[Sca-cooks] raisin wines

[Stefan li Rous]

Olwen said:
> >Hey, I found a new (to me) non-alcoholic drink in one of my books the
> >other day.  The book is Epulario, a 1598 English translation of an
> >earlier Italian text, and the recipe is "to turn water into wine".
> >Basically it tells you to get raisins of the sun, grind them up into a
> >powder (paste?), then put them in water.  Raisin juice!
> >
> >Yours,
> >
> >Katherine
>
> And we think Mountain Dew is special.  These folks must have had some really
> good drugs and/or WWAAAAYYYYY to much time on their hands.  On the other
> hand, this probably isn't all that good cuz it didn't survive the test of
> time.

Hmmm. You think it didn't survive? Do a quick web search on "raisin wine".
Like mead, while they seem to have fallen in favor vs. wine from fresh
grapes, apparently they were in use a long time.

The following comes from:
http://www.neosoft.com/~scholars/raisin.htm

Too bad the only raisins I think I can get around here are those
from Concord grapes. This might be a fun project.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****

Having learned how to create wine from dried grapes from inhabitants of Asia
Minor, the ancient
Greeks went on to perfect these vinification techniques in the 8th century BC.
The stems of grape
clusters were twisted to prevent sap from reaching the grapes, causing them to
shrivel.   Another
technique was to pick grapes and dry them out in the sun on racks.   Depending
on the varietal, the
grapes would lose between 40-60% of their water.   Wines produced from these
grapes were rich,
larger-than-life, benefiting from years of maturation, and were prized by
ancient writers such as Homer, Cato, Pliny and Virgil.   The early robustness of
raisin wines – the need to “loose their teeth” -- is indicative of their
longevity, critical in an era before the invention of stoppered bottles.

Like the Greeks, Roman explorers planted vineyards wherever they went.   As a
result, dried grape
winemaking techniques became embedded into the complex fabric of vinification
traditions in France,
Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, and England.   These wines flourished from
the 13th to 17th
centuries, especially in Italy and France, but today the practice survives only
in isolated European
enclaves.   Italy alone appears to have an unbroken tradition of raisin wine,
often produced at only the best estates around Tuscany, Trentino and Umbria.