SC - When did they start aging wine?

[Stefan li Rous]

At 1:31 AM -0600 6/29/98, Stefan li Rous wrote:

>The young, small ale drunk
>by the majority of folks in period will likely lose out to the fine,
>aged wine drunk by an extemely small portion of the populace.

I was recently reading a biography of Pepys (late 17th century). The author
said that the use of corks was just coming in at the time, and associated
that change with the introduction of aged wines. Of course, wines could be
aged earlier in the cask, but the implication semed to be that it was only
with the introduction of corked bottles that long aging, concern about
vintages, etc. appeared.

Does anyone know what the facts on this are? Is the "extremely small
portion" actually zero in our period?

David/Cariadoc
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I think you may be right. I was trying to err on the conservative side
in my statements. Either way, none or an extremely small portion, 
our A&S competitions tend to give an over-riding preferance to aged
wines, meads and beers and thus do not present a fair showing of true
medieval art in my honest opinion. I think our arts should be keyed
toward the VWs, Chevys and Corollas of the medieval world, not the
Roll’s Royces and DeLorens that only the Kings and Princes had. We
should work with what the nobility had not look for the exceptional
cases.

Even for beers, I get the impression that most of it was drunk extremely
young, and probably of low alcohol content by our standards.

The following is one of the messages in my p-bottles-msg file. I would
love to have more definative information. Unfortunately, if Corwyn did
post his referances here, I missed the message.

Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net

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Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 14:33:14 EST
From: CorwynWdwd <CorwynWdwd at aol.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Wine

>what did they do in period, and did they even HAVE wine bottles at all in
period?

Wrong question. What you wanted to ask was did they have CORKS in period...
and the survey says: Late period in most of Europe. Through most of period I'm
given to understand tarred rags were used to stopper stoneware bottles. The
ones I've seen pictures of looked sorta like a Black Tower bottle. The corks
were introduced from Spain later.

I don't have the references at hand at the moment, but I'll look for them if
you like.

Corwyn
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