What did Roman Wine taste like?
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- Опубліковано 15 тра 2024
- This video explores the production, sale, and - of course - the taste of Roman wine.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:32 Spread of viticulture
0:51 Roman vineyards
1:28 Wine production
2:14 Selling wine
2:45 Bright Cellars
3:47 Watering wine
4:34 Flavoring wine
5:08 The taste of Falernian
6:06 A medieval impression of Roman wine
7:06 Conclusion
Thanks for watching!
Thanks again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video. Click on this link for 50% off your first 6-bottle box: www.brightcellars.com/toldinstone
You know what I've always wondered? Why were Roman amphorae - like those at 2:25 - designed so ridiculously? I feel like that's not limited to Rome only & I've seen Greek & Levantine ones that look the same...but, just why? The look like they'd be impossible to stand freely, and storing them lying on their sides would probably leave sediment in your drink. They can't have been done that way bc of ease of production and I'm fairly certain that shape doesn't allow you to jam tons of them extra tightly in the hold of a trireme. Give me a video on that, my friend.
@@seankessel3867 They had that odd shape because they were usually transported by ship; the pointed ends of the bottom row of amphorae were slotted into niches to prevent them from shifting. (Additional layers of amphorae could then be slotted between the amphorae in that lowest row.)
What was roman dating or courtship like? I think such a video would great for valentines day now that you've produced this video.
There was nothing like dating or courtship. Marriages were arranged and were political. Women were tightly controlled before marriage.
@@Ken_Scaletta what about for the lower classes?
@@randomcow505 still pretty controlled. They had a very strong patriarchal system in which men were the absolute masters of their household and their wives and daughters were considered property. Technically they could even legally kill any member of their household, slave or family, but that doesn't seem to have happened much in practice.
So basically even in lower classes, marriages were arranged and the people often never even met each other before they got married. While romantic love existed as a concept and was talked about in poetry and we have evidence that many marriages WERE happy and loving, love was not seen as the REASON to get married. That was seen as impractical, immature, "irrational youth."
One thing you see in the poetry and other literature was that "romance" of a sort often revolves around people who are married to others and before Augustine, it seems like there was kind of a lot of swinging going on. People had their official marriages but then would have parties where they'd swap spouses and whatnot. Augustus made them stop that (although Augustus personally continued to do whatever he wanted)..
Why was the roman woman smiling? She was Gladiator.
@@Ken_Scaletta Not just women, men too. Arranged marriages are usually arranged by parents, unless a man is successful enough to get a(n extra) wife himself. As Rome was monogamous a few older men had choices. Most people (regardless of gender) had no choice.
Even today in Greece we still drink resinated wine. It's called retsina. And it smells like turpentine 😆
wonderful! given its history and that of Greece and Rome for the period, this could be a close resemblance as to what some Roman wine tasted like ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retsina
seems good for the digestion
I first encountered this wine on my first trip to Greece. Loved it paired with taramosalata. 😉
@@njm3211 I will travel to Greece for the first time in April, will keep this in mind!
@@unknown81360 Enjoy yourself. Get a copy of Pausanias' Giude to Greece written back in the 2nd century. Really interesting.
At a Gallo-Roman museum in the french region of Alsace (town called Biesheim), archaeology sites revealed grape seeds which were though to be an early variety of today's Riesling wine.
I hate Riesling with passion, if Roman wine tasted even worse than Riesling then I wouldn't wanna try it at gunpoint
@@anonymousbloke1 maybe the pine pitch makes it taste alright?
@@bmetalfish3928 no.
@@anonymousbloke1 damn I’m so glad I wasn’t born with your taste. Riesling is my favorite variety
Reisling is the best wine
I don't know why, but lately I've found myself fascinated with everything to do with Roman civilization. Recently been to Segovia and admired the aqueduct. Good video btw
Garacheyakov?
@@LoLFilmStudios almost, almost but not quite
you would really enjoy the youtube channel Historia Civilis.
@@armedgarach oooh! ga-ra-chi-e-i-a-ko-bu?!
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 I binge watch that in my free time lol
Some Roman wine cellars are still in use today. We had a wonderful wine tasting in a big Roman cellar in Trier (Germany) which has been a Roman city before where Emperor Konstantin lived who became Christan. The tomb of Apostle Matthew is also there as well as e.g. an Amphitheatre and Konstantine's big Palace aula and the Porta Nigra...a nice place to visit.
Thanks for your interesting videos & greetings from Germany!
Toldinstone, you've got it. The tonality of yor voice, cadence and information is exceptional. Keep up your very fine work and presentations. They are a joy to listen too and beyond fascinating. You've got it down.
I had not considered that wine was "flavored" by the sealant inside the clay bottles. That is very interesting. Thank you for posting this illuminating video. DA - Vancouver, WA
Funny - was just reading this chapter in your book this morning!!! Highly recommend “Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants: Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans.”
My Daughter saw it sitting on the dining table and asked to read it after I was done. That never happens
All your videos are so well done! Keep going. You are appreciated by many history nerds around the globe.
If you want an idea of what this "turpentined" wine would have tasted like then you might want to give Greek Retsina a try. An acquired taste: some can't stand it, others, like my my wife and I, love it and would not countenance a meal of Greek food without it.
As for Falernian: a sweet wine aged for up to 20 years? I think we call that Port or Muscat or any other dessert wine.
Finally, regarding the fact that "every day" cheap wines weren't aged and were drunken (drinked? dranked? drinkened?😁) almost immediately: well, the wine industry has come nearly full circle after 2 millennia! Most mass market wines today are also intended for immediate consumption and actually don't do well when you attempt to age them. It's one reason we have 3 wine storage places/fridges in our house. 😆
I thought Falernian might be like a kind of Muscatel as well but then the narrator specifically mentioned honey and *pitch*, and as I've never had a dessert wine with pitch in it I don't think it's as easily comparable. Also Pliny the Elder said it was the only wine 'that took a flame', which (if he was right and not just talking nonsense again) suggests a much higher alcohol content.
I had the same thought when he mentioned resin. I spent a year in Greece back in the 70’s and at least in those days, Retsina was the only wine available in the corner grocery store - it was very cheap and came in huge bottles that - my memory may be off here - you could stand on the floor. It came wrapped in a kind of protective wicker basket-weave that prevented the glass from breaking, and when you finished the bottle, you brought it back to the store to be refilled.
It amazed me then and still does that the Greek palate never lost its taste for resinous wine over the millennia - but it was affordable at a time when great imported wines were out of reach except for the unusually wealthy.
@@wenwilloughby8197 Well, apart from totally agreeing with you that *anything* that PtE wrote has to be taken cum magnissimo grano sailis 😆, the basic wine could still be what we would call dessert wine style - they just mixed stuff in it. Early cocktails, dontchaknow! (I kid, I kid! Probably). Heck, if it *did* take flame, then it'd have been the rum of its day! The Roman Empire probably fell because nobody had that final smart idea: funny little umbrellas! 😁
@@Cor6196 It still frequently comes in huge bottles. We "traditionally" take a 2 litre bottle to our favourite Greek restaurant! They keep it in the fridge and refill a little decanter reserved just for us! No, we don't glug 2 litres between the 2 of us, we share it with the staff! 😁Even though it's generally fairly low in alcohol, especially compared to many modern wines that have gotten ridiculous (thank you, Robert Parker, you imbecilic bastard! 🤬🤬🤬)
Imagine a Sauternes crossed with retsina and further Sweetened with honey. 😳
I've thought about this question a lot before.
First of all, it's certain that our modern wine is far stronger than ancient wine due on the one hand to technical improvements in the winemaking process, and on the other to the selective breeding of grape varieties and climate change, which have produced higher and higher levels of sugar content in grapes over the years. This also suggests to me that modern wines are probably fruiter and more luscious than in Roman times. Their red wines would have been drier, lighter and weaker, and perhaps more acidic - something like a young pinot noir from Alsace or the northern US states or New Zealand perhaps.
If you want an idea of what Falernian wine tasted like, I would guess a medium-sweet sherry might be the closest modern equivalent to try. And of course the obvious comparison that comes to mind with regard to pine resin is retsina, the modern Greek wine made with this ingredient, which has a distinct piney aroma. It's very dry, but perhaps with added honey it could resemble a fine Falernian.
Finally, someone who doesn't perpetuate that myth that Greek and Roman wines must have been stronger because they diluted them. I really wonder where that fairy tale originated
We haven't only bred grapes over the years. Most yeasts will die off long before the fermentation reaches an alcohol content anywhere near what modern wines contain.
Wrong
@@roelant8069 A homeopath, probably. 😂
Just wanted to tell you I finally got a copy of your book. It’s a fantastic book really fun reading! I absolutely can’t wait for your next book brother. Your a smart man for your age I look up to you. Keep up the good work!
Sincerely-Justin.
I'll second that. I am just getting into it, and after so many videos, I hear the text in Dr. Ryan's voice!
I’ll third that
Audio book?
Yes, as you say he's smart for his age
I remember reading about some of this in your book! Thanks for the hard work, Dr. Ryan!
In Greece they still add pine resin to wine and call it retsina. It's very good!
Just finished Naked Statues Fat Gladiators and War Elephants. Great read! Write more books please. :)
Thank you so much for this content!
After graduating from university a few years ago I’ve really missed learning. I’ve essentially binged all of your videos this week and I’m incredibly excited to see what’s next.
I can’t express enough how thankful I am for you sharing these fun and interesting videos for free on UA-cam.
Love the videos. I just recently got your book from Amazon, and I must say great job. Me and young daughter love reading it together. Makes her like history a little bit better.
Another awesome video! Your book is fantastic - my family members have enjoyed their copies as well!
Always appreciate your vids. Thank you.
In 1973, I bought a 52 liter demigiana of vino locale rosso from a wholesaler in Vicenza Italy for 12000 Lira, about $20 US if I recall correctly. These are very large glass bottles held in a handmade vine basket about a meter tall by a meter wide. The next morning in a quadrangle at Caserma Ederly where I stood at attention with about 300 other GIs in dress greens, a rickety rusty delivery van pulled into the center of the quad and a stereotypical Italian driver wearing a dirty wife beater, with a cigarette dangling loosely above unshaven jowels and oblivious to the surrounding formalities shouted "Eh, dove Larry Buzbee?".
Disbelieving eyes focused on me as I raised my hand and directed him toward the proper door. He promptly got out, rolled up the rear door and hopped up on the lift gate, grabbed a dolly and loaded up this enormous bottle. My CO and other authorities were looking on in silent horror as I held up 1 finger. They had never considered the full implications of that clause of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which stipulates that every US soldier may have one bottle of wine in their quarters at any time. Having recently arrived and read those rules I had spotted the loophole immediately. Much to the consternation of the authorities there was nothing they could do about it. It was not very good, but it was fully and appropriately disposed of in about four months and the flavor was greatly improved by having owned the lifers in the parlance of the time.
Lol. That’s class 👍🏽
@@kelvyquayo Thanks. I couldn't help myself, and the storytelling has continued to pay dividends for decades. Moreover, I have managed on other occasions since then to make waves all out of proportion to the effort expended. It's a gift, I claim no personal credit but I have no need to make things up, the challenge is just to remember the details. 🤣🤟
5:35 just take a sip and describe it
No shit. Take one for the team.
Ask ashens
@@hugolafhugolaf remember me if I die from the taste
Longtime lurker, first time commenting. Almost two months ago, I first watched one of your videos because of the interesting content, then I subscribed because of the amazing quality, and finally I binged most if not all because of the soothing voice. Congratulations on the 100th video and keep up the good work!
How did you know I wanted to know the answer to this?! Thanks again for another great video toldinstone
That's another interesting aspect of ancient civilizations. Thanks for the presentation.
love your vids man
Love your videos. Bravo
Seems like just yesterday I was saying "congratulations on 100k". Consider this an early congratulations on 200k!
I just finished Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators and War elephants! What an awesome book!
Great videos as always :)
you can go in Georgia and try homemade Qvevri wine. it’s still the same taste what was 80 centuries ago, because they still make with same technology. from there it moved in east then Greece and after in Roma
Good and unusualk subject, very interesting.
I would have loved to taste these ancient wines, both the good and the bad ones.
I had a few very good modern wines that overaged and were ruined, but they didn't turn into vinegar but rather into something like "sherry".
What a perfectly suitable sponsor for this vid!
Amazing work on the advertisement! Felt like just another part of the video, I watched through for the beauty of the designs on the bottles and the sound of your voice. Nice choice of sponsor too, please remain with cool sponsors instead of like Blinkist or random mobile games. Those are always really annoying I think. You're honestly my favorite UA-camr at this point, I really hope you just keep going with what you do well instead of devolving into just another cash grab like a few channels I could mention
Hey I mean if he can make more money from the mobile app ads shouldn't he take it? You can always just skip the ad.
You don't need to belong to a wine club to appreciate decent wine. I find this sponsorship offensive.
@@paulkoza8652 ok
I’m surprised you didn’t speak more about the sweetening process that involved their leaded pots and pans leaching into the syrup while it was being reduced forming the sweet-tasting lead acetate. I know there’re many questions surrounding the prevalence of this happening, but it’s just so interesting I was sure you’d mention it
Pop open a bottle of wine, new toldinstone video dropped
They added "sugar of lead" [lead acetate] to sweeten it too...which apparently weakened their bones and sent them crazy over time.
That's probably not true. The amount of lead acetate was tiny compared to the amount of sugar present, and since lead acetate is as sweet as sugar, it wouldn't have changed the flavor much. It seems more likely that wine was fermented in lead containers instead of _copper_ containers because copper acetate tastes awful.
@@General12th tastes awefull but looks amazing, especially when mixed with arsenic.
Nice, informative clip to watch while having a good Barbaresco on a winter day. Interesting that Marcus Aurelius had an opiate infused glass. Not sure about the additives there - chalk or marble dust, seawater. Putting water in wine doesn't sound good, but thought I heard that wine back then, possibly with the Greeks/Hellenes, maybe tasted more like a strong brandy? Garum still being consumed in the 10th century sounds horrible.
The Falernian wine tasting like turpentine brought to mind Retsina, but mixing in honey sounds nice.
Susan and I actually subscribe to this club. Pretty good and rather sophisticated. We subscribe to two other wine clubs one is exclusively Hungarian. We have a relationship with the owners and can narrow our selections to the tokai and olivier grapes which run from dry to very dry.
this is so interesting
I'm 75 years old now and I started making wine in the summer of 2006. During my first year of winemaking I researched everything I could find about wine making. That year I got on a forum that was frequented by seasoned winemakers from around the world, and one of them wrote a comment saying that he had done extensive research about the history of winemaking, and he found out that the ancient Romans regarded pear wine as their favorite wine. And there they were in the middle of the world's premier grape growing region at the time. So I started making pear wine and I have to admit that it puts grape wine to shame.
1:53 This reminds me of a scene from ‘The Jerk’ where Steve Martin’s character is in a fancy restaurant demanding that he be brought the “freshest wine, not any of this old stuff! I want wine from this year!”
Request: do a video about silphium soon?
What a perfect sponsor for the video. Don’t mind sponsor spots when it’s relevant
so interesting
I love your videos. Please make more videos like this on trade goods, economy, and coins. pls make more. Thank you
Hey, i just finished listening to your book on audible, really enjoyed it. i just wish you had been the narrator as I've gotten used to your voice on your YT videos.
This wine tastes terrible. I know! I'll just add a little lead, arsenic, chalk and honey, much better, much much better.
That elevated wine rack at 2:37 is probably in Pompeii and certainly a reconstruction but how they found out enough about it reconstruct it has to be a hell of a story.
Yea it looks like Pompei. But as iv seen amphoras were stored in upright position leaning against walls or special holders in roman times. In Herculaneum the ash covering it is so thick that it conserved organic material and there are many wooden details of houses and furniture still recognizable from 2k years ago. In Pompei organic material is decomposed but it kept holes in ash layer so they used gypsum to fill holes and there are doors, bodies and lately also a horse carriage preserved in that way.
That picture you are referring to is from Herculaneum. The wood in the rack is original and carbonized from the eruption. Like the other commenter mentioned, Herculaneum has the preserved wood and Pompeii does not due to the relation of each city to the eruption and the type of material it was covered by.
@@solinvictus39 Amazing it could still support a clay jar!
Hello sir, may I recommend you make a video on Bath, England? I went to their museum and was particularly intrigued by the one wealthy Syrian merchant who traveled there frequently it seemed
Lately I've been drinking Cantina Zaccagnini from Southern ItLee good stuff
Fascinating! I imagine Roman wine would be unpleasant to the modern palette as we have different notions of wine today as well as better production methods (eg better sanitization and cleanliness, better storage & materials, etc).
i disagree. wine in roman times was even more expensive and exquisite than what we have today. no one today has any wine that is aged 20 years.
Haven’t watched it yet, but my guess is the lead made it taste sweeter. I do wonder how many and to what extend lead poisoning played in their society. I have read that lead was used to seal the jars.
And they also use alot of pewter in their cook ware and utensils.
However you don't hear lot about heavy metal poisoning.
Actually, the Romans knew that lead exposure to liquid had ill effects and made people sick, so they actually didn't have many lead pipes for most of Roman history. It's a common myth that's passed around.
I read about this in his book.
Apparently using lead vessels indeed created lead sugar in the wine, but these amounts were so small that it is unlikely that the sweetness can solely be attributed to the storage in lead vessels.
Yes my car and my body use only unleaded ethanol fuel
Removing lead from our air and water is relatively recent, like the 1980s-today. Many countries around the world still have at least some lead water pipes, including the U.S.
But it's been removed from many other things like paint and gasoline.
A lengthy response but it will clear this up a bit! I expect wine tasted well... similar? Because that is a fermentation process that produces definite flavors universally. But they added flavorings to influence the result after it ended up in the markets. In other words they knew what they were doing with their wine and they consumed a lot of it in their wine culture. Adding water only makes sense. They probably drank enough of it watered down to around 5% alcohol or less. That's an average American beer. You cannot drink straight wine even in modest quantities with out being quickly affected. Wine can be 10-20% alcohol. Drinking wine straight in such large glasses is a relatively new habit that Modern society has adopted. From the Middle ages toward our era wine was served in small glasses that gradually became bigger in the late 1800's. Not as big as the glasses we demand now.
The common wine would have been perpetually on the verge of turning to vinegar. They would have been intimate with the flavors associated with the onset of the souring process. Once it starts to sour better drink it all up quick otherwise after a few days all that alcohol will be gone. Flavorings like honey and spices would help at this stage. This is due to the fermentation process that would have been spontaneous from wild yeast. You get other types of organism this way and that opens the door to Acetobacter which is what produces vinegar. It's a side by side process with the yeast who make alcohol. Once they are done they die and have provided plenty of food for the Acetobacter who begin to take over rapidly and ruin the wine for drinking at least. Everyone uses vinegar and I imagine it featured heavily in the cuisine. I have read Apicius' recipe lists.
If they had known about adding sulfites they would most certainly would have had wine to rival our quality on a truly massive scale.
I was reading a gay porn story (not the best source, I'll admit... but I think the writers are interested in Rome, and have done some homework) where characters go to bars and have "watered wine", where in a more modern story it would be beer.
The hay-floored empty rooms upstairs for the benefit of patrons who fancy each other were probably an invention for the convenience of the plot, mind you.
Wine isn't the only place where Acetobacter cause trouble. US gasoline contains ethanol (alcohol), which absorbs water from the air. When the ethanol absorbs enough water, it separates from the gasoline. Acetobacter can then consume it and produce acetic acid (vinegar). If gasoline is left in a lawnmower for too long, the vinegar attacks the aluminum of the carburetor bowl. The resulting aluminum acetate absorbs water and forms a gel, which clogs the carburetor.
@@kevinbyrne4538 That's a good response. I've seen it in my motorcycle tank after sitting a good while. It looks like dirty Vaseline and smell like rotten fruit. You can use ethanol gasoline 87 in small engine like weed eaters and chainsaws during the season, but you store them with engineered fuel because it doesn't have ethanol in it.
@@intractablemaskvpmGy -- All true and good advice. (BTW the fruity smell comes from ethyl acetate, a product of ethanol and vinegar (acetic acid))
"Wine was fundamental to classical culture"
Me: "Hold my beer"
Normie
2nd me : hold my wine
you see rich people drinking beer?
nope. beer is for peasants. same reason why so many bums and homeless and the less afluent all have a 30 case of beer at home. will be hard pressed to fine wine in a shit hole .
@@ChickenMcThiccken 1. You should learn more history. For a start you should pay attention when watching this video especially the prices and who drank it.
2. If you are referring to modern times, then I suggest you visit micro breweries or a craft beer store sometime.
Sealing wine with resin reminds me of the modern Greek wine style retsina, which is flavored with pine resin.
Hey Toldinstone! It got me thinking while looking at all the amphori when you talked about how the wine was stored and sold; how strong/fragile were the ceramics used in Greek and Roman times? Modern cultural examples (like the pots in Zelda games, or in the Hercules Disney film) are show as being extremely fragile and brittle. Was this the case? Or were actual clay pots more resilient to being dropped/hit?
Almost at 200k!
Hopefully soon...
I'll stick to my box of Franzia Chillable Red, thank you very much.
There is one winery in Napa called Del Dotto that is one of the only ones in the US that uses clay vessels and it’s delicious. No lead and marble dust lol. Lead was also in their cosmetics which would ultimately destroy the skin so they would just apply more.
I once saw a very interesting video on Roman food and wine. Because of the lack of knowing how to strain things, it is said that it was sort of like drinking watered ketchup today.
ew 😀
Greeks would fill clay amphorae with wine and then seal it with pine resin to keep out the oxygen. The aroma of the resin would then soak into the wine itself creating what we now call Retsina wine. When the innovation of oak barrels and other wine storage techniques came into effect across the Greek and Roman empires the pine resin was already so popular that winemakers continued to include it in the wine despite the lack of necessity.
Due to the fact that wine can not be made in a day, week etc. And it takes months or years to make a good wine. The majority of individuals drank basically just a refined grape juice. Considering how much wine there was available to those that had the ability and funds to obtain it. And drink it as much as they did. Most of what was referred to as wine, wasn't actully wine as we understand it to be, today.
I wonder what the Romans would say about the taste of our wine?
Probably that we are barbaric drunkards... before begrudgingly admit that its purity is praiseworthy.
Sulphitus maximus!
@@dschehutinefer5627 not pure with added sulfites, though!
Delectamentum!
Cheers
Lead, the element!
A few years ago, I attended a Greek cultural festival at a nearby Orthodox Church. While there, I bought a bottle of Greek wine; after all, they have been making wine for millennia and surely must be experts of it, or so I thought. When I actually tried the wine, though, my reaction was much the same as that of Bishop Liutprand.
A dozen years before that, I made a similar experiment by purchasing a bottle of Jewish wine from the "ethnic foods" aisle of the grocery store. I like sweet wine, as a matter of fact, but I was completely unprepared for this ridiculously sweet wine. I asked my supervisor at the time, who was Jewish, about this, and he laughed and said that was an American Jewish phenomenon for which he had no explanation.
Haha I would say that’s a residual marketing, not necessarily Jewish wine. Basically a company in the 40s, Manischevitz, wanted cheap kosher wine for Passover to say the blessings over for the service. The grapes were sourced from New York and were not ideal. So they decided to add sugar to at least make it drinkable. Then in the 60s they had a series of very successful ad campaigns with Sammy Davis jr.
I feel like today most Jews will buy a bottle of it at Passover for sentimental reasons, but it’s awful. Fortunately now there are wines from Israel, Napa, Italy, and France that are kosher for Passover.
@@saynototheborg Thanks! Good to know!
Do a Romam wine tasting/party! :D I remember you doing party games before.
Very interesting. Hope you'll cover the use of wine in the mystery cults and other rituals where additives were used to bring on a psychedelic effect and acheive some kind of 'cosmic one-ness' with the spiritual world as recently described in "the Immortality Key".
“I was going to make an offering to Spes…. but then I got high..” 😁
“I was gonna bleed that bull for Mater Isis.. but then I got high “
“Now meum auspecium malum est . And I know why”
“Quodi Alti. Quodi Alti.. Quodi Alti…. Ba da da dap dap🎶
My friend, just add marijuana to your wine bottle and close the wine door, then drink it for forty days and travel to Mars.
They are still watering their wine in Croatia and the proportion you pointed are pretty accurate, the proportion is really individual too, not sure if other mediterranean countries still water their wine, in hot country it's just so much better honestly as wine is a beverage meant to reduce thirst rather than purely festive, since alcohol is harder to deal with in very hot and sunny climate. I personally had to confront french coming to Croatia about this aspect.
The difference and reason that lead french wine makers and roman or antique wine makers into these differences are actually a lot more technical, and less "cultural" than people might think. Some of those technicalities are about the soil choices, the fertilization, the sweetener used to raise the alcohol (rather than just because of taste), the seal used for wine storage (sealed amphora disappeared, and sealed bottle became the only mean), pruning in antiquity was very badly regarded but pruning is one of the best technique to raise sugar in grapes.
So in general i would say the argument that roman wine was bad quality and was watered because of that lack of quality is most probably wrong. Variety of taste is also due to some technicalities, but the comment is long enough anyway. All those techniques were just more suited to those era, i'm confident the bad vs good is mostly a myth due to that seal needed for good preservation and aging and that period in early medieval time that made that seal very hard to come by.
Thanks
That's very generous!
The big innovation in wine from Roman times vs. now doesn't have much to do with the wine itself - the real change is the availability of glass bottles.
Glass is inert and doesn't need to be sealed with tar, pitch, resin, etc.
It's also easy to seal properly and completely with a cork and maybe some wax, cutting off exposure to oxygen and preventing wine from turning into vinegar on the shelf.
Glass is why we have wine that holds up and tastes good on its own, instead of half-vinegar, stale, resin infused, barely passable product that desperately needs additives.
Weren't the Romans pretty good glassmakers?
@@GoldenBeholden sure. of course they were. and even roman wine bottles exists. presented in some museums. i do not know about the size of these bottles. but those roman wine bottles of glas do not have somethong to close a bottle.
So it tasted like British food?
Before the infusion of Indian spices I presume
Fish N Chips!!
Praised be Dionysus who gave us wine !
About to watch the video but I remember from high school ancient studies that ancient wines, supposedly due to added water, were much diluted? EDIT: By Zeus, I was right!
yeah in some cases when when clean water wasn't available they drank diluted alcohol
like on ships the British navy had a ration of alcohol to drink with there water
@@kellynolen498 I heard also that throughout much of London's history poor workers drank beer throughout the day because the ground water was simply too toxic!
Or by Iesvs, the Sacred Nazarene!
@@Perririri He made wine, not beer. =)
DANG, the acquaforte (from their website) is sold out!! i'm afraid to enter my 'tastes' into cellar website, i'd probably get something from mars . . .
Can u make the audiobook in ur voice next pls
Does anyone know what the image is at 3:50 or who the shepherd character is?
"here's a coup of the finest roman wine. garnished with a spoonful of plaster and pitch"
"err...i'll just have some water"
"leaded or unleaded?"
A lot of Chinese add Coca-Cola to wine (even expensive Bordeaux's, apparently) to make it sweeter and more attuned to their palates. What goes around comes around!
Man we are bloody lucky to live in a time where we have literally 20,000x the selection they had.
Asking the real questions
I always liked ol' Marcus Aurelius. It seemed like he had good sense.....Aaaaaand I'd guess that he's right, a glass of opiated wine would probably be most effective against insomnia.
.....just one though.
Imagine diluting wine. The Romans were lightweights
When they used asphalt to seal the clay amphorae, diluting the wine with water with water caused the asphalt to drop out of solution, making it less toxic and more drinkable.
Roman and ancient wines had much higher levels of alcohol, sometimes up to 20 percent. That's why it was diluted
Because the wine of their time had a much higher alcohol content.
If you don't dilute the wine, you're a savage barbarian; but fear not. We will civilize you next March.
No wheel or fire, but honey, man was makin' wine outta somethin'....🥂
Surprised you didn't mention the lead content.
Liutprand of Cremona would have loved YELP
Is that style of wine still produced today? What varietal/genetic is it?
Falerian vintage
I wonder how this connects to the last supper. I've always thought of the blood as red wine, but from what I understand the wine of the day was mostly white.
Yes red wine was probably unlikely.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐parabens!!! Pois isso tudo e bem inportantes.🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
It depends, how many sesterces do you have to spend?
At $2 a glass and $4 for a loaf of bread, that ratio is true today.
Wow.
Where are you paying 2 dollars for a glass and where does bread cost that much? Is this an American thing?
@@user-bo3mp8un6c Dave's Killer Bread is like $5‐6.
I can buy canned wine for a few bucks.
@@johnw1954 i would never pay 6 dollars for a loaf of bread. for that much i can buy a few pounds of flour and make it myself .
@@ChickenMcThiccken You're paying someone to make it for you.
The Roman wine market sounds rather like the Chinese variety.
In China spend $500 on a bottle of wine, then mix 50/50 with Coca-Cola for Red and Sprite for White.
Are the recipes gone?
I bought a baked clay roman wine jug found in turkey in the 1910s in 1995 tests showed I never held any whine so, this wine jug was a wine virgin! it was found in a wine merchant above-ground dry cave tomb and his son was a potter.
instead of putting this find in the archive or museum, we decided to do an experiment roman wine went off quickly right!? so, was that the wine or... the container!? so we bought 2 exact amounts of the traditionally hand-eh, sorry foot made wine from a winery that would fill the jug twice and ordered the same amount holding glass jug online and filled them both.
after a year the roman jug had gone off, the reason, the salty residue, and acids in the clay with volcanic ash! the same as wine in most Italian states would have been packed in this very clay.
so, roman pottery was to blame! since our inferior eh, foot made whine was just fine after a year in a glass vessel but, it was still crap! though!!
both Italy and turkey have similar volcanic ash river bed clay used for pottery to this day nowadays it's glazed so minerals don't transfer.
ps, the roman clay jug wine tasted like battery acid! very bad!!
we re-did the experiment in 2000 with 3 new unglazed jugs 1 with a new jug from turkey the region the original came from 2 a new one from the predominant central roman claypits and 3rd from the rhine, 1-2 went bad 3 was ok after a year in an unglazed jug! so, it's the pottery due to volcanic activity in the regions for Milena, not the wine.
Cleomenes went mad because he didn't water-down his wine. *I suppose retsina's added resin is a throw-back then, to the waterproofing of the vats...
🍷cheers
Undoubtedly, this was necessary for the development of today's wine. But. If you have honey, just make a heavy mead. For the love of God, you can push the alcohol content higher, it's easier and all you would want grapes for is yeast food. As a bonus, it doesn't taste like vinegar or plaster. Sea water? Damn. Great video. Thanks.
I love the idea of competing wines in the ancient era, because you have actual military military power backing up each brand instead of some corporate vineyard today lol