[Sca-cooks] Danelaw feast - Take Two

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 02:11 PM 7/17/2005, you wrote:
>Am Sonntag, 17. Juli 2005 21:46 schrieb Carole Smith:
> > Wasn't there a wine trade in England on the earlier side?  It is my
> > understanding that when the weather got colder (more or less corresponding
> > to Elizabethan times) that they could no longer grow wine grapes and became
> > dependant on wine from other countries.
>
>I don't know about Anglo-Saxon times, but wine was grown in England later in
>the Middle Ages. If nothing else, it would have been necessary for Eucharist.
>Nonetheless, wine was imported from France in quantity, so it can't have been
>all that much, or all that good.

I think it was Geoffery of Wales who noted that the English wines were so 
ghastly that one drank them with a shudder, straining it through the teeth...

England in the 12th-13th c was somewhat warmer, the Little Ice Age was in 
the early 14th c (1315 was especially bad), and effectively ruined the 
rootstock...

So yes, there was a wine trade for awhile, but the good stuff came from the 
continent- especially when England held the Aquitaine, Gascony, etc.

'Lainie
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