Drinks of the world / by James Mew and John Ashton.

Mew, James.

Date:: 1892

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drinks of the world / by James Mew and John Ashton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

34/390 (page 26)

The most important wines of later times are those of the islands Chios, Thasos, Cos, and Lesbos, and a few places on the opposite coast of Asia. The Aminean wine, so called from the vine which pro- duced it, was of great durability. The Psithian was particularly suitable for passum, and the Capnian, or smoke-wine, was so named from the colour of the grapes. The Saprian was a remarkably rich wine, “toothless,” says Athenseus, “and sere and wondrous old.” Wine was the ordinary Greek drink. Diodorus Siculus says Dionysus invented a drink from barley, a mead-like drink called fipvTos; but there is nothing to show that this was ever introduced into Greece. The Greek wine was conducive to inebriety, and Mu- ssus and Eumolpus (Plato, Rep. ii.) made the fairest reward of the virtuous an everlasting booze—rjyrja-dfxevoi kciWicttov dper^g /uucrOdv fieOr/v alwviov. Different sorts of wine were sometimes mixed together; sea water was added to some wines. Plutarch (Quasi. Nat. io) also relates that the casks were smeared with pitch, and that resin was mixed with their wine by the Euboeans. Wine was mingled with hot water as well as with cold before drinking. To drink wine undiluted was looked on as a barbarism. Straining, usual among the Romans, seems to have been the reverse among the Greeks. It is seldom mentioned. The Roman wine was most likely filtered through wool. The Spartans (.Herodotus, vi. 84) fancied Cleomenes had gone mad by drinking neat wine, a habit he had