Invino veritas, in wine truth.
That was Pliny the Elder's fancy way of saying
give me a few glasses of wine, and I'll really tell you what I think of you.
So you can't get mad at me if I get a little mouthy after just a few
glasses of this conditum paradoxum, the incredible spiced wine of ancient Rome.
So a big thank you to Bright Cellars for not only sponsoring
this video but for actually giving me the idea to do it in the first place.
Conditum paradoxum and the wines of ancient Rome this time on Drinking History.
The ancient Romans loved their wine and they really enjoyed zhuzhing it up a little,
sometimes because they had to like when they would add a bit of
salt water to wine that was getting ready to turn into vinegar just to make it more palatable.
Or sometimes they would just want to change the flavor up
like when they would add herbs and spices
to make a wine more complex. Most often they would sweeten it. They loved their sweet wines
sometimes they would add mustum or grape must,
the best version being boiled in a pot preferably made of lead so you get that extra sweet taste
that only lead can provide, but safer and more common was just to add honey like this
recipe from Apicius for conditum paradoxum which translates to incredible spiced wine.
"Put 15 pounds of honey in a bronze vessel into which you have already put two pints of wine...
Heat it over a slow fire stirring with a stick as it cooks... when it is cooled, heat it again.
This must be done a second and third time, then remove it from the fire and skim it the next day.
Then add four ounces of ground pepper, three scruples of ground mastic, a dram each of
aromatic leaf and saffron, five roasted date pits and the same date softened in wine... and pounded.
When this is prepared add 18 pints of light wine. If it is bitter add charcoal."
Now obviously the main ingredient other than the honey is the wine and it's hard
to decide on exactly which wine to use because while many have guessed what wine tasted like
back in ancient Rome nobody really will ever know.
Plus there were tons of varieties just like today many of which we will talk about but for
this recipe since it calls for a light wine I've decided to use a Pinot Grigio sent to
me from our sponsor Bright Cellars. Now Bright has sponsored my videos before but in this case
they actually gave me the idea to do this video. You should do an episode on ancient Roman wine.
By jove I think that's a smashing idea!
Not exactly sure why I'm always English in my memories
but there it is. Anyway when they gave me this idea I said okay sounds great but
I only want wine sent to me from areas that were the ancient Roman empire and their concierge
service said okay! They sent me Allonym from Spain, then a Montepluciano called Ladro D'uva
but I decided to go with a Pinot Grigio from Pavia and most of it of course is in our recipe today,
but I saved a little bit back so I could try it sans paradoxum.
Let's give it a go. It's interesting because it'already a little- you can taste the honey,
there is no honey in it yet. We're about to add some but there's are it has that crisp honey- oh
I get apple. It's really wonderful, I like Pinot Grigio. Now when you start with Bright
Cellars it's best to take their seven question quiz and let them curate your wines for you.
They're also super flexible, you can skip a month or you can get extra to take to all the holiday
parties that you're going to. Frankly if I show up to Christmas dinner without a bottle of wine
my mom will send me home and a subscription to Bright Cellars is an excellent gift and one that
nobody is going to want to return. And right now Bright Cellars is giving 50% off of your first six
bottle box plus a bonus bottle. 7 bottles for $53 dollars when you use the link in the description.
Now that we have our bottle of wine what else we need for this recipe is:
2/3 of a cup or 225 grams of honey. I'm using raw unfiltered honey but you can use
regular clarified honey, it doesn't matter. A 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper. A pinch of
mastic powder. So mastic is a gum or resin that comes from the mastic tree grown on the island
of Chios in Greece. It starts off bitter but then it gets this sweet pine flavor and it's
kind of like walking through a forest. It's really wonderful but in moderation.
Then either a pinch of ground spikenard or bay leaf. The original word in the recipe is
very unclear when people debate which leaf this is. Some people say bay leaf, some people say
spikenard, that's going to be a lot harder to find though we used it in the recipe on
hyppocras which was another spiced wine so maybe a link there. I don't know, either one is going
to be fine though a pinch of ground saffron threads and one date and its accompanying pit.
So soak the date in a bit of wine and set the date pit in the oven at
350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes. Also
you'll notice I'm only using one instead of five because I've cut this way down.
It's a huge recipe, I'm just making one bottle instead of like a vat.
Then put the honey in a saucepan and stir in one third cup or 75 milliliters of the
wine and set it over medium-low heat, and bring to a simmer making sure it doesn't
boil over. You want to let it simmer for about five minutes, then take it off and let it cool
and then return it to the heat. Heat it up let it simmer. Take it off you're going to
do this three times. If anything floats to the top skim it out. You probably won't need to
if you're using commercial honey and commercial wine, but if there is get rid of it. Then take
the date pit and grind it. It's really hard to grind a date pit pretty pretty much impossible
to get it like into a powder unless you have I don't know what kind of machinery,
but doing it by hand I was able after a while and with all my strength to get it into shards,
and that's just gonna have to be fine. Then add in the spices and the date and mash until you have a
paste. Then add that to the honey mixture and stir until well combined. Then pour in the remainder of
the wine including that in which you soak the date and cover it and let it rest overnight. Now it's
often thought that doing this to a wine this whole process was a way to make an inferior wine taste
better but the ingredients used are so expensive that it's unlikely the household doing this would
even have inferior wine and there are records that say that this type of drink was often made with
the best wine that one could find, and that raises the question what were some of those wines?
Now there's no way that we can discuss all of the wines of ancient Rome in one video.
Pliny the Elder says there were 80 that he considered high quality alone.
So just think of how many there were that were not high quality. So today we will be
focusing on just that top tier of wine mainly because that's what was written most about.
Now in the early republic the most prized wine in Rome did not come from Rome.
Just like the wines that I ordered from Bright Cellars are all old world wine,
so were the wines that the Romans enjoyed at the beginning,
but their old world meant Greece. And it wasn't just the wine but the art and
culture of the Greeks that were invading Roman society, and that really irked our
old friend Cato of the Elder who hated to see Rome embracing all that was Greek.
And after the sack of Syracuse the Greek city he
said "The vanquished have conquered us not we them."
But then again Cato was a grump. Most people welcomed this Greek influence
specifically wine from the Isle of Chios, the same place from which we get our mastic.
Cayenne wine became the rarest and most precious of wines during the early republic
and it was so expensive that often during a big banquet
everyone would get a sip before moving to the less expensive wines.
And it's interesting because it's one of the few fine wines in ancient Rome that was red
instead of the more popular white.
The Greek historian Theopompous said that it was
actually the first red wine which he called black wine.
It's doubtful but who's going to question him? Not me.
I'm also not going to question Pliny the
Elder who hailed both the wine's flavor and medicinal properties.
Now much of what we know about the wine of ancient Rome comes from Pliny
the Elder who was revolutionary in many of his ideas on wine,
specifically an idea that today the french call te hoi. These examples, if I'm not greatly mistaken,
will go far to prove that it is the land and the soil that is of primary importance,
and not the grape as the same vine transplanted to several places is productive of features and
characteristics of quite opposite natures, and for him the land and soil that produced great wine was
mostly iItaly and not Greece, though some of the wines that he talks about get mixed reviews. I
guess back then people's palettes differed just like they do now. Columella had said that the
wine from Sorentinum "Holds first place in the excellence of wine." but Pliny said that while
it's good for the sick due to its thinness, its flavor leaves something to be desired.
And emperor Tiberius believed it to be no less than a conspiracy among physicians
to even call it wine as he said that it was nothing more than fancy vinegar
which sounds about like the wine that I used to drink in college.
And even Columella who did like it said that it
was only good after it had been aged 15 to 25 years.
Now this idea of wine being medicinal and having other
qualities besides flavor to recommend them was very important in ancient Rome.
The Empress Livia lived well into her 80s and was asked what her secret was.
She "attributed her longevity to the wine of Pucinum, as she never drank any other."
Livia's husband the Emperor Augustus on the other hand preferred the wine known as
Sethinum it was known to have a sharpness and taste of figs and was best served
diluted and chilled with snow but it wasn't the flavor that recommended it rather it was because
there is no danger of indigestion and flatulence resulting from the use of this wine now Augustus
had a man working for him who was a bit like a sommelier and would choose his wines for him,
and he was a bit of a wine snob. One time while they were visiting someone's estate he was doing
a tasting of the wine from that area and he said to the owner of the estate
"The taste of this wine is new to me, and it is by no means of first-rate quality;
the Emperor, however, you will see will drink of no other."
You can almost hear the eye roll.
Now the most famous wine of ancient Rome perhaps
because it is the most written about wine but also because it is one of the best
was called Falernian.
"There is no wine that ranks higher than the Falernian;
it is the only one, too, among all the wines that takes fire on the application of flame."
Clearly highly alcoholic almost to the point of incredulity but it wasn't the strength of the wine
but its pedigree that made it so prized.
Originally Mount Massico south of Neopolis, modern-day Naples, was bare
with just enough grass to graze a few cows belonging to the farmer named Falernos.
Well one night Bacchus, the god of wine, came looking for a place to rest
and the poor farmer let him stay at his place
and gave him what bread and milk he had.
Well Bacchus being Bacchus took the milk and turned it into wine,
and they drank until they passed out.
The next morning when the farmer woke up, probably with a hangover, Bacchus was gone
but his mountain was draped in a canopy of grape vines to make more wine.
Now there were three types of this Falernian wine which Pliny described as
"The rough, the sweet, and the thin."
And it was that middle one the sweet that was the most famous and probably the most flammable.
It was called Faustian Falernian and this wine had to be aged for at least 10 years
until it became golden and sweet like honey.
And I'm guessing it was something like a Sauternes or maybe an ice wine
one of the very rich dessert wines of today.
It was extremely expensive and so available really only to the very wealthy,
which is probably why most historians think that it was a fraudulent Falernian,
and that was for sale at a tavern in Pompeii.
The menu saying "For one coin you can drink wine, for two you can drink the best,
for four you can drink Falernian." Though it was surely a real Falernian that the fictional
character Trimalchio from Satyricon served to his guests to impress them.
"Carefully sealed wine bottles were immediately
brought forth, on the necks of which labels had been attached with the title Falernian.
Consulship of Opimius 100 years old.
While they were examining the labels, Trimalchio clapped his hands and said 'Ah,
so wine has a longer life than us poor folks. So let's soak it up, wine is life.
I'm giving you real opinion. I didn't put out such
good stuff yesterday and a much classier crowd was eating dinner."
Such a jerk but the bottle would have been quite remarkable because
not only was it a Falernian it was Opimium which was a specific vintage
from 121 BC named after the consul at the time, Opimius.
This vintage was served by Julius Caesar to celebrate his conquest of Spain
and a 160 year old bottle was given to Caligula in 39 AD.
Though some say that by this time it had become
so thick that it was pretty much undrinkable, but still really fancy.
Though as high and mighty as this Falernian was we can always count on the stoic
Marcus Aurelius to keep our feet on the ground.
"Even Falernian wine is just juice from a bunch of grapes."
Well you can't argue with that but a little time and that grape juice can
become something pretty remarkable.
Just as adding honey and spices might make this Pinot Grigio even more remarkable maybe not better
but different. So once you've allowed the wine to sit overnight give it a mix and then strain it.
First I strained it through a sieve and then i strained it through cheesecloth.
A coffee filter would work as well.
And here we are conditum paradoxum, the incredible spiced wine of ancient Rome.
Now even with all that straining there is still quite a bit of sediment at the bottom.
I don't know how much I'd have to strain it to get it clear,
but you know whatever. Let's give it a shot.
*glug glug
0_O
I don't know how I feel. So uh-
it's very honey but there are a bunch of other flavors in there.
There's that mastic and the saffron and they they they pop out individually.
You know it it's mixed but they really do pop out individually.
Honestly....
it just kills the wine. I mean it is definitely wine. You know if you put this in water it
wouldn't taste like this. You can taste it as wine, you could taste it it's alcoholic, but...
the other flavors are just so, so overpowering. It's not like a mulled wine or hippocras. It
is these are the flavors and it's because of all that honey but even so it definitely beats
two of the less fancy wines from ancient Rome. There was Lora a wine typically given to slaves
that was made by soaking the grape skins left from previous pressings.
Then that would be pressed for a third time to get out every last bit of
tannic gunk that they possibly could.
The other bad wine according to Pliny at least would be wine from Pompeii.
He actually said the flavor was okay but "They are found to produce headaches,
which often last until noon the next day."
Truly the mark of an inferior wine.
Nothing like the wonderful wines that you'll get
from Bright Cellars when you use my link in the description
to get 50% off of your first six bottle box plus a bonus seventh bottle.
$53 for seven bottles I don't mind if I do. Now I'm actually going to
try to finish this glass of conditum paradoxum because surprisingly enough
it's starting to grow on me. So yeah I'll see you next time on Drinking History.
[Close Captioning provided by Jose M.]