HERB - Re: HERB -Reply about wines

Beth Ann Snead ladypeyton at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 21 14:26:50 PDT 1998


 
>>I {Lettice, Lady Peyton} wrote:
> >Period wines were not aged longer than one year.  >>Since thay were
bulk stored in wooden casks they didn't last any longer without
oxidation or vinigration. 

>Jin Liu Ch'ang replied,

>This is not true.  William Turner wrote extensively >in his 1568 book
("A Book of Wines" amazingly 
>close to the same title as the one she mentioned) 
>about aged wines quoting Galen and other older 
>sources. 

In response:
In Pre-Medieval times wines were aged in ceramic vessels called
amphorae. Galen is referring to wines aged in these.  In classical
times (when Galen was alive) yes, wines could be aged sometimes for
years.  They were also so thick and strongflavored that it was
impossible to drink them without watering them down and were made with
sea water in many cases. HOWEVER, during the Middle Ages wines were
for some reason no longer stored in amphorae.  It is surmised that the
the knowledge of haw to make them was lost, but that is just a theory.
 In the Middle Ages wines were stored in wooden casks and were
therefore not aged longer than a year due to the previous reasons I
mentioned. 


>Jin Liu Ch'ang then stated:

> Kenelme Digbie in his slightly out of period book (published after
his death in 1669)
> also talked of aging his meads for times over a year.

Although Kenelme Digby is considered only slightly out of period one
MAJOR invention was developed between 1600 and the day his book was
published.  Wine and Beer bottles and the modern corking method were
developed, again making it possible to age beverages (and led, some
years later, some guy named Dom Perignon to develop the Champagne
method)  But the modern (or its seventeenth century equivalent)
bottling method did not exist in our period.

Thank you for listening. : )

==
Lettice, Lady Peyton

"Time spent without a glass of wine is time wasted"
					-Albert Einstein

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Herbalist mailing list