In The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World a course taught by Professor Robert Garland at Colgate University, he describes the common peons wine as red vinegar with additional spices. Because of the poor preservation methods available even the Emperor didn’t fare much better, he would just have had better spices and more of them.
So whats the word, would Nero have traded his throne for a box of Boone’s Farm?
It’s kind of hard to believe that the ancient Greeks and Romans were drinking basically spiced vinegar when you read ancient works, which praise particular sources and vintages. I think Prof. Garland goes overboard in his pitch.
Wikipedia on ancient Grek wine has this to say:
In the Odyssey, writing about the concentrated wine that Odysseus eventually gives (undiluted) to Polyphemus, Homer goes on about its smell and taste. Even allowing for exaggeration, I can’t believe he’d do that if the wine tasted awful.
Here’s the piece on Roman wine, which indicates a great deal of sophistication about preventing it from turning into vinegar:
Why did the wine need to be diluted? And to what extent was the dilution?
Pliny the Elder describes noted “first growths” of Rome, so vinegar it wasn’t. In fact Falernian was expected to age at least 10 years.
Granted, the peasants made do with much worse, but the idea that the rich and powerful drank plonk is just plain wrong.
The Greeks considered intoxication to be a social faux pas, and dilution reduced the alcohol content. Several sources suggest that it was more that wine was added to water to make it safe to drink than water was added to wine to dilute it.
There’s a passage in the Odyssey that gives a ration of 20 parts water to one of wine, but the footnote indicates this was to show that the wine was particularly potent, and the normal ratio was more like three to one.
That was the wine they gave Polyphemus, so of course the story has it that it was particularly potent – it had to knock out a giant with the amount they had in one wineskin. Even if it was a biggish wineskin, made from a whole Ox, it’d have to be pretty strong.
If I took the incredibly strong wine my father made, or even a good brandy and diluted it 20:1 I don’t think it would stand up.
If they weren’t drinking to get drunk it stands to reason that it tasted good.
I believe wine is actually a way of preserving fruit and it should last longer in storage than the raw fruit or juice. If they ended up with vinegar at times because of harvest delays or other reasons they’ve still benefited more from the fruit than if they’d stored it raw.
But by modern standards, would it be plonk? Back in their era, of course, it would have been considered high quality.
As Colibri said, diluting wine essentially enabled them to make a larger amount of water safe to drink with the same amount of wine.
Given that available water was often unsafe to drink, the passages about the dangers of not diluting your wine may be a reference to planning to get all of your daily water by drinking undiluted wine. This would indeed be quite unhealthy, and seems like the sort of thing writers of the day might argue against doing.
Back in their era? Heck, back in the day. knowwhatImean?
Readily Googlable, I suppose, but more fun to ask here: How much can you cut a wine of, say, 14% alcohol and have it remain effective against stuff like … well, and what were the principle waterborne pathogens of the time? Presumably you’d be dealing with cholera & the like, maybe other stuff prevalent in swampy water?
This 1936 article has this to say:
Are there any grape vines that could be said to more resemble those of antiquity than others? Perhaps their grapes’ DNA could be compared to that of ancient wines discovered in sealed amphorae.
That wine turned to vinegar, but would the grape DNA survive? If a contemporary vine or grape matched closely enough to the ancient variety, we’d know whether Caeser and his ilk had refined or vulcanized-rubber palates.
Besides, I’d like to taste the stuff.
It probably wouldn’t not be considered bad, but it also likely would be nothing like modern wine. Standards and tastes change, to the point that even good wine from a couple centuries ago is very different. Champagne, for instance, used to be ludicrously sweet. Many red wines were made (and exported) in bulk quantities as inexpensive table wine, meant to drank while they were bold and fresh and very rough - even though that wouldn’t fly in much of the world today. Many varieties favored in classical antiquity seem to have been flavored with aromatic compounds we might find quite odd, although some are still made today, such as retsina. Even so, there’s direct evidence that ancient writings about how to cultivate the grape specifically for winemaking. That implies there was some high-end product that they, at least, liked quite a bit.
Winemaking goes back over 6000 years. We’ve had a long time to practice even before, say, Rome became the hip new thing. At the same time, the basics of making alchohol hasn’t changed.
Probably not. Most of the European vines today are grafted onto American root-stock, and wine snobs claim that makes a difference. If it does, then 2000 years of breeding and refinement are going to make today’s grapes quite different from those of antiquity. Not necessarily better, mind you, although that is the way to bet. But different.
Well, it’s not vinegar, but personally I think retsina is pretty nasty stuff and yet folks drink THAT today. Of course, when I drank I was never a wine drinker (was more a whiskey and tequila drinker), so perhaps folks really like the stuff (wine in general, not retsina specifically). According to the wiki though it help preserve the wine from going bad after less than a year, so my guess is that, no, the wine drunk by the elite wasn’t ‘awful’ for folks who like wine anyway.
Muscat of Alexandria is thought to be one of the oldest genetically unmodified vines still in existence. In the wine trade it’s rumored to be the wine that Jesus drank at the last supper; not entirely unlikely since it was widely grown in the region at the time.
I’ve grown it and made wine from it, and it is excellent stuff with a floral character that seems to be found especially in the Muscat grape. A winemaker I know made a white port out of M of A. I never got to sample it, but it was selling for about $75 a bottle, so presumably pretty good. Another one accidently got some secondary fermentation after bottling and ended up with a slightly effervescent muscat that was as good as any champagne I’ve ever tasted.
There is a winery in southern France near Cotes du Rhone that was discovered to be situated on top of an ancient Roman workshop that produced ceramic urns called amphoras to make and store wine. In honor of this, the winery started recreating Roman wines by following the various manuals they found among the ruins.
They made three types of Roman wines and while none of them were superb or even great by modern standards, none of them were vinegary or tart. One was a sweet type flavored with honey and herbs and meant to be drank as an aperitif. Another had sea water and roots added to give it a strong, semi-bitter taste. The third wine was the most palatable for me and was also a little sweet from the must reduction that was added to it.
Interestingly, none of the wines were red, (although they red grape varieties could be used if they wanted), and they gave two reasons for this. First, most of the estate’s Syrah and Grenache varieties were used in the winery’s “regular” wine productions, and second, apparently in ancient Rome, red wine was for the masses while white wine was reserved for the imperial class.
Found the name of the winery! Mas des Tourelles
Bet they didn’t add in the lead though. 
Done to create a phylloxera resistant vine. In areas where the pest is not endemic the old varieties are still grown ungrafted. Australia for instance. (Keeping the blasted critters under control is a full time activity however.) In the US, where it came from the vines evolved to be resistant.
Indeed, just about anything can make a difference you can taste. Whether it makes for a good or bad difference is a totally different matter.
I would say that the winemaker can make nearly as big a difference as the actual variety. (Which is a bit heretical, but it is fun when a wine is made that uses a variety in a different manner to its traditional style. The results can confuse many claimed experts.) Some varieties are however so utterly distinct as to stand totally on their own. Muscat for one.