SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #805

[Heather Law]

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
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