Bacchus, son of Ammon, was born in Egypt, and was the first who taught his countrymen the art of cultivating the vine, and of making wine. He is the same as Osiris, the famous conqueror of India. Œnopion, worthy son of one of these heroes, enriched the inhabitants of Chios with the first rosy wine that ever yet obscured their reason. Modern science, agreeing with holy writ, Palestine was renowned for its vines. Pliny speaks in praise of them. The growths of Lebanon, However, the Hebrews, a sober people, like all eastern nations, rarely made use of pure wine; they generally mixed it with a quantity of water, and only drank a little at some ceremonial feasts, and at the end of their repasts. Some nations seem to have had a great horror of wine. The Persians drank nothing but water; The Egyptians would have thought it a profanation of their temples to carry in a flagon of the rosy liquid; but Psammetichus came (670 B.C.), and that wise prince made them understand that a pot of beer is not worth a cup of good wine. The Romans asserted that their old king, Janus, planted the first vine in Italy, The inflexible muse of history has preserved to us the name of the individual who doomed himself to a sorry sort of immortality by inventing the custom of mixing water with wine; it was CranaÜs, King of Athens, 1532 B.C. Lycurgus was, no doubt, ignorant of this practice, when he had the barbarity to destroy the vines of the LacedÆmonians, under pretext of Hippocrates, great physician as he was, had already somewhere advised The god of grapes had everywhere fervent admirers, except, perhaps, among the Scythians. These schismatics refused to worship a divinity who caused the faithful to become intoxicated. The Romans addressed to him special prayers twice a year, on the occasion of the wine festivals, The god could not reasonably refuse this request, for the vine-dressers spared neither labour nor fatigue to procure an abundant harvest. They were constantly seen disincumbering the plant of a too luxurious foliage, thereby exposing the grapes to the sun’s rays, which bring them to maturity, and breaking with indefatigable perseverance the least clods of earth which, accumulating around the tendrils, appeared to fatigue them by their weight. him permanently the remembrance of his fault and of the rights of property. The imperial jurisprudence afterwards softened the Draconian rigour of this law of the Decemviri. The ancients, like ourselves, were fond of seeing fresh grapes appear on their tables at all periods of the year. They preserved them by covering them with barley flour, The method of making wine was precisely the same both in Greece and Italy. The vine gatherers carefully rejected the green grapes, Wine obtained in this manner was much esteemed, and kept very well. The grapes, crushed by the feet, were placed under the press, The press was always raised at a little distance from the cellar and kitchen. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XXII. No. 1. Wine-press, explained in the text. No. 2. A large vase, in which a man is sitting, supposed to be Diogenes. This amphora is broken, and the pieces are joined by ties of lead, cut dove-tailed. It is a bass-relief, from the Villa Albani, published by Winkelman. No. 3. Represents a beast of burthen, with a pack saddle, loaded with two amphorÆ. This piece of terra cotta, drawn the size of the original, is taken from the collection of children’s playthings of Prince de Biscari. The difficulty of carriage was so great in mountainous countries, that the inhabitants of the Alps substituted for vessels of terra cotta, casks, or wooden tubs, put together with wooden circles, similar to our own. (See Plate III., No. 4., Chariot with four wheels, loaded with a cask.) to the top piece, were placed underneath. The grapes occupied the space between the vat and the lower plank. Between each of the cross planks wedges were introduced, and two persons kept striking them with hammers, one on each side; it is thus the pressure was effected. The lees were taken from the press when it yielded no more liquor; a certain quantity of water was poured over them, and the whole subjected to a second pressure. The weak kind of wine obtained by this new operation must have somewhat resembled that acrid stuff called piquette, in France; it was the beverage of the people, and especially of the country people during the winter. A part of the wort—that which was required for immediate use—was put aside, and clarified with vinegar. This wort, thus prepared by night, when the moon did not shine, Those who wished to preserve sweet wine during a whole year, filled with the second wort—that is to say, that which was produced by the pression of the feet—some amphorÆ covered with pitch inside and out. They were then hermetically sealed, and buried in the sand, or plunged in cold water, where they remained at least two months. There still was left a large quantity of wort as it came from the grapes. This was taken into the cellar, At Herculaneum a spacious cellar has been discovered, round which hogsheads were ranged, and built into the wall. Large earthen vessels were found there, with and without handles, very carefully executed, and smeared with pitch. The Dolia—for so they were named—were first subjected to a fumigation with aromatic plants; then watered with sea-water, and buried half way in the earth. They were separated each one from another, and strict attention was paid to see that the cellar contained neither leather, nor cheese, nor figs, nor old casks. Sometimes persons who inhabited the country paved the store-room, spread sand, and placed the dolia on it. At the end of nine days, when the fermentation had cleared the wine from those substances it rejects, they carefully covered the dolia, after having smeared all the upper part of the inside, as well as the covers themselves, with a mixture of defrutum, saffron, mastic, pitch, and pine nuts. They accelerated the fining of the wine by throwing in plaster, chalk, marble dust, salt, resin, dregs of new wine, sea-water, myrrh, and aromatic herbs. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XXIII. Colum Nivarium.—A strainer, used to separate the dregs from the wine. Two are preserved in the collection of Herculaneum; they are made of white metal, and worked with elegance. Each is composed of two plates, round and concave, of four inches in diameter, supplied with flat handles. The two dishes (as it were) and their handles adapt to each other so well, that when put together they appear as one; holes in great number are symmetrically perforated in the upper dish, which keeps the dregs, and lets the clear liquid pass through the lower one. The strainer here represented is taken from Montfaucon’s “Antiquities,” and was found at Rome, towards the end of the 17th century. It is of bronze, and ornamented. On the handles are reliefs in silver, referring to the worship of Bacchus. salt, Fine wines were kept in the wood for two, three, or four years, according to their different properties; after which they were transferred to amphorÆ, and that operation required the greatest care. The amphorÆ were earthen pitchers with two handles, Pliny assures us that the vineyards of the entire world produce 195 different kinds of wine; or double that number, if we reckon every variety. Let that be as it may, the best Greek wines were those of Thasos, DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XXIV. No. 1. Amphora, or Dolium. Upon one of the handles is engraved the sigles P. S. A. X; the first two, probably, are the initials of the proprietor, and the last describes the capacity of the vase, being 250 quarts.—Montfaucon’s “Antiquities,” expl. Nos. 2 and 3. Smaller Dolium, found at Herculaneum, buried at the bottom of a cellar. The mouths of these vases were fixed in a marble slab, and closed with a cover of the same material. There is in the Villa Albani, an amphora of terra cotta of this kind, which contained 18 Roman amphorÆ, or 463 quarts, as marked by numerical letters, engraved upon the outside. In 1750, one of these amphorÆ was found at Pouzzole, which was five feet six inches in height, and five feet in diameter, containing 1,728 quarts. Several amphorÆ from Herculaneum and Pompeii have inscriptions written in colours, and which give the name of the PrÆtor Nonnius; the same as those found at Rome, which were inscribed with the name of the consul, to fix the year of the vintage. Falernum, The ancients professed to have a very particular veneration for wines of a renowned growth, which had ripened slowly in amphorÆ. Some gastronomic archÆologists produced, on their tables certain wines which had so far dried up in leather bottles, that they were taken out in lumps; This predilection for good old wine was common to the Greeks; AthenÆus sets no bounds to his praise of old wine. He says it is excellent for the health; it is the best thing to dissolve the food; it strengthens; it assists the circulation of the blood, and assures a peaceful sleep. The topers of antiquity did not disdain white wine, but they seem to have viewed it as of secondary importance. It digests easily, says the writer just cited, but it is weak, and has but little body. However, there was no lack of amateurs of white wine, and, like ourselves, the ancients doubtless preferred it when they eat snails, oysters, or any of those shell fish with which the Lucrine lake abounded. They even took it into their heads (how ingenious is gluttony!) to change red wine sometimes into white. To do this it was only necessary to put three whites of egg, or some bean flour, into a flagon, and shake it a long time. The same result was obtained with ashes from the white vine. The Greeks endeavoured to preclude the disastrous effects of intoxication by putting sea-water into the wine; a mixture which they also thought had the effect of assisting digestion. One measure of water was enough for fifty measures of wine. This very simple process metamorphoses the most indifferent liquor into that delightful nectar which gave renown and fortune to the isle of Cos. The saline wine of the Greeks (vinum tethalassomenon) was nothing else. The following are the made wines most in vogue in olden times. The Passum was one of those most esteemed in Rome, particularly, when it came from Crete. The Dulce wine was obtained by drying the grapes in the sun for three days, and crushing them with the feet on the fourth, at the time of the greatest heat. The Mulsum, or honeyed wine, was an exquisite mixture of old Falernian wine and new honey, from the Mount Hymettus. The name of Anisites wine was given to that in which some grains of aniseed had been infused. The Granatum was prepared by throwing thirty broken pomegranates into a pipe of wine, and pouring over them ten pints and a-half of a different wine, hard and sour. This drink was fit for use at the end of thirty days. Apicius gives us the recipe for the Rosatum:—“Put,” says he, “some rose leaves into a clean linen cloth; sew it up, and leave it seven days in the wine; take out the roses, and put in fresh ones; repeat the operation three times, and then strain the wine. Add some honey at the time of drinking. The roses must be fresh, and free from dew.” The Violatum is made in the same manner, only violets are used instead of roses. Rosatum may also be obtained without roses, by putting a small basket filled with green lemon leaves into a barrel of new wine before the fermentation has taken place, and leaving them there for forty days. This wine is to be mixed with honey before it is drunk. Myrrh wine—Myrrhinum, among the ancients—was wine mixed with a little myrrh, to render it better and make it keep longer. They thought much of it. All these wines, like those previously mentioned, were strained through the colum vinarium before they were served to the guests. This strainer was composed of two round, deep dishes, of four inches in diameter. The upper part was pierced, and received the wine, which ran into the lower recipient, whence the cups were filled. In Rome the price of common wine—sometimes adulterated In the early days of the Roman republic women were forbidden to drink wine; LIQUEUR WINE.It must be owned that the Roman law was, for a long time, tyrannical in the extreme with regard to women. Totally interdict the use of wine! Kill the unfortunate creatures who were unable to resist the seductions of that dangerous liquor! For the Roman history furnishes us with more than one example of that atrocious chastisement inflicted on the guilty thirst of the fair sex. The barbarous Micennius immolated his wife on the butt, at which he caught her one day, quenching her thirst at the tap or the bunghole. The ferocious Romulus thought this act simple and natural: he did not even reprimand the cruel husband. Another unfortunate creature discovered the place where her husband kept the keys of the cellar. She took them, and had the imprudent curiosity to go and visit the mysterious and inauspicious treasure, to which she was forbidden all access. Her family perceived this innocent larceny, and refused her every kind of food, to punish her for an imaginary crime. She died in the tortures of hunger. Is it necessary to speak of C. Domitius, that uncourteous judge, who deprived a lady of her marriage portion because she had taken the liberty to drink a spoonful or two of wine unknown to her lord and master? The good Trajan quaffed off numberless cups every day: of course he became the idol of the human species. The ladies ventured, in the first place, to wet their lips with a few drops of those light wines which the sun seemed to ripen for them at Tibur, in the environs of CumÆ, and throughout Campania. Leaving aside this knotty question, which we do not feel ourselves called upon to resolve, let us state that these different drinks were prepared in a very simple manner. Two handfuls of one of the above-named plants were put into a butt of wort; a pint of sapa and half a pint of sea-water were added. It frequently happened, after a banquet, that the wearied and palled The live wood, or the leaves of the cedar, the cypress, the laurel, the juniper-tree, or the turpentine-tree, boiled a long time in wort, produced different bitter liqueurs, to which intemperance complacently attributed benign qualities and numerous medical virtues. But, thank Heaven! our Roman beauties were not always obliged to have recourse to the gloomy experience of the disciples of Æsculapius; and when they were in good health, more exhilarating liqueurs lent their aid to toast their return to health and pleasure. They were then seen sipping myrtle wine, a mild beverage, the light vapours of which brought down calm and profound sleep. It was wisdom to drink it; for, alas! not all that would, can sleep! If the reader be troubled with wakefulness, he will hail with joy the recipe for this beneficent narcotic. Let him take young myrtle branches with the leaves, pound them, and boil one pound in eighteen pints of white wine, until it is reduced to two-thirds. The petites maÎtresses, those delicate women, whose life seemed to be a tissue of vapours mingled with tears—Rome abounded with them—would have fainted even at the smell of the wines made up in the manner indicated above. Their frail, nervous organization, required a different kind of drink, and one was invented for them,—the Adynamon. This adynamon, or wine without strength, was the most inoffensive of The Œnanthinum wine was destined for more vigorous constitutions, for natures of less exquisite delicacy. The Roman ladies, somewhat fond of rusticating, who passed a part of the year in their villas, prepared it by putting two pounds of wild vine flowers into a butt of wort. They were left there thirty days, and then the liquor was drawn off into other vessels. Such were the vinous drinks which fashion formerly brought into repute in the capital of the world. The women set no bounds to their taste for these concocted wines; but went on from one excess to another as long as the empire lasted. These strange habits, now buried under the Roman colossus, have been replaced by a new order of civilisation. Woman, that graceful being of whom antiquity was not worthy, now appears such as Christianity has made her, to reveal to us virtues which ancient Greece and Italy never knew. Daughter, wife, and mother, she consoles, encourages, and supports man amid the trials of life. Her sweet smile welcomes him at the cradle; her prayer accompanies him to the tomb. It was she who softened the ferocious instincts of the barbarous hordes that the forests of the north vomited over Europe; and still exercising her empire over modern society, she is hailed as a queen, whose virtues and chaste attractions render her the living embodiment of the flower and the angel, those sweet symbols of love and beauty, between which a modern poet has gracefully placed her throne. The primitive inhabitants of Great Britain learned from the Romans to plant the vine, under the reign of the Emperor Probus. The conquerors Saint-Louis was the first who established statutes for the dealers in wine. Under the reign of Louis XIV., a great dispute arose concerning the relative merits of Burgundy and Champagne wines, and the preference due to the one or the other. This quarrel originated in a thesis, maintained at the commencement of the 17th century at the Medical School of Paris, in which it was asserted, that the wine of Beaune, in Burgundy, was not only the most agreeable but the most wholesome. This thesis excited no murmur at the time: from the 13th century the wine of Beaune had always enjoyed the highest reputation, and no one dreamed of disputing it. But forty years later they risked a proposition much more rash than the preceding one: it was maintained, in the same school, that the wines of Burgundy were not only preferable to those of Champagne, but that the latter attack the nerves, cause a fermentation of the humours, and infallibly bring on the gout in persons not naturally subject to it. They fortified this incredible opinion with the authority of the celebrated Fagon, chief physician of Louis XIV., who had just forbidden the king, as they said, the use of Champagne wine. The Champagne people took fire—it was time—the dangerous heresy threatened to spread; so they attacked the Burgundians bravely. The latter defended themselves with equal courage. The battle waxed warm. Each party sought to crush their antagonists with heavy The epicureans took part in this great discussion, and that they might give their judgment after mature deliberation, founded on a perfect knowledge of facts, they have been tasting Champagne and Burgundy wines these two hundred years. May the vouchers in this suit never fail them! Wine was long used for presents and fees—a custom established under Charlemagne. After a baptism, a marriage, or a burial, the priests received the vicar’s wine; before marriage, wedding wine was offered to the intended bride; after a law-suit, the counsellor was presented with clerk’s wine; the wine of citizenship was given to the mayor of a town in which any person took up his abode. This present subsequently took the name of pot-de-vin (bribe), still in great favour. It has changed its character, certainly, but the variations have multiplied to infinity. In the middle ages sober people intoxicated themselves regularly once a month. Arnaud de Villeneuve examines seriously the advantages of this Hygienic custom. In the middle ages, and in the 16th century, intoxication was severely punished in France. By five ordinances, in the years 802, 803, 810, 812, and 813, Charlemagne declares habitual drinkers unworthy of being heard before courts of justice in their own cause, or as witness for another. Francis I. decreed, by an edict, in the month of August, 1536, that whosoever should be found intoxicated was to be imprisoned on bread and water for the first offence; the second time, flogging in the prison was added; the third time, he was publicly flogged; and if the offender was incorrigible, his ears were out off, he was deemed infamous, and banished the kingdom. Now every one is free to quench his thirst, and drink more if he chooses. “The Crafte to make Ypocras.—Take a quarte of red wine, an ounce of synamon, ane halfe an once (ounce) of gynger, a quarter of an unnce (ounce) of greynes and long pepper, and halfe a pound of suger, and brose all this (not too small), and then put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore (for that purpose), with the wire, and it hange over a vessel tyll the wine be run thorowe (through).” The English were extremely partial to a drink they called Clarey, or Clarre. According to Arnold “For eighteen gallons of good wyne, take halfe a pounde of ginger, quarter of a pound of long peper, an ounce of safron, a quarter of an ounce of coliaundyr, two ounces of calomole dromatycus, and the third part as much honey that is clarifyed as of youre wyne, streyne them through a cloth, and do it into a clene vessell.” John, in the first year of his reign, made a law that a tun of Rochelle wine should not be sold for more than twenty shillings, a tun of wine from Anjou for twenty-three shillings, and a tun of French wine for twenty-five shillings, except some that might be of the very best sort, which was allowed to be raised to twenty-six shillings and fourpence, but not for more, in any case. By retail, a gallon of Rochelle wine was to be sold for fourpence, and a gallon of white wine for sixpence, and no dearer. |