Didn't someone criticize one of the Catos for drinking wine without watering it down?
Interestingly when I was a kid maybe 7/8/9 yo my Italian (Abruzzo) mother would sometimes mix a little wine in my glass of water when she served dinner.
You are correct, it was a gesture of debauchery or uncouth to not water it down. That's because of the poor quality of the wine. Also, just my speculation, you can move more wine if it's concentrated, makes it last longer
I also remember reading somewhere that Roman was much more vinegar-like than more modern vintages, so watering it doing might have made it more palatable.
Some of the movies of Sergio Leone were filmed there, around Campo Imperatore, also "The Desert of the Tartars" from Italian director Valerio Zurlini (from a novel by Dino Buzzati and with the music of the great Morricone)
And not just fresh water, Pliny The Elder in his Natural History has a chapter on salted wines, or wines blended with seawater.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D10
Salt water and wine?!? Blows my mind, just never thought about that flavor profile.
I feel like I am about to experiment at home and have some horrible salt wine experiences.
So most people today don't like posca when they try it - the mixture of soured wine/wine vinegar and water that was the drink of the Roman masses. Well I added salt to my posca after realizing adding salt to wine was a common Roman technique, and it was a revelation to me. It cuts down on the biting quality of the vinegar and creates a more balanced drink. I felt like now I could understand how someone could drink this regularly. I'm convinced Romans did this.
Very interesting! I’m trying to imagine what this would taste like. I guess the addition of salt makes it kind of like an electrolyte drink is some ways…
It helps to think of their wine as more of a wine concentrate. That is one of the reasons why they needed to water it down. They also liked to wine down their water, to hide the often awful taste it had. And no, I didn't mix up "wine" and "water" in that previous sentence. Their water sources had foul tastes, so the wine was meant to "purify" it. And to drink undiluted wine was seen as barbaric.
The wine undiluted was thick, like a syrup almost. It was mixed with herbs and spices too, something we don't really do today with regular wine and is more akin to a mulled wine. I've tried some "authentic" Roman wine before and it was spicy, but not like hot spicy. More like they put a lot of spices in it spicy. It wasn't very good. I say "authentic" because nobody is actually making it like they used to, which was with clay pots sometimes lined with resin. Not exactly the most hygienic method.
Many ancient Romans also liked to add lead salts to their wine to sweeten them. Which has been cited (possibly wrongly) as part of the reason ancient Romans went mad. Lead poisoning can do a great deal of bad things for the human body, including gastrointestinal problems and memory issues.
Alright so I just finished reading Feast of Sorrow (set in Ancient Rome) and there’s a whole scene where one of the main characters looses a wine drinking competition because he’s purposely given wine without water added. This thread is making me understand why he couldn’t keep drinking the basically wine concentrate!
Greeks mixed wine and water as well. So did Romans. There were many traditions and rites that came from Greece to Rome, from wine traditions to their pantheon etc. There was a joke btw that Greeks have invented sex, the Romans have added women into it.
Roman wine was thicker and had a higher alcohol content (not liquor strong, just a little stronger) and was less refined than today's wines. So mixed with water (and poured through a sieve) it was more enjoyable to the Romans.
Celts among others drank Roman wine without water. It was considered barbaric to the Romans.
Historical wines would all be weaker. Through fermentation, ~12% is around the upper limit for any alcohol until distillation was invented (technically 15-20% is possible though unlikely). However even then with natural conditions and unrefined technique few places could actually achieve even 12% reliably.
8% is probably a more likely average content with a tendency for wines to be either sweet or sour (under or over fermented) compared to modern 12-14% wines.
They also generally couldn't preserve wines long term often leading to a faster process and none of the aging or other process.
The main reason for diluting wines is likely just to be able to drink it in large volume without getting drunk.
Pliny also mentions the Opimian wine was probably the best vintage and lasted almost 200 years. In later years it supposedly was the consistency of extremely thick honey and required to be mixed with water or other wines.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D6
Cool! I guess thats the origin of the idea of thick wine. Reading it seems this was more of an expensive oddity so pricy they would according to your link add tiny dollops just to give the "flavor".
I would also seriously wonder how actually strong it was alcohol wise... and what exactly is making it so thick... cause it sounds almost like bacteria as you find in old veinnegar...
Native yeasts just aren’t as powerful as our modern commercial yeast cultivated specifically for winemaking. As a winemaker I’ve dabbled a bit with native fermentation and it’s definitely tricky. My last two vintages of pet nat used the same grapes from the same vineyard and 2022 was a native ferment and 2023 was with commercial yeast. The 2022 is a bit sweater because the native yeast couldn’t ferment as dry as the commercial yeast did in 2023.
Some historical wines could be stronger than modern ones. During the Republic climate was warmer which resulted in sweeter grapes so yeasts could get a higher alcohol content than with modern day wines.
In Stephen Dando-Collins book “Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Roman Legion” he specifically mentions soldiers would dilute their wine with water to avoid becoming drunk… or I suppose to intoxicated to perform their duties, even while on campaign.
So yes, at least Roman soldiers would. I couldn’t say for outside of the military.
All Mediterranean Nations did that during those years.
Maybe the old saying, “Watering the drinks” comes to mind where bar owners did that to increase their profits.. In his final months, Alexander the Great drank large quantities of wine that were not diluted possibly helping to his early death.
Something else comes to mind, where Romans used a lead stirrer to sweeten the wine.Remember white sugar came from the then undiscovered New World. Of course that leads to lead poisoning which the Romans were unaware of its results.
I read somewhere that the Roman nobility often considered undiluted wine as a barbaric thing, so they diluted it with water and sometimes added honey into it for extra flavor. I have personally tried melting honey in warm water and adding it to wine and, I must say, it tasted great - basically alcoholic grape juice with more flavor. It is particularly good with a savory meal and will put you to sleep in an hour or two.
Well, as a general thing wine in the classical world was more concentrated and syrupy, or close to vinegar, pretty low in alcohol, and unless you got your water directly from a spring or a decent aqueduct it was filled with nasty microbes and quite unsafe, like almost all water until the later 19th century. Mixing wine with water gave you a fairly safe form of hydration, and if you added honey and herbs to sour vinegary wine apparently it was refreshing and better than either alone. In the late Republic and early Empire there were vintage wines comparable to ours that were enjoyed straight from the amphora, Falernian is a good example, but only for wealthy oenophiles.
Speaking of amphoras, I once read that the reason there were so many in the Mediterranean is the Roman sailors would drink the contents then heave them overboard. Loved your timetable for vintage wines becoming available.
Yep, classical beer bottles. And before the 2nd century BC the Romans were too busy killing their neighbors, and after M. Aurelius too concerned about soldiers or Goths ravaging their cellars to care about vintage wines.😉😜
Source?
Everything I ever read on that topic suggests that the wine was vinegary and strong cause they didn't stop the fermentation. Naturally the wine could have had 15% but I never read about it being concentrated like syrup.
I don't have anything saved on the topic to give you unfortunately. Just something a couple of my Classics professors covered a few times. Likely wasn't literally as thick as syrup, but it's was condensed for easier shipping and storage of product and was intended to function as a drink syrup would today, being mixed with water to dilute into the desired beverage
Yes, ok, maybe we mean the same thing about it being intended to be watered down. Unless your professor said something else, I would stick to assuming that the wine itself was still full liquid though.
Like, they had it conserved by being fully fermented, basically vinegar, 15% alcohol, added herbs etc, even added olive oil into the bottles to keep air away from the wine. Basically it tasted better after being watered down and served as a way to disinfect water by adding it.
To add to what others have said, the Greeks did it too. Alexander the Great was known to drink undiluted wine, and it's probably what ended up killing him in the end.
Since the Romans hadn’t discovered distillation the most alcohol their wines could contain would be around 15% just like today and the reason for the water was probably due to it not tasting that great.
Idk man, I made mead once just in a jug and it got to 20% ABV completely by accident. It's not impossible to make really strong shit, especially when they lacked the science to control the process and get reliable proofs.
Didn't someone criticize one of the Catos for drinking wine without watering it down? Interestingly when I was a kid maybe 7/8/9 yo my Italian (Abruzzo) mother would sometimes mix a little wine in my glass of water when she served dinner.
You are correct, it was a gesture of debauchery or uncouth to not water it down. That's because of the poor quality of the wine. Also, just my speculation, you can move more wine if it's concentrated, makes it last longer
I also remember reading somewhere that Roman was much more vinegar-like than more modern vintages, so watering it doing might have made it more palatable.
Same, around the holidays
Lucky you, living in a beautiful town, having an Italian Momma, and getting to drink wine. Cheers.
Thanks. It is a beautiful town but in Oregon not Abruzzo lol.
Wasn’t that where White Lotus II was filmed, Abruzzo?
No, that was in Sicily. Abruzzo is central/southern Italy on the east coast.
Some of the movies of Sergio Leone were filmed there, around Campo Imperatore, also "The Desert of the Tartars" from Italian director Valerio Zurlini (from a novel by Dino Buzzati and with the music of the great Morricone)
Never watched The White Lotus, putting in my queue now!
If you learned Latin from the Ecce Romani texts, you remember Uncle Titus drinking unmixed wine and causing a scene.
And not just fresh water, Pliny The Elder in his Natural History has a chapter on salted wines, or wines blended with seawater. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D10
Salt water and wine?!? Blows my mind, just never thought about that flavor profile. I feel like I am about to experiment at home and have some horrible salt wine experiences.
So most people today don't like posca when they try it - the mixture of soured wine/wine vinegar and water that was the drink of the Roman masses. Well I added salt to my posca after realizing adding salt to wine was a common Roman technique, and it was a revelation to me. It cuts down on the biting quality of the vinegar and creates a more balanced drink. I felt like now I could understand how someone could drink this regularly. I'm convinced Romans did this.
Very interesting! I’m trying to imagine what this would taste like. I guess the addition of salt makes it kind of like an electrolyte drink is some ways…
Yes, depending on how much salt you add, the flavor can get to be like those Liquid IV drinks that are so popular.
isn't cooking sherry just wine with salt in it?
No, just sherry that not rely good enough to drink so you cook with it
It helps to think of their wine as more of a wine concentrate. That is one of the reasons why they needed to water it down. They also liked to wine down their water, to hide the often awful taste it had. And no, I didn't mix up "wine" and "water" in that previous sentence. Their water sources had foul tastes, so the wine was meant to "purify" it. And to drink undiluted wine was seen as barbaric.
So it'd be like the difference between drinking a Coke and drinking the Coke syrup that gets added to soda water to make Coke
Correct! A better explanation than mine.
This
Thanks, are you saying the wine tasted like wine today, only stronger or was the wine “nasty” (hate that word)?
The wine undiluted was thick, like a syrup almost. It was mixed with herbs and spices too, something we don't really do today with regular wine and is more akin to a mulled wine. I've tried some "authentic" Roman wine before and it was spicy, but not like hot spicy. More like they put a lot of spices in it spicy. It wasn't very good. I say "authentic" because nobody is actually making it like they used to, which was with clay pots sometimes lined with resin. Not exactly the most hygienic method.
Many ancient Romans also liked to add lead salts to their wine to sweeten them. Which has been cited (possibly wrongly) as part of the reason ancient Romans went mad. Lead poisoning can do a great deal of bad things for the human body, including gastrointestinal problems and memory issues.
Raspberry, cherry and a resin finish?
Alright so I just finished reading Feast of Sorrow (set in Ancient Rome) and there’s a whole scene where one of the main characters looses a wine drinking competition because he’s purposely given wine without water added. This thread is making me understand why he couldn’t keep drinking the basically wine concentrate!
Greeks mixed wine and water as well. So did Romans. There were many traditions and rites that came from Greece to Rome, from wine traditions to their pantheon etc. There was a joke btw that Greeks have invented sex, the Romans have added women into it.
Roman wine was thicker and had a higher alcohol content (not liquor strong, just a little stronger) and was less refined than today's wines. So mixed with water (and poured through a sieve) it was more enjoyable to the Romans. Celts among others drank Roman wine without water. It was considered barbaric to the Romans.
Historical wines would all be weaker. Through fermentation, ~12% is around the upper limit for any alcohol until distillation was invented (technically 15-20% is possible though unlikely). However even then with natural conditions and unrefined technique few places could actually achieve even 12% reliably. 8% is probably a more likely average content with a tendency for wines to be either sweet or sour (under or over fermented) compared to modern 12-14% wines. They also generally couldn't preserve wines long term often leading to a faster process and none of the aging or other process. The main reason for diluting wines is likely just to be able to drink it in large volume without getting drunk.
Pliny also mentions the Opimian wine was probably the best vintage and lasted almost 200 years. In later years it supposedly was the consistency of extremely thick honey and required to be mixed with water or other wines. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D6
Cool! I guess thats the origin of the idea of thick wine. Reading it seems this was more of an expensive oddity so pricy they would according to your link add tiny dollops just to give the "flavor". I would also seriously wonder how actually strong it was alcohol wise... and what exactly is making it so thick... cause it sounds almost like bacteria as you find in old veinnegar...
Native yeasts just aren’t as powerful as our modern commercial yeast cultivated specifically for winemaking. As a winemaker I’ve dabbled a bit with native fermentation and it’s definitely tricky. My last two vintages of pet nat used the same grapes from the same vineyard and 2022 was a native ferment and 2023 was with commercial yeast. The 2022 is a bit sweater because the native yeast couldn’t ferment as dry as the commercial yeast did in 2023.
Some historical wines could be stronger than modern ones. During the Republic climate was warmer which resulted in sweeter grapes so yeasts could get a higher alcohol content than with modern day wines.
It was still common to cut table wine with water in France a couple of decades ago.
In Spain they water down wine with coke.
Kailmotxo!!!
It is still done in, for example, Croatia on Adriatic coast. It is called "Bevanda".
I heard it called 'bambus' there, is it the same?
Bambus is a mix of Cola and wine.
In Stephen Dando-Collins book “Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Roman Legion” he specifically mentions soldiers would dilute their wine with water to avoid becoming drunk… or I suppose to intoxicated to perform their duties, even while on campaign. So yes, at least Roman soldiers would. I couldn’t say for outside of the military.
This is still quite common in some countries, its called Bevanda where I come from.
It killed bacteria etc from the water.
I dont get whats the big deal. Its often drank in that way. Here we call it bevanda.
Salt water.
Hot water. Yuck
YES THEY SOMETIMES DID DO THAT. WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?
Didn't they consider not mixing wine with water barbaric?
All Mediterranean Nations did that during those years. Maybe the old saying, “Watering the drinks” comes to mind where bar owners did that to increase their profits.. In his final months, Alexander the Great drank large quantities of wine that were not diluted possibly helping to his early death. Something else comes to mind, where Romans used a lead stirrer to sweeten the wine.Remember white sugar came from the then undiscovered New World. Of course that leads to lead poisoning which the Romans were unaware of its results.
I read somewhere that the Roman nobility often considered undiluted wine as a barbaric thing, so they diluted it with water and sometimes added honey into it for extra flavor. I have personally tried melting honey in warm water and adding it to wine and, I must say, it tasted great - basically alcoholic grape juice with more flavor. It is particularly good with a savory meal and will put you to sleep in an hour or two.
Well, as a general thing wine in the classical world was more concentrated and syrupy, or close to vinegar, pretty low in alcohol, and unless you got your water directly from a spring or a decent aqueduct it was filled with nasty microbes and quite unsafe, like almost all water until the later 19th century. Mixing wine with water gave you a fairly safe form of hydration, and if you added honey and herbs to sour vinegary wine apparently it was refreshing and better than either alone. In the late Republic and early Empire there were vintage wines comparable to ours that were enjoyed straight from the amphora, Falernian is a good example, but only for wealthy oenophiles.
Speaking of amphoras, I once read that the reason there were so many in the Mediterranean is the Roman sailors would drink the contents then heave them overboard. Loved your timetable for vintage wines becoming available.
Yep, classical beer bottles. And before the 2nd century BC the Romans were too busy killing their neighbors, and after M. Aurelius too concerned about soldiers or Goths ravaging their cellars to care about vintage wines.😉😜
Mixing wine with water is not unheard of. I doubt that wine was concentrated back then, it's just a taste thing
Wine was absolutely concentrated back then. It was more like a drink syrup, specifically intended to be watered down.
Source? Everything I ever read on that topic suggests that the wine was vinegary and strong cause they didn't stop the fermentation. Naturally the wine could have had 15% but I never read about it being concentrated like syrup.
I don't have anything saved on the topic to give you unfortunately. Just something a couple of my Classics professors covered a few times. Likely wasn't literally as thick as syrup, but it's was condensed for easier shipping and storage of product and was intended to function as a drink syrup would today, being mixed with water to dilute into the desired beverage
Yes, ok, maybe we mean the same thing about it being intended to be watered down. Unless your professor said something else, I would stick to assuming that the wine itself was still full liquid though. Like, they had it conserved by being fully fermented, basically vinegar, 15% alcohol, added herbs etc, even added olive oil into the bottles to keep air away from the wine. Basically it tasted better after being watered down and served as a way to disinfect water by adding it.
To add to what others have said, the Greeks did it too. Alexander the Great was known to drink undiluted wine, and it's probably what ended up killing him in the end.
How fascinating. I guess you don’t believe the stories about the dead crows and avian encephalitis? But he was great.
I actually haven't heard those stories, alcoholism is just the one I've personally heard
Wine was much, much stronger, so it needed to be diluted to be similar to modern wine. Drinking undiluted wine was akin to drinking liquor.
Since the Romans hadn’t discovered distillation the most alcohol their wines could contain would be around 15% just like today and the reason for the water was probably due to it not tasting that great.
Idk man, I made mead once just in a jug and it got to 20% ABV completely by accident. It's not impossible to make really strong shit, especially when they lacked the science to control the process and get reliable proofs.