SC - lees wine

[Cindy M. Renfrow]

In a message dated 4/3/00 11:45:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
craig.jones at airservices.gov.au writes:

> >Grape skins, called lees, are used in the production of the wine
>  itself
>  >("sitting on the lees" gives red wines their color), and then fed to
>  farm
>  >animals.
>
>  Aren't they also distilled to make Marc or Grappa?  Any idea on when
>  that process started?

While this does not touch on distillation, it does show that the practice
of making wine from lees is very old:

[AFTER-WINE] - c. 77 A.D.
"The liquors made from grape-skins soaked in water, called by the Greeks
seconds and by Cato and ourselves after-wine, cannot rightly be styled
wines, but nevertheless are counted among the wines of the working classes.
They are of three kinds:  one is made by adding to the skins water to the
amount of a tenth of the quantity of must that has been pressed out, and so
leaving the skins to soak for twenty-four hours and then again putting them
under the press; another, by a method of manufacture that has been commonly
employed by the Greeks, i.e. by adding water to the amount of a third of
the juice that has been pressed out, and after submitting the pulp to
pressure, boiling it down to one-third of its original quantity; while the
third kind is pressed out of the wine-lees  -Cato's name for this is
'lees-wine.'  None of these liquors is drinkable if kept more than a year."
(From Natural History, by Pliny the Elder, Book XIV, section XII, pp. 243-5.)


HTH,


Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
cindy at thousandeggs.com
Author & Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More, A Collection of 15th
Century Recipes" and "A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing
Recipes"
http://www.thousandeggs.com