William de Grandfort said:
> --- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > You're wrong. Grappa is a brandy made from the pomace of the
> > winemaking.
> > As a brandy, it has no bearing on the strength of wines and was
> > unknown in
> > Antiquity (which doesn't mean the name was not used for something
> > else, just
> > that I haven't encountered it).
>
> Ah. Right. Grappa is a brandy, and thus would have been distilled,
> and the strength bolstered. Thanks for the reminder.
>
> However, some sources point to the 14th or 15th century as possible
> 'born on' dates for Grappa,
> so, while not necessarily 'of Antiquity', it is possibly a 'period
> potable'.
See this file in the BEVERAGE section of the Florilegium. I seem to
remember some comments in there about grappa.
wine-msg (124K) 10/ 1/04 Medieval wines.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/wine-msg.html
I also seem to remember that wine did not keep well in medieval times.
Without corks, which are a very late period item and mostly a Spanish
item, bottled wines don't keep and kegs are problematic as well, even
when left unopened. I seem to remember comments about the first
availability of the new wine being looked forward to and celebrated.
They certainly don't seem to have celebrated vintages as is done today.
They definitely knew the difference between wine and vinegar. And they
intentionally would turn wine into vinegar. There are comments about
this being done by shipping wine for this reason. The constant rocking
of the ship would help this process along. I don't know how far vinegar
was shipped though. For northern Europe I would look more at malt or
other vinegars.
You might want to take a look at these Florilegium files in the FOOD
section for more details or some book references:
Vinegar-art (20K) 6/26/01 "What's so special about Vinegar?"
by
Mistress Christianna MacGrain.
Vinegar-NJFCC-art (18K) 10/23/01 "Vinegar: Not Just for Cleaning
Coffeepots"
by THL Mirin ben DhIarmait.
vinegar-msg (78K) 12/21/04 Vinegar in period. Making vinegar.
> Similar to the
> French 'Marc', though I do not have a reference for when Marc was first
> introduced. Another beverage to consider.
I don't think I've heard of this before. Is this a brandy?
Stefan
PS: Is anyone getting any digests or do I/we have a problem somewhere?
Last night was the last time I got a digest for this list. Number
20-013. Rather unusual for this list. :-)
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****