Cooking sherry.
You must be thinking of the wine amphorae salvaged from the 4th-century BC Kyrenia shipwreck discovered in 1965. During some 2200 years at the bottom of the sea, salt from the seawater leached in through the earthenware, I imagine until reaching osmotic equilibrium with the environment. If the salinity of the environment changed, I imagine the salinity of the wine would eventually match it.
Ah, but the water flowed through the lead pipes quite quickly and would not pick up enough lead to be harmful.
Actually Romans were quite aware that lead consumption could make them ill but were willing to acept that with the trade off that it was easy to make pumbing out off.
The big risk of lead intake came from lead vessels being used in the preperation of food and drink.
Oh, and Roman wine was fermented in big pottery vessels, dug into the ground, called ‘dolia’. We suspect that Romans may have use barrels to store liquids but we’re not really sure and it may have been a regional thing.
I presume it was undrinkable, if not toxic?
I always thought that cooking sherry was salted for tax reasons. (This is just an aside.)
I vaguely recall reading some biblical apologetic a while back that addressed Jesus’s miracle of turning water into wine: the author made the point that at that time, wine was not particularly good tasting, and the quality of wine was judged according to its alcohol content. So when Jesus’ wine was being praised for being especially good, it was actually being praised for being really strong! Apparently it was the practice at that time to serve the strong stuff first, then the weak stuff when people were a bit soused.
My google-fu is failing me, so I can’t confirm this story at the moment. Accept the above with a grain of salt.
I recall hearing the same thing when I was in ( catholic) grade school.
That, and to enable it to be sold without the same restrictions real wine has. In Pennsylvania for example if cooking sherry was clasified as a beverage it couldn’t be sold in a supermarket at all, only in a state store.
Yes. In many parts of Europe, wine is still routinely diluted.
But it indicates that drinking wine was not inherently a sin.
Evidence from the Modern Greek word for wine: krasi. It literally means ‘mixture’.
The Ancient Greek word for wine, oinos, came from the same prehistoric root as Latin vinum, Arabic wayn, and Hebrew yayin. But IIUC in Greece they don’t call it that any more, they call it krasi.
Edit.
So the irony of it is how the ancient Greeks drank a mixture but called it wine, while modern Greeks drink wine and call it mixture. Perfect!
My own WAG is that, same as other health recommendations which got spread by the clerics, it’s a matter of observation.
They didn’t know “why” or “how” washing your tools and hands with soap made it less likely to get ill - but they knew it did.
They didn’t know “why” or “how” drinking diluted wine/beer led to less intestinal troubles than drinking water straight from the river - but they knew it did.
As for the wine, the kind of wines which were commonly drunk daily in Spain just 30 years ago were stronger and drier (“more fighter-like” we’d say, literally) than even wine-in-a-box. Most people needed to add soda or fruit juice to those simply in order to make them palatable (mix all three, you get sangría), and people who drank only “plain wine” and of that kind during meals were the same ones who were likely to start their day with a draught of “cordial” of the kind that burns the hairs off your chest.
Yes I know. I was just trying to add some context.
Anyone know?
On the other hand some teetotaling Christians insist that the water was not turned into wine, but into non-alcoholic grape juice.
Seriously guys…
from this page, and this specific version is the New American Standard Bible, the underlines are mine:
Whether some people want to retranslate “good” to “strong” or “wine” to “grape juice” seems to me to say more about the quality of their own palates and of their knowledgeability of wine than of ancient customs in Palestine. Those wines which I previously mentioned were daily fare and usually taken diluted were, in the same recent period, not what would be served first at a wedding (and this custom of “once they’re sloshed, bring out the cheap stuff” is still alive and well) - not unless you wanted the guests to be requesting your blood next.
Ha. I grew up southern baptist. Every time we’d hear a reference to wine in the bible, it was always followed with a disclaimer about how it wasn’t “gettin’ drunk wine” but low alcohol stuff “More like grape juice.” As a kid, I thought The Repudiation Of The Alcohol was part of the Communion ritual.
And southern baptists don’t like it when you refer to the communion cups as shot glasses.
The grapes used for winemaking back then contained a high acid content, so the wine wasn’t very palatable. It was diluted and mixed with other stuff both to improve the flavor and to make safe drinking water.
I don’t know either, I just read that it tasted really salty. There’s no doubt it must be completely undrinkable. Though I don’t see how it would be toxic (apart from excess salinity). Maybe we can bribe some archaeologist to let you have a sip.
I recommend the works of Eddie Campbell, scholar of Greek and Roman myths and of wine. His comics cover the unadulterated myths, what happened after the myths, and an awful lot about wine.
We can always hope! Thanks.