and made it taste like a better quality vintage . And 
what about the effects of industrial pollution?  If one can tell 
the location of a wine from taste imparted by soil differences, 
does our atmospheric contamination affect the taste as well?  
Pollution is fairly universal now and I don't think the grapes 
escape its deterious effects.  It is probably impossible now to 
duplicate the exact flavours of period wines, I would think.  

My take is that wines in period were "new" and best soonest
after encasking and became just "wine" in late Fall and 
"old wine" in late Spring when the new grape crop was 
in obvious new growth and the flavour of the previous
wine harvest deteriorated somewhat badly.

Akim Yaroslavich


Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 07:19:35 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Wine

CBlackwill at aol.com writes:
<< Thank you for the information.  I had not considered this before, and will 
 now have to hit the books again.
 
 Balthazar of Blackmoor >>

I would suggest that when 'hitting' the books to keep in mind that current 
practices of vintners in California are very much different from traditional 
practices. While California wines can be said to little resemble traditional 
European wines because of the bulk tank methods used in their production, 
there are wines available that are made in the traditional ways still. 

Calloway Chardonnay, for instance is produced on the 'lees'. And a few small 
vintners still use or are experimenting with naturally occurring wild yeast. 
A good rule of thumb is that if a vineyard produces consistently small 
batches of wines then it's production methods are usually closer to the 
original methods.

So far as 'blending' is concerned, that really was the traditional way to 
make wines. The recent rise of California varietals is a modern phenomenon 
and is the major reason that I do not purchase California wines very often. 
European wines are almost exclusively blended. They always have been.

I also disagree that wines 'taste' any different now than they did in the 
middle ages. As I pointed out in my earlier posts Several of the Trebbiano's 
are still produced in the same way as they always were. Many of the Rhones 
also are still produced using the same stone pits and tanks that have always 
been used. According to the producer of Est! Est! Est!, it produced from the 
same varieties, using the same techniques that have been used since the 13th 
century. 

According to the same producer burning sulfur to sterilize casks, is not a 
modern invention. However, the addition of sulfur to the juice by some major 
commercial wineries is. Also storing wines in casks does not greatly lend to 
their going bad any quicker than storing them in bottles.

While it can be said that there are few California varietals that taste much 
like a period wine would have, it can also be said that many of the wines 
available from France and Italy most likely taste little different from their 
medieval counterparts. The exception would be mass produced commercial wines 
which are most likely better tasting now than in the middle ages. The art of 
vintning is truly ancient and almost all of 'innovations' that have occurred, 
with the exception of corking, have occurred in this century and almost all 
of those innovations are entirely restricted to commercial mass production. 
Basically if you avoid Ernest and Julio, Almaden, Paul Masson and Inglenook, 
avoid varietals and buy your wine from small European wineries, your product 
will be very much the same as that which was used by our ancestors for 
hundreds of years.

Ras


From: "Daniel Phelps" <phelpsd at gate.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 17:00:53 -0400
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Wine

There's a nice exhibition about the history of wine on now at the ROM go to
http://www.rom.on.ca and follow the links.

Daniel Raoul


Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 01:25:16 -0600
From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
To: SCA-Cooks maillist <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] raisin wines

Olwen said:
> >Hey, I found a new (to me) non-alcoholic drink in one of my books the
> >other day.  The book is Epulario, a 1598 English translation of an
> >earlier Italian text, and the recipe is "to turn water into wine".
> >Basically it tells you to get raisins of the sun, grind them up into a
> >powder (paste?), then put them in water.  Raisin juice!
> >
> >Katherine
>
> And we think Mountain Dew is special.  These folks must have had some really
> good drugs and/or WWAAAAYYYYY to much time on their hands.  On the other
> hand, this probably isn't all that good cuz it didn't survive the test of
> time.

Hmmm. You think it didn't survive? Do a quick web search on "raisin wine".
Like mead, while they seem to have fallen in favor vs. wine from fresh
grapes, apparently they were in use a long time.

The following comes from:
http://www.neosoft.com/~scholars/raisin.htm

Too bad the only raisins I think I can get around here are those
from Concord grapes. This might be a fun project.
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra

Having learned how to create wine from dried grapes from inhabitants of AsiaMinor, the ancientGreeks went on to perfect these vinification techniques in the 8th century BC.The stems of grape clusters were twisted to prevent sap from reaching the grapes, causing them to shrivel.   Another technique was to pick grapes and dry them out in the sun on racks.   Depending on the varietal, the grapes would lose between 40-60% of their water.   Wines produced from these grapes were rich, larger-than-life, benefiting from years of maturation, and were prized by ancient writers such as Homer, Cato, Pliny and Virgil.   The early robustness of raisin wines =96 the need to =93loose their teeth=94 -- is indicative of their longevity, critical in an era before the invention of stoppered bottles.

Like the Greeks, Roman explorers planted vineyards wherever they went.   As a result, dried grape winemaking techniques became embedded into the complex fabric of vinification traditions in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, and England.   These wines flourished from the 13th to 17thcenturies, especially in Italy and France, but today the practice survives only in isolated European enclaves.   Italy alone appears to have an unbroken tradition of raisin wine, often produced at only the best estates around Tuscany, Trentino and Umbria.


Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:17:58 -0500
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Malavosia-What is it?

Also sprach Catherine Hartley:
>I noticed quite a few references to Malaosia in the online translation of
>Sabrina welserin's Cookbook. Is this a kind of wine?

A.K.A. Malmsey, the stuff George, Duke of Clarence (brother of Edward
V, I think, and Richard III) is alleged to have drunk/starved himself
to death with, or if you follow Shakespeare, drowned in.

A sweetish, strong wine along the lines of sherry or tawny port. I
forget whether it is fortified... it's available at most decent wine
shops.

Adamantius


From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Malavosia-What is it?
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:18:46 -0600

>I noticed quite a few refernces to Malaosia in the online translation of
>Sabrina welserin's Cookbook. Is this a kind of wine?
>
>Caitlin of Enniskillen

In Antiquity it was wine made from Malvasian grapes.  These days it is
Malmsey or Madeira, fortified dessert wines.  I was able to get an
unfortified Malvasian wine from California when I made Welser strawberry
tart, but I haven't seen any since.

Since distillation was a growing business when the cookbook was written, it is
possible that the wine was fortified.

Bear


From: "Jeanne Papanastasiou" <jeanne at atasteofcreole.com>
To: "Ansteorra Cooks" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 01:52:18 -0400
Subject: [Sca-cooks] The Origins of Wine - Part 1

 http://www.thewineletter.com/history/index.html

Soffya Appollonia Tudja


Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 23:38:41 -0800
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period apple commerce
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

At 11:06 PM 1/31/2004, you wrote:
>> Perhaps for the same reasons the English imported French wine even  
>> though they grew grapes and made wine in England?
>
> Because English wines were known for being *really bad*. IIRC it was Peter
> of Blois who remarked on the terrible wine. Can't cite it though- guess
> where the books are? :-/

Replying to myself, I know...

I found this on the Godecookery website:
> Wine, in thirteenth century England mostly imported from English-ruled
> Bourdeaux, was drunk young in the absence of an effective technique for
> stoppering containers. Wine kept a year became undrinkable. No attention
> was paid to vintage, and often what was served even at rich tables was of
> poor quality. Peter of Blois decribed in a letter wine served at Henry
> II's court:
> "The wine is turned sour or mouldy - thick, greasy, stale, flat and
> smacking of pitch. I have sometimes seen even great lords served with  
> wine so muddy that a man must needs close his eyes and clench his teeth,
> wry-mouthed and shuddering, and filtering the stuff rather than  
> drinking."

I looked for the source of the Blois quote but haven't found it- everyone
quotes it, but no one says exactly where it's from. I glanced through the
Blois documents in the InternetSourcebook, and found a rather harsh letter
from Peter to Eleanor of Aquitaine, amongst others, but the wines of
England were not mentioned in the letters on that site
.
>> So, was English (or French) cider exported out of the area it was made
>> in, in the Middle Ages?
>
> I'm pretty sure that French wines were imported fairly early. How far,  
> I don't know.

There's quite a few mentions in various places that French wines from
Bordeaux began importing to England in a big way when Henry and Eleanor
took the throne- it all being under management, so to speak. And apparently
continued so until Gascony slipped from English control.

'Lainie


Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 23:38:41 -0800
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period apple commerce
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

At 11:06 PM 1/31/2004, you wrote:
>> Perhaps for the same reasons the English imported French wine even  
>> though they grew grapes and made wine in England?
>
> Because English wines were known for being *really bad*. IIRC it was Peter
> of Blois who remarked on the terrible wine. Can't cite it though- guess
> where the books are? :-/

Replying to myself, I know...

I found this on the Godecookery website:
> Wine, in thirteenth century England mostly imported from English-ruled
> Bourdeaux, was drunk young in the absence of an effective technique for
> stoppering containers. Wine kept a year became undrinkable. No attention
> was paid to vintage, and often what was served even at rich tables was of
> poor quality. Peter of Blois decribed in a letter wine served at Henry
> II's court:
> "The wine is turned sour or mouldy - thick, greasy, stale, flat and
> smacking of pitch. I have sometimes seen even great lords served with  
> wine so muddy that a man must needs close his eyes and clench his teeth,
> wry-mouthed and shuddering, and filtering the stuff rather than  
> drinking."

I looked for the source of the Blois quote but haven't found it- everyone
quotes it, but no one says exactly where it's from. I glanced through the
Blois documents in the InternetSourcebook, and found a rather harsh letter
from Peter to Eleanor of Aquitaine, amongst others, but the wines of
England were not mentioned in the letters on that site
.
>> So, was English (or French) cider exported out of the area it was made
>> in, in the Middle Ages?
>
> I'm pretty sure that French wines were imported fairly early. How far,  
> I don't know.

There's quite a few mentions in various places that French wines from
Bordeaux began importing to England in a big way when Henry and Eleanor
took the throne- it all being under management, so to speak. And apparently
continued so until Gascony slipped from English control.

'Lainie


Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:29:50 -0400
From: Cynthia Virtue <cvirtue at thibault.org>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Periodoid vs. Period Re: Interesting posts

Bronwynmgn wrote:
> We have at least one surviving French book (Le Menagier de Paris, 1390, usally
> listed in English as The Goodman of Paris), [...]

> to cook when having guests over right down to explaining that carrots are the
> red roots one buys in the market.

It's fun to just read, too.  I'm particularly fond of the recipe to take 
white wine and turn it into red wine by coloring it.

I like to show it to my oenologist friends.  They twitch well.

cv


From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Periodoid vs. Period Re: Interesting posts
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:07:43 -0700

Cynthia Virtue <cvirtue at thibault.org> wrote:
> Robert Uhl wrote:
> > So, how _does_ one colour white wine red?
> 
> I *think* it was crushed rose petals, but the book is in the garage and 
> it's pouring outside.  I'll try to find it tomorrow.

Janet Hinson's translation, which I think is the only complete 
translation of the cooking section of Le Menagier, is webbed at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier_Conten
ts.html

---
TO MAKE WHITE WINE RED AT THE TABLE, take in summer the red flowers 
which grow in the wheat, called rose-mallow and other names, and let 
them dry until they crumble into powder, and secretly drop them in the 
glass with the wine, and it will turn red.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com


Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 19:48:47 -0800 (PST)
From: she not <atamagajobu at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: wine and vinegar
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

> This is not, note, the same as saying it works.  but, keeping in mind  
> that wine in period might well be indistinguishable from vinegar,
William de Grandfort wrote:
>>>
Why do you make this assumption?  If anything, I am inclined to say that wine 'in period' (which spans a very long time) was likely more concentrated than it is today.  I am basing this assumption on the ancient Greek custom of diluting wine with water (certainly something we would balk at today).
<<<

(maybe you, but not me and not the French! it's still a custom, especially for children)

>>>
  Perhaps this custom was a way to stretch the wine, but I think it was  
likely more to make it less intense.
<<<
(Probably both.)

>>>
Vinegar is a sour liquid, which cannot really be tolerated in the same quantity as wine.  To assume that wine and vinegar were 'indistinguishable' is, I think, an error.  If wine did not have a pleasing flavor to our ancestors, why would they continue to make it?
<<<

Sorry I've been away for so long, some of those questions have been answered already, but you raised several points and I guess I should explain my comment further

People in period were well acquainted with wine, vinegar and all the stages in between. (ref multitudinous comments and complaints in  primary documents about new wine, sour wine, old wine, also ref  numerous recipes which make the nastier stuff more palatable)

I hadn't meant to imply people didn't know the difference, only that often there wasn't much difference. Wine has a short shelf life, even now- try drinking what you uncorked several weeks ago, or check the   current sales on last fall's Beaujolais Nouveau, (price falls in direct  ratio to the quality) I don't know what the alcohol content is at this  stage-and never managed to choke down enough of it to guess. Shelf life was shorter in period, despite attempts to preserve it (at one point, the French? used an arsenic compound called orpiment as a preservative in tuns shipped by sea) It was generally shipped by the (big) cask or (huge)tun, and would turn quickly after it was tapped,  becoming less  and less "pleasing", hence the custom of adding water, spices, honey,  etc. to correct the problem.

Not that that was the only reason-water made a precious commodity like  wine go further, as well as making the water safe to drink, watered  wine is quite tasty, drinking unwatered wine marked a drunkard, and  spiced wine is delicious, especially "mulled" with hot water. Also, I  believe the Greek and roman amphorae tended to lose moisture, so old  wine might be a thick syrup that needed dilution- I've run across  several references to wine like honey that seemed to refer to texture  rather than taste.

As to why they would drink it if it wasn't tasty- several reasons there, too. Food value (they drank beer, too, that needed a piece of burnt bread to give it color and taste, hence drinking a "toast"). Any extracted liquid (such as verjuice) or fermented beverage was generally safer than water, given the variety of contaminants that might affect  the source.  Both were important reasons to use it in cooking too, as was tenderization and flavor. Medicinal properties-pretty well documented what those were thought to be. It's psychoactive and addictive properties-prisoners in Siberia used to drink cologne for its alcohol content, and really, fermented mare's milk? euuw!   
Fashion/status-it might be preferable to offer poor wine than good beer. And, since the quality dropped sharply before the next harvest, (note the preference in period for sweet wines), everybody that drank  wine regularly would be used to souring wine, yet not wish to continue  drinking it once the new wine came in, If and when it was replaced with new, The kitchen got to use up any old wine which hadn't been distilled or sold off, which, as I said, might well be indistinguishable from vinegar.

It's hard, in a commercial society, to remember that very few people at any time in period had the option of running out to buy what they  wanted to eat or drink- and almost none had the luxury to waste what  they had, which was anyway considered both a social and a moral sin.   
(I think it was a prince of orange who got whapped upside the head for putting both butter AND cheese on his bread, which waste was NOT the  thrift that made his country strong)  But any realistic approach to period cookery has to consider that food came pretty exclusively from hunts, harvests and storerooms, with occasional minor additions from markets, shipments and such. Weather, politics, plague, you name it,  could disrupt any of these but the storeroom, therefore stored foods-especially imports- were a vital resource at any time-one would  certainly not pour out old wine just because the flavor had gone off.

gisele


Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 14:05:41 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Danelaw feast - Take Two
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> Am Sonntag, 17. Juli 2005 21:46 schrieb Carole Smith:
>Wasn't there a wine trade in England on the earlier side?  It is my >understanding that when the weather got colder (more or less >corresponding to Elizabethan times) that they could no longer grow wine >grapes and became dependant on wine from other countries.

>I don't know about Anglo-Saxon times, but wine was grown in England >later in the Middle Ages. If nothing else, it would have been necessary >for Eucharist. Nonetheless, wine was imported from France in quantity, >so it can't have been all that much, or all that good.

I think it was Geoffery of Wales who noted that the English wines were so ghastly that one drank them with a shudder, straining it through the teeth...

England in the 12th-13th c was somewhat warmer, the Little Ice Age was in the early 14th c (1315 was especially bad), and effectively ruined the rootstock...

So yes, there was a wine trade for awhile, but the good stuff came from the continent- especially when England held the Aquitaine, Gascony, etc.

'Lainie


Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:30:53 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
	<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks]Wine Lees was: Mainz Ham
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

On Jul 30, 2005, at 3:05 PM, Radei Drchevich wrote:
> Please.  What is wine lees??
> radei

The dregs or sediment. Basically, when you ferment the wine, you convert sugar, which is dense, to alcohol, CO2, and various other goodies, but since much of the CO2 escapes, you're left with a less dense and viscous liquid. It's thinner. So, all sorts of suspended proteins and impurities fall out of it like rain, and land on the bottom of the container. To clarify it, the best and least intrusive way is to let gravity do that work, then rack the wine off of the dregs, leaving them, and a little of the liquid part, behind. That sludge evidently has some valuable "industrial" uses, like for pickling hams, for example.

I vaguely remember some reference to the Romans pickling stuff in wine lees.

Adamantius


Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 11:05:31 +0200
From: Volker Bach <carlton_bach at yahoo.de>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] grape stomping
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Am Sonntag, 14. Mai 2006 09:21 schrieb Stefan li Rous:

> I know today that machinery is probably used almost everywhere to get
> the juice from grapes for making wine. Was the juice actually
> extracted from the grapes, in period or "traditionally" actually done
> by filling vats with the grapes and then by people climbing into the
> vats and stomping on the grapes?

AFAIK the extraction was a two-step process: First, the grapes were put into the vat and stomped. In the process, they would be turned into a gooey pulp rather than discrete units. The juice flowing out at this stage would not be a large quantity, but made the choicest wine. In stage two, the pulp was placed in a wine press and squeezed. That created much more juice, but of a somewhat lower quality. Finally, the squeezed pulp would be watered, creating the base for the lowest quality wine.

There is a winery in South Germany where they still do the stomping. It is part of an annual harvest festival, Roman-style, and the wine thus made is sold mostly to local enthusiasts. I'll have to check if I can find the address, it was on TV a few years ago.

Giano


Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:21:58 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Random food-related questions....
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On 11/14/06, Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com> wrote:
> Would a sherry do if I can't find sack?
> --Maire

Most of the sack I've been able to find these days is sherry.  The  term as
used in the 16th and 17th Centuries however covers almost any light, dry,
fortified wine produced in Spain or the Canary Islands.

Bear


Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 23:57:39 -0500
From: "Nick Sasso" <grizly at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Thank you and 2 more questions....
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

>>>>> Thank you for all the suggestions for red wine substitution. I ended
up using veggie broth and all came out well. (I thought)  Next time I
am in Wilkes Barre PA or Philadelphia I will get a few bottles of
kosher to keep on hand.... which leads me to another question: How
long does open wine keep?  (And don't say, like DH, that wine is
already spoiled, so what could happen?)  Doesn't open wine get
stale?  (I don't drink)...and I wonder if kosher wine comes in those
vacuum pack boxes??  ...must investigate......  (OK that was 2
questions)

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
Phillipa < < < < < < <

Two common enemies of opened wine: oxidation and infection.  Oxidation makes
it taste "off" and eventually like wet cardboard.  Infections happen that
will cause it to turn sour, into vinegar very often.  My experience is that
You can keep stoppered wine in the fridge for a week or two.  You can use
for cooking for a couple of weeks more, maybe.  Less air exposure means
longer life.

If you put it gently into a sanitized smaller bottle with less surface area
exposed to air, then you get longer shelf life, in terms of adding
days, not weeks.

niccolo


Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:57:25 +0000 (GMT)
From: emilio szabo <emilio_szabo at yahoo.it>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] wines -- De diuersorum vini generum natura liber,
	1559 (books.google)
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Book about the nature of the different kinds of wine
(liber - de natura - diversorum generum - vini )

natura/nature = humoral, medical properties, temperament

http://books.google.com/books? 
id=6O7VubsbM_QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:vini&lr=&num=100&as_brr=1 
&hl=de#PPT1,M1

E.


Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:54:19 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Wine Question
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

> Anybody out ther have a good resource for cheing on wine types etc... and
> their "periodness"... I'm looking specifically for info on Rhine and
> Burgundy.
>
> -Ardenia

Rheinwein and Burgundy have a fairly long history, but the real question is
are those wines in period the same as they are today.  The fact is, there is
no way to be sure.  There is however, probably a continuous process of
improvement from the Roman period through today.

We know from Tacitus's Germania that in the 1st Century wine was imported
into France and Germany and that this is supported by the numbers of wine
amphorae that have shown up in various archeologcal digs.  Viticulture in
the region probably began in the last half of the 1st Century and was well
established by the 4th Century.

The city of Augustodunum was established in the Burgundy region in the 1st
Century.  The first known reference to wine being produced in Burgundy is
from an account of a visit by Constantine to Augustodunum in 312 CE.

While there is no direct evidence (that I've found) for Rhine viticulture in
the Roman period, Mosel (a tributary to the Rhine) viticulture is mentioned
in Ausonius's Mosella (370 CE).  Rhenish Rieslings can be dated to the 15th
Century and are likely to have been cultivated much earlier.  You might
check out this paper on the Rhenish wine trade in the 14th to 16th
Centuries:  http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Weststrate.pdf

Interesting stuff.  Thanks for asking the question.  I haven't located the
account of Constatine's visit or Mosella yet, but I have no reason to think
the references aren't valid.

Bear


Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:26:39 -0400
From: Sandra Kisner <sjk3 at cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] brewing
To: ladypeyton at yahoo.com, Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

>I thought such books only covered beer....

<<< There are many books available for making wine.  I highly recommend The 
Joy of Home Wine Making by Terry A. Garey (a former SCAdian and we're even 
mentioned in the book) and  Winemaking: Recipes, Equipment, and Techniques 
for Making Wine at Home by Stanley F. Anderson and Dorothy Anderson who 
are the Papazians of home wine making. >>>

Another book you might find interesting is "Folk wines, cordials & 
brandies: ways to make them, together with some lore, reminiscences, and 
wise advice for enjoying them," by M.A. Jagendorf (NY: Vanguard Press, 
1963).  I picked up my copy because they name caught my eye (it turned out 
one of the professors I worked for was the author's son), and thought the 
topic interesting.  I'll admit I haven't tried anything yet, so I have no 
idea if any of the recipes are good (or the instructions appropriate for 
beginners) but it's got info on wines from just about everything.

Sandra  


Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:07:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Beth Ann Bretter <ladypeyton at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] brewing
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

<<< Not to mention "A Sip in Time" by Cindy
Renfrew...covers all sorts of potent potables! >>>

"A Sip Through Time" by Cindy Renfrow is certainly a decent source if you are interested in period brewing recipes, but if you looking for a good period source strictly for winemaking and period cordials I'd recommend finding a copy of Arnald de Villanova's "Book of Wine" first.  Mostly because the wine making section in Sip is small and rather post period heavy while Arnald's entire book was printed in period (and reprinted, since the 1948 translation readily available was actually a poorly researched, documented and attributed German translation published in the 15th century).

The two books I recommended earlier are not historical but are great for getting a good foundation of wine making knowledge before you delve into the historical aspect.  

Another excellent book, which is strictly historical background and includes no recipes, is "Monks and Wine" by Desmond Seward.

Peyton 


Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 14:25:04 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Lemons? Limes? Confusion?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< Let me see thee, froth and lime.  Host, The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1,3

While the title is "Butter in the Bard",  after the pervious discussion I 
cannot speak for the author's ability to tell lime quick or otherwise from 
the cirtus fruit.

Daniel >>>

This particular quote refers to treating wine with calcium oxide or similar 
compound to make it taste drier.  In Henry IV, Falstaff is complaining about 
the treatment being applied to sack to make it seem higher proof thus 
cheating a poor honest Englishman as himself while giving them kidney 
stones.

Bear 


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:51:11 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: kat_weye at yahoo.com, Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Oct 21, 2008, at 2:40 PM, Katheline van Weye wrote:
<<< One of the people in my cooking group wants to make clary wine (as a  
lot of our recipes call for it).  For clary wine we need the flowers  
from clary sage plants.  Unfortunately, if planted from seed, it  
takes a year before the plants bloom.  We only have six months.

Does anyone have a source for the clary sage flowers, or perhaps the  
plants? >>>

I can't be certain, but it was my understanding that many of the clary  
references in medieval recipes are to claret wine, which is, as I  
recall, a light Bordeaux. I wasn't aware of the need for clary sage to  
make it...

Is there something that documents this connection, or could this just  
be some supposition on your friend's part?

Adamantius


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:06:43 -0500
From: Michael Gunter <countgunthar at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< I can't be certain, but it was my understanding that many of the clary
references in medieval recipes are to claret wine, which is, as I
recall, a light Bordeaux. I wasn't aware of the need for clary sage to
make it...

Adamantius >>>

I agree with Master A on this. I hadn't even thought
of a wine made from clary sage. Every mention I've
seen of this appears to indicate a Claret (pronounced
"Clary").

Gunthar


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:27:43 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source

It occurred to me afterward to look for instances of clary sage being  
added to wine, and I didn't find them. Ale, yes, and other types of  
sage as well as clary sage used in beers and ales, but nothing about  
wine in what I saw...

Maybe there's something in Villanova...

Adamantius


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:43:55 -0400
From: "Amy Cooper" <amy.s.cooper at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

While I don't have the books with me at work, I do know where I had
heard of Clary Wine first myself was in either To Take A Thousand
Eggs, or in A Sip Through Time. I wanted to make it, too, but never
was able to find a source for just the flower heads, and I knew better
than to try to grow them myself!

Ilsebet


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:41:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Here are two "clary" definitions from Cindy Renfrow's website:

Clarry, clarre = a beverage made of mixed wines with honey and spices 

Clary =Salvia sclarea L., Labiatae, also called Clear Eyes.  Clary is a relative of sage, and was once much used as a seasoning in foods and beverages.  Culpeper notes (p. 88) "the seeds or leaves taken in wine, provoketh to venery... the juice of the herb in ale or beer, and drank, promotes the courses."  (TTEM) 

If you could tell us which recipe that "clary wine" is needed for, it would help us to figure out which clary is being called for.

I would be careful about making a wine from clary sage.  I found this on an online herbal website:

http://www.susunweed.com/Article_ClarySage.htm

"History: The Romans called it sclarea, from claurus, or "clear", because they used it as an eyewash. The practice of German merchants of adding clary and elder flowers to Rhine wine to make it imitate a good Muscatel was so common that Germans still call the herb Muskateller Salbei and the English know it as Muscatel Sage. Clary sometimes replaced hops in beer to produce an enhanced state of intoxication and exhilaration, although this reportedly was often followed by a severe headache. It was considered a 12 th-century aphrodisiac."

and:

"Toxicity: non-toxic, non-irritant, non-sensitizing. Avoid during pregnancy. Do not use clary sage oil while drinking alcohol, it can induce a narcotic effect and exaggerate drunkenness."

This website does have this recipe:

Clary Wine
10 gallons water
35 lb loaf sugar
12 eggs
2 pecks of clary blossoms
1 pint good new yeast
Mix sugar, water and well-beaten egg whites. Let boil gently for 1/2 hour, skimming until the mixture is quite clear. Let stand until cold. Pour into a cask, add 2 pecks of clary blossoms stripped from the stalk and 1 pint of yeast. Stir the wine three times a day for five days. Stop it up, and let stand for twelve months. It may be bottled at the end of six months if perfectly clear.

So, even if you started making clary wine today, it wouldn't be ready for a year, according to this recipe.

From the Prospect Books glossary:

http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/pages/glossc.htm

CLARRETT, clarret, claret, wine: claret. Although the usage that invariably linked claret to the wines of Bordeaux was current from about the year 1600 (OED), the earlier meaning, which distinguished wines of a claret colour (orange or light red, i.e. the French clairet) from white or fully red wines, was still found. See, for instance, the use in Receipt 129 where the maker of cherry wine is to add ?white or clarrett wine into each bottle?. Hess has a useful discussion of this point. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17) 

CLARY, 6, 172. Clary, Salvia sclarea, was used as a remedy for eye complaints (claws being the Latin word for clear), but also had culinary uses. It is slightly bitter and was used to add flavour to wine. Clary fritters, i e clary leaves fried in batter, were featured regularly in 17th century cookery books. (Robert May, 1660/1685) 

CLARY, clarie: clary, Salvia sclarea. Clary leaf fritters are specified in Receipt 311. Clary was otherwise used medicinally. (John Evelyn, Cook, C17) 

CLARY: Salvia Sclarea. The herb in flower was used to make a sweet wine with a muscatel flavour. Oil of clary is a perfume fixative. (John Nott, 1726) 

CLARY LEAVES: the crinkled leaves of Salvia sciarea, or other plants such as celandine and species of fennel. (Richard Bradley, 1736) 

CLARY; CLARYE FRITTERS, 82; CLARYE LEAVES. Clary, the herb Salvia sclarea. Apothecaries interpreted the name as a form of ?clear-eye? and applied it to other plants which were thought to be beneficial to the eyes. It was more common in the 18th century to find recipes for clary wine than for clary fritters. Rabisha (1682) gave a longer recipe, To Fry Clary, which would also have produced fritters of a kind, but with an egg batter.(Glasse, 1747) 

From The Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook
by Sussannah Carter - 1803 

http://www.kbapps.com/cookbooks/TheFrugalHousewife/199.html

To make Clary Wine.
Take twenty-four pounds of Malaga raisins, pick them and chop them very small, put them in a tub, and to each pound a quart of water; let them steep ten or eleven days, stirring it twice every day; you must keep it covered close all the while; then strain it off and put it into a vessel, and about half a peck of the tops of clary when it is in blossom; stop it close for six weeks, and then bottle it off; in two or three months it is fit to drink. It is apt to have a great settlement at bottom; therefore it is best to draw it off by plugs, or tap it pretty high.

Huette


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:08:14 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks]  Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Earlier today before Huette posted her summary, I asked Cindy what she 
had on Clary and she sent this to me.
In case we need more or if Stefan wants it for his files, here's what 
she had to say. She does mention a number of recipe sources.

Johnnae
----------
In addition to Claret, which is a red wine from Bordeaux, there are also:
Clarrey, a spiced wine/ale mixture (see Forme of Cury #205);
Potus clarreti pro domino (Royal MS 17A iii), a spiced & fortified 
hydromel drink;
Clarrey (ibid) a spiced & sweetened wine;
And Clary Wine itself. There are recipes for Clary Wine (and yes they 
*do* call for clary flowers. John Murrell, Charles Carter, Hannah Glasse 
and A New System of Domestic Cookery all have recipes for Clary Wine.
Clary sage flowers or clary water also appear in several wine recipes 
where clary is not the predominate flavoring.
All the above recipes can be found in A Sip Through Time.

For the herb itself, try www.pennherb.com That's where I got some many 
years ago, though I wasn't happy with the quality of the product. I 
wanted the dried flowers, but they arrived chopped up and mixed with the 
cut herb.

Cindy Renfrow


Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:29:14 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <rcarrollmann at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Clary Sage Flowers - Source
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:08 PM, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
quoted Cindy Renfrow, as follows:

<<< In addition to Claret, which is a red wine from Bordeaux, there are also:
Clarrey, a spiced wine/ale mixture (see Forme of Cury #205);
Potus clarreti pro domino (Royal MS 17A iii), a spiced & fortified hydromel
drink; Clarrey (ibid) a spiced & sweetened wine; >>>

De Nola has a recipe for "clarea" a spiced white wine sweetened with
honey.  (Followed by the recipe for "Clarea de Aqua", a non-alcoholic
version.

[snip]
<<< Clary sage flowers or clary water also appear in several wine recipes where clary is not the predominate flavoring. >>>

The horseradish-honey sauce from de Nola can also be made with the
leaves of clary sage.  I've never tried it.
-- 
Brighid ni Chiarain


Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 10:01:25 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] May wine
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

We used to make it with a German white wine, maybe a Dry Riesling???
This was back when if you were under 21 but over 18, you could legally 
buy and drink wine and beer.
We used to do lots of things with wines then. Remember wine coolers and 
jug wines.
Wicca101.com http://www.unc.edu/~reddeer/recipe/rec_beltain.html has 
this recipe
MAY WINE  1 bottle of German White Wine; 1/2 cup Fresh Strawberries, 
sliced; 12 sprigs of fresh woodruff
Pour wine into carafe or wide mouth bottle. Add strawberries and 
woodruff and allow to blend for at least an hour. Strain and serve well 
chilled. Garnish with thin orange slice. The strawberries add a 
wonderful flavour and the woodruff adds sweetness.

Another source says 1 bottle of fairly good white table wine, not 
Chardonnay, chilled.

Johnnae

devra at aol.com wrote:
<<< I only tasted May wine once, many years ago. It was pretty nice. Now I've just planted a sweet woodruff in one of my herb pots, so I wondered... what kind of wine? approximately how much herb? how long to soak together?

Devra >>>


Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:11:04 +0200
From: "Susanne Mayer" <susanne.mayer5 at chello.at>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] May wine
To: <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

The toxic substance in woodruff  is Coumarin (btw the same as in Cinnamon 
(Chinese more than Ceylon) and we always made it with a dry white wine 
(Riesling, Veltliner, Pinot blanc,..).

Woodruff is best before the flowers open and for the typical taste to 
develop you have to pick it and let them wilt for a few hours or overnight 
(a small bouquet, here the 12 sprigs can give you an idea, is enough for 1 
bottle of wine). Hang the bunch in the wine put in the fridge for about 2-3 
hours (the longer you soak the woodruff in the wine, the more coumarin you 
will have, albeit you do get the typical taste only from the coumarin). If 
you want: add sugar, fill up either with mineral water or and dry sparkling 
wine (prosecco/champagne/cava/sekt,...) and make a may bowl out of it.

A word of caution: may wine is delicious, but if you overindulge you WILL 
get a real beast of a headache (I know this from experience).

Here the info on coumarin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coumarin

BTW you can freeze the woodruff for later (no wilting needed).

I love may wine and may try the strawberry variant Joanne posted.

regards Katharina


Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:01:04 +0200
From: "Susanne Mayer" <susanne.mayer5 at chello.at>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] may wine
To: <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Just some more info:

I got a new magazine a few days ago (with a lot of nice recipes) and  4 
whole pages devoted to woodruff.

There is a quote but unfortunately without source:
"sch?tte den perlenden wein ?ber das Waldmeisterlein" (pour the bubbling 
wine over the woodruff) attributed to the benedictine monk Wandalbert in the 
year 854. I did not yet try to find anything about this in the net.

Maybe some one on the list has more information on the periode-nes of use of 
woodruff?

The article mentions also 10 to 12 sprigs as safe amount.

the magazine is in german the new kraut&r?ben special Kr?uter (2.nd edition) 
1/09

Regards Katharina


Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 20:23:00 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] may wine
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Wandalbert of Pru:m, Deacon of Treves in 854 if I'm not mistaken.  He's best 
known for his Martyrology.  I don't know the source of the quote, but the 
attribution is probably accurate.  The use of woodruff in wine is mostly a 
German custom of long standing.  It also is used to flavor some sausages and 
in puddings and jellies, but I have no knowledge of any period recipes that 
use it.

Bear

----- Original Message ----- 

Just some more info:

I got a new magazine a few days ago (with a lot of nice recipes) and  4
whole pages devoted to woodruff.

There is a quote but unfortunately without source:
"sch?tte den perlenden wein ?ber das Waldmeisterlein" (pour the bubbling
wine over the woodruff) atributed to the benedictine monk Wandalbert in the
year 854. I didn not yet try to find anything about this in the net.

Maybe some one on the list has more information on the periode-nes of use of
woodruff?

The article mentiones also 10 to 12 sprigs as safe amount.

the magazin is in german the new kraut&r?ben special Kr?uter (2.nd edition)
1/09

Regards Katharina


Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 19:04:20 +0000 (GMT)
From: emilio szabo <emilio_szabo at yahoo.it>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Rasch: Weinbuch / wine book, 1580
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

Did I or anybody else mention the wine book of Johann Rasch 1580 before? (I am not sure.)

Rasch,
Johann: Weinbuch. Das ist: Vom baw und pflege des Weins, Wie derselbig
n?tzlich sol gebawet, Was ein jeder Weinziher oder Weinhawer zuthun
schuldig, Auch was f?r nutz und schaden durch sie kan au?gerichtwerden,
Allen Weingart Herren sehr nothwendig zu wissen. Daneben auch wie man
allerley Kreuter und Brantwein, Essig, Meth, und Bier, machen,
erhalten, und welche abgestanden, wie denselbigen wider zuhelffen sey,
M?nchen, [1580][VD16 R 324]

urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00027343-2

It is online here:
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00027343/images/

On top on the right side there is a download option (PDF).

E.


Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 15:12:21 -0400
From: Sam Wallace <guillaumedep at gmail.com>
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Malvasia (Malmsey) and Rheinfal

One very good resource is the Sean Thackrey Library
(http://www.wine-maker.net/LibraryIntroPage.html). Also, if you look
into de Casteau's Ovverture de Cuisine you should find a poem
describing methods of combining wines to imitate others. In some
cases, these sorts of descriptions are all we have to indicate how
historic vintages tasted.

Guillaume


Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:25:19 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] An old wine book 1584

It appears to be up on Google Books in a plain text version.
Search under "Wein B?chlein" By Samuel Dilbaum
But actually I don't think it's transcribed there.

On Jul 2, 2010, at 8:47 PM, emilio szabo wrote:
<<< Here is sort of an old wine guide from 1584.
http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/search?oclcno=166006417

I vaguely remember that there is also a transcription available  
somewhere on the net. But I do not remember where it was.

E. >>>

Thomas Gloning has it at his site--
http://www.uni-giessen.de/gloning/tx/1584dilw.htm

He offers several texts on wine:
Old wine texts

Burgundio Pisano, Liber de vindemiis (Cod. Ashburnh. 1011)
The wine book ("Hie vahet an alle artzenie von dem wine") of the Codex  
Donaueschingen 787, ed. Ankenbrand
Samuel Dilbaum: Weinb?chlein 1584
Old wine texts from the Sean Thackrey Library
Confalonerius, De vini natura (1535): siehe Alte Texte in digitalen  
Arbeitskopien.

Johnnae


Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 21:12:44 -0600
From: James Prescott <prescotj at telusplanet.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Malvasia (Malmsey) and Rheinfal

Three adjustments.

1) Malmsey is most commonly thought to derive ultimately from
Monemvasia, a town in Greece in the same general area as Sparta.

2) The poem in Ouverture de Cuisine merely lists wines (including
two kinds of malmsey), and does not describe how to use them to
imitate each other.  Malmsey is used as an ingredient in a number
of recipes in Ouverture.

3) There *is* a recipe in Ouverture which tells us in great detail
how to make counterfeit malmsey!

The malmsey recipe calls for rain water, Spanish honey, coriander,
juniper berries, and cinnamon.  It is not clear whether the result
is alcoholic or not, but probably not since it has to be extremely
sweet.  "better after three years than the first year"

Thorvald

At 3:12 PM -0400 7/2/10, Sam Wallace wrote:
<<< One very good resource is the Sean Thackrey Library
(http://www.wine-maker.net/LibraryIntroPage.html). Also, if you look
into de Casteau's Ovverture de Cuisine you should find a poem
describing methods of combining wines to imitate others. In some
cases, these sorts of descriptions are all we have to indicate how
historic vintages tasted.

Guillaume >>>


Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 22:24:58 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Malvasia (Malmsey) and Rheinfal

Malmsey is a wine made from Malvasia grapes and comes from a Latinized form 
of Monemvasia (Malvasia), a village in Southern Greece where the use of 
these grapes appears to originate.  Variants of the name appear in most 
languages in period and refer to wines made from Malvasia grapes.  Malvasia 
grapes were transplanted to Madeira where they became the basis for some of 
the fine Madeira wines.  These days, IIRC, Malmsey is usually fortified with 
brandy, while Malvasia may or may not be fortified.

<<< I'm guessing that Rheinfal is a type of wine that comes from the
Rheinland-Pfalz region of Germany.  Google-fu revealed many types of wine
originate there, and that there is surprisingly a near Mediterranean micro
climate as well in the area.  But, I still don't know what that might have
meant in the 16th century.

Katherine >>>

The Rheinland-Pfalz (AKA Rheinland Palatinate or formerly the Palatinate 
Eloctorate) winemaking region was referred to as Rheinpfalz when I was 
there, but I understand that reference has been largely discarded.  Rather 
than the Palatinate, I think Rheinfal may actually refer to Rheinfalls in 
Switzerland (Canton of Schaffhausen), a significant district for Reislings. 
Unfortunately, my references are buried

Bear 


Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:45:18 -0500
From: Elaine Koogler <kiridono at gmail.com>
To: yaini0625 at yahoo.com, Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT storing wine

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 8:30 PM, <yaini0625 at yahoo.com> wrote:
<<< Any suggestions on how to properly store wine. Do they go on there sides or
cork down?

Helen >>>

If it's a corked wine, it should go on its side to keep the cork moist.
Champagne should be stored with the top pointing mostly downward but on its
side as well.

At least that's what I've been told.

Kiri


Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:43:12 -0500
From: Ratt <rattkitten at bellsouth.net>
To: yaini0625 at yahoo.com, Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT storing wine

Still Wine with a Cork should be stored on it's side.
Sparkling Wine Should also be on it's side unless traveling... then Cork 
Up!!!! (Otherwise you could end up with a soaked trunk/seat or a new 
Sunroof.) You could even store both with a slight downward tilt to the 
bottle so that the Cork stays moist.
And if it is a screw top then you can store them whichever direction you 
want... (Don't laugh people have asked. And A Lot of the Better Wineries 
are going with screw tops.)

Best way to store wine in my opinion though is in the tummy.... lol.

Nichola


Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:45:43 -0500
From: Kate Wood <malkin at gmail.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT storing wine

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Ratt <rattkitten at bellsouth.net> wrote:
<<< Still Wine with a Cork should be stored on it's side.
Sparkling Wine Should also be on it's side unless traveling... then Cork
Up!!!! (Otherwise you could end up with a soaked trunk/seat or a new
Sunroof.) You could even store both with a slight downward tilt to the
bottle so that the Cork stays moist. >>>

Unless it's port or other fortified wines, in which case it should be
stored standing up. Otherwise, the cork can rot, and you'll end up
with all the crud that should be in the bottom of the port bottle in
your glass.

Kate


Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 05:07:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tracey Duncan <narniarose2003 at yahoo.com>
To: Merry Rose <atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>, Kat Romanish
	<k_romanish at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [MR] searching for wine and jewelry references

<<< I looking for a good book or maybe web page about the history of wine in Europe that goes into a lot of detail about when each chateau's (etc.) winery started and what they started etc. I'm not interested in how they made wine. I'm more interested in who was making wine back then and what types. I see a lot of web pages that claim to have histories but when you dig into them a little you find they don't have much at all. >>>

I have an amazing book I found called "Wines of the World" edited by Andre L. Simon. It covers France, North Africa, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, the Americas, and Other Vinelands of the West. Each chapter has a short history of wine-making in each geographical region. Would that help?

Lady Rosanella Vespucci 
Chatelaine, Barony of Windmasters' Hill
Pursuivant Herald-at-Large, Kingdom of Atlantia
Deputy of Performing Arts, Kingdom of Atlantia


Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 15:30:07 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Quinces

How about a recipe from quince and apricot wine? 
http://www.wine-making-guides.com/quince_apricot_wine.html

Bear

<<< The recent discussion of quince recipes got me wondering ... can you juice 
and ferment quinces in a similar fashion to apples and pears? Is it any 
good if you do? Was something like this done in period? I know about the 
post period (1733) recipe for brandy flavored with quince juice and 
spices, but that's not what I'm after.

Juana Isabella
West >>>


Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 17:49:48 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Quinces

A search in EEBO-TCP under quince and drink came up with

from The regiment of life, whereunto is added a treatise of the pestilence, with the boke of children, newly corrected and enlarged by T. Phayre. from 1550

Also ye may make a iuice of quinces and geue it to the chylde to drinke with a litle suger.
------
OED says

quince wine   n.

1600   R. Surflet tr. C. Estienne & J. Li?bault Maison Rustique  iii. xlix. 410   Perrie which is pressed out of the peares, and ceruise wine, quince wine, pomegranate wine, mulberrie wine.., which are made of the iuices of these fruits pressed out.

So back to Maison rustique, or The countrey farme? English edition from  1616.

CHAP. XLIX.

A briefe discourse of making of drinkes of the iuices of Fruits.

Perrie which is pressed out of the Peares, and ceruise Wine, quince Wine, pomegranat Wine, mulberrie Wine, gooseberrie Wine, and sloe Wine, vvhich are made of the juices of these fruits pres?sed out. 

Then it spends the rest of the chapter on cider, perry, and ceruise drinks.
The next chapter goes into pastes, jellies, cakes and Marmalades.
-----
So yes they did create quince drinks.

Also another modern recipe here
http://saramoulton.com/2013/03/quince-liqueur/

Johnnae


Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:01:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Italian wine-making in the fourteenth century

You have to really, really be interested in wine (and read French) to  
follow this, but it should be pretty useful for the right reader:

Sur le vin au Moyen ?ge. Pietro de' Crescenzi lecteur et utilisateur  des 
G?oponiques traduites par Burgundio de Pise 
Jean-Louis  Gaulin    lien M?langes de l'Ecole fran?aise de Rome. 
Moyen-Age,  Temps modernes  lien   Year   1984     lien Volume   96    lien Issue    
96-1    lien pp. 95-127

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/mefr_0223-5110_1984_n
um_96_1_2746

Jim  Chevallier

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