The cycle of the vineyard and the enjoyment of wine by man has lasted over the centuries.
with some of these intriguing differences …
ONCE UPON A TIME
The Roman civilization knew viticulture and winemaking well, but then the barbarians
destroyed their vineyards and turned them into pasture and cornfields. Fortunately,
Benedictine monks and others kept the art of viticulture alive in their monasteries. For him
In the 12th century, viticulture was completely revived.
THEY WERE NOT SO FUSSY
One of the main differences between today’s wine connoisseurs and medieval man was that
back then they weren’t so concerned about the exact vineyard a wine came from, but rather
the general area. The body of the wine was more important than its subtle flavors and
smell.
JUST BE PRACTICAL
Wine was primarily the drink of the upper classes and wealthy merchants, while the lower classes
he generally drank beer, cider, or mead.
Also, in medieval times, much of the water was polluted by sewage, so naturally people
He preferred to drink wine.
OTHER USES
The wine also served to alleviate minor aches and pains.
In 1166, the vintages were so abundant and there was such an overproduction of wine, that in
Franconia (a part of what is now Germany), they mixed wine with lime for use in construction
construction.
DRINK BEFORE IT’S BAD
In medieval times, wine aging was not important. This was partly due to the fact that
much of the wine was too unstable to age well anyway, and if the air hit it, it could turn into
vinegar. One way to combat this problem was to use a thin layer of olive oil. Other
Methods included adding burnt salt, mixing nails, or dipping submerged lighted torches into
pour into the wine.
Vintners and wine sellers often only mixed good wine with bad, at least until practice.
then it was banned. Others put cloves in the wine to prevent it from spoiling.
An important advance in medieval winemaking was the discovery of sulfur by alchemists.
This was now used to preserve wine.
A pinch of this and a pinch of that
Spices were added to wine for the same reason they were added to food: for variety and for
disguise that it is mediocre or tasteless. Spicy wines were called paprika.
When bad weather caused poor ripening of the grapes, flavors and herbs were often added.
to the wine. The resulting drink would then take on the flavor and character of these
added ingredients. If the poor harvest yielded low sugar grapes, medieval man sometimes
Cooked grape juice or honey was added to increase the sugar levels, so that the final alcohol content.
increase.
To clarify the wine, they used eggs, pine nuts, peach stones or river pebbles. Honey was
sometimes it is added to maintain the proper color.
Because their wine was so unstable, many medieval winegrowers diligently tried to keep
their barrels and wine vessels as clean as possible. Various methods to clean them were
used, including cold water scrubbing, vintage wine or salt water scrubbing. Sometimes they would then
fumigate them with rosemary or cedar wood.
WHILE, IN THE GRAPE FIELDS
The drawbacks of medieval viticulture were partly due to slow technical progress in general during
that time, and the cultivation of the vineyards was not as advanced as it had been in Rome
times.
A novelty for the time was the use of the “low vineyard”. The vines began to tie
vertical stakes and were not allowed to grow more than 4 feet in height.
FROM MALMSEY TO MERLOT
The most famous of medieval wines was Malmsey. This was a sweet wine made from grapes.
cultivated mainly in Crete or Cyprus. We still have a form of Malmsey today which is basically a
sweet kind of Madeira wine. But today’s wine drinkers generally prefer drier, more complex
wines that their medieval ancestors had access to.