WINE CONSERVATION –
AMPHORAE & RESIN
Today, we can all enjoy
wine all year long. This wasn’t the case when wine made its first appearance
sometime during the Neolithic period (8000-3000 BCE). Early vintners would
store their wine in clay jars, which they sealed with clay stoppers.
Conservation wasn’t ideal and the wine quickly oxidized. Since harvest only
came once a year and people presumably wanted to drink wine for as long as
possible afterwards, winemakers used
various additives (gypsum, lime, marble dust, myrrh, and
in some cases lead) to help delay spoiling and avoid infections which cause
them to become acid, malodorous and moldy.
To today’s palates,
many ancient wines would be terrible! Across many different cultures
(Anatolians, Egyptians and Phoenicians), the practice of adding boiled tree
resin (pitch) persisted for many centuries. Tree resin (notably from Cyprus)
described as “the color of honey … [with] a fleshy consistency” would help
delay souring of the wine. Due to its
antibacterial virtue, resin was used as a preservative.
During that time,
unless wine was consumed right after harvest, it would have tasted like old
tree sap and very little fruit. The flavor doesn’t seem appealing to modern
wine drinkers, but people in many ancient cultures apparently liked it. Pliny
the Elder, a resin connoisseur, was one of them: “It is a peculiarity of wine
among liquids to go moldy or else to turn into vinegar and whole volumes of
instructions how to remedy this have been published.”
You can still taste a
remnant of this practice in the Greek wine Retsina. Retsina was born of the
need to preserve and ship wines in pine pitch sealed vessels. Due to the pine
oils, Retsina was thought of as wood nymph tears, though how tears were
collected from those shy nymphs is not recorded.
Don't forget to visit the blogspot for more tips and news!
No comments:
Post a Comment