A history and description of modern wines / by Cyrus Redding.

  • Redding, Cyrus, 1785-1870.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history and description of modern wines / by Cyrus Redding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    They mingled sea-water with their wine before drinking it, which they thought improved its flavour. It was boiled before; the mingling. The Romans copied the example, which ori- ginated in tlie efibrt of a slave to prevent detection, who, having robbed his master’s cask, filled it up with salt water. The Ibomans borrowed from the Greeks, liowever smgular the; custom might be, whatever was their fashion. The substances they mingled in their wines were of opposite characters, mid must have destroyed the natural qualities. Besides salt water, they infused asafeetida, tar, bitumen, pitch, myrrh, aloes, gums, pepper, spikenard, poppies, wormwood, cassia, milk, chalk, bitter almonds, and cypress. All these were steeped, each or more than one of them in the different wines druiilc by both Greeks and Romans. The ancients exposed their wines to the action of smoke, in a sort of kiln or chamber called a fumarium, which thick- ened and matured them. It would appear that their wine was made from vines suffered to grow to the full natural ex- tent, unpruned, and, therefore, the must being w^eak might require some kind of preparation to prevent ascescency, though at the expense of delicacy. Wine-mixing seems to have been an important employment, not as with the moderns, implying, for example, the mingling of Cape and other white wines to simulate sherry, but with some of the substances just mentioned. This explains what was meant by “mixed wine” among the Jews, whose wine was mixed with aloes and myrrh, or wormwood. Ovid deifies a wine-mingler who luid quitted life: one of giant line Who to the gods does mix immortal wine. The wine thus mingled was taken in Murrhine cups; a substance about which critics are not agreed. It was said to impart a peculiar flavour to the wine. But the wines were commonly drunk out of small glasses called cyaths, of which as many were talcen as there were letters in the name of the party toasted, and they wore crowned or filled to an overflow. Ihe cya,tli was not equal to the modern wine-glass in size. It was just the twelfth of a pint, or 0‘469| of a cubic inch. >So that a lady’s name of six letters would demand only three of the middle-sized wine-glasses of the present day. The most renowned of the ancient wines among the Romans was