Several treatises have been written on wine in most European countries. Lord Bacon, in the days of Elizabeth, did not disdain to give his attention to the subject; and his Italian contemporary, Andrea Bacci, the physician of the able Sextus the Fifth, has given us probably the best history of wine in that rare and curious book, “De Naturali Vinorum Historia.” About a century ago a Sir Edward Barry, then a physician at Bath, and afterwards state physician to the Viceroy of Ireland, published his “Observations, Historical, Critical, and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients; and on the Analogy between them and Modern Wines.” In consequence of the interest excited by the topic, this work, now somewhat rare, acquired a certain repute, but it does not now stand in the estimation it did half a century ago. Much that Barry tells us of the ancient wines is borrowed from Bacci; and there is a great deal of useless disquisition mixed with some absurdity. The late Dr. Henderson, a good judge of wine, and who had some excellent wine in his cellar, published his “History of Ancient Wines” some seven or eight and thirty years ago, in which there is a great deal of interesting and useful information. This was followed by a “History and Description of Modern Wines,” commenced by Mr. Cyrus Redding in 1832, and published in 1833. The work was so useful and successful that a second edition was called for in 1835, and published in 1836.[30] From 1836 to the past year there has not been anything very remarkable published in England on the subject of wines. In the month of December last Mr. J. G. Shaw published a work entitled, “Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar,” and in January of the present year, Mr. Denman, also a wine merchant, published a work called the “Wine and its Fruit,” more especially in relation to the production of wine. Both of these works are well printed and illustrated, but they really add little to what was before known on the subject by any one who has made wine his study.
Barry tells us it was the reading of Hippocrates as a professional duty which first led him to the consideration of the subject of wines. Hippocrates described the various qualities of wines, and adapted vinous mixtures to different diseases and constitutions. By lessening the proportion of water usually mixed with wine, he made a powerful cordial; as, by increasing the water, he obtained a cooling diluent.
It is impossible to deny that wine, taken in moderation, tends to strengthen and excite the spirits, to cheer and comfort the languid, and to refresh the toil-worn and exhausted. The poets of Greece and Rome celebrate the praises of wine, and, as though the invention of the liquor were too transcendental to be human, attribute it to the gods—to Osiris, Saturn, and Bacchus. Anacreon calls the juice of the grape ambrosial; and Homer himself bestows on wine the epithet divine, πoτoν θείον.
Plato, while he would strictly restrain the use and severely censure excess in wine, maintains with more than his usually persuasive power, that nothing more excellent than the juice of the grape was ever granted by God to man. It appears from the ancient historians that the rules for the culture and preparation of wine and grapes descended from the Egyptians to the Greeks, who improved and perfected them, and that the Romans, in turn, became the scholars of the Greeks.
As the soil of Italy was favourable to the vine, vineyards soon spread through the country. Italy became distinguished by the name of Œnotria., and the inhabitants were called Œnotrii viri. An infinity of wines were produced from the various species of grapes. Virgil, who was as familiar with agriculture as he excelled in poetry, says it would be as easy to enumerate the sands of the sea-shore as the different species of wine.
Pliny carefully collected all that had been written before his time on the subject of the vine. He describes the various species of the vitis, and the mode and manner of making wines. He enumerates the principal wines of Asia, Greece, and Italy.
Cato, Marcus, Varro, and Columella have also written on the culture of the vine and wine-making; and it appears from the productions of these writers that they perfectly understood the racking off into fresh casks which had been previously impregnated with the vapour of sulphur. Out of these authors and Palladius, Mr. Redding admits that an excellent treatise might be formed on the grape and its products; though he states, and truly, that on the qualities and flavour of the ancient wines the moderns must be content to remain in ignorance.
We know, for instance, that the light and delicate Setine, was the favourite wine of Augustus; that it is commended by Martial, Juvenal, and Silius Italicus, who pronounces it to be worthily reserved for Bacchus himself, “ipsius mensis seposta Lyaci.” I am not, however, quite so sure as Dr. Barry that it was the wine so much recommended by St. Paul to Titus for strengthening the stomach. “It was grown,” says Henderson, “on the heights of Sezza,” and though nota strong wine, possessed sufficient firmness and permanence to undergo the operation of the fumarium; for Juvenal alludes to some which was so old that the smoke had obliterated the mark of the jar in which it was contained. The process which these wines underwent in the fumarium gave to them a greater transparency and more early maturity. This method had been long known to the Greeks, their αποθηκη being equivalent to the Roman fumarium. The ancients were perfect adepts in these methods of forcing wines, and they used for the purpose plain and burnt salt, bitter almonds, the whites of eggs, and particularly isinglass. But when wines were more than usually foul, they added sand, or marble finely powdered. Salt water, also, was frequently used to depurate and preserve wine. This discovery is said to have been owing to a slave’s having drunk part of a cask of wine committed to his care and concealed the fraud with sea water; the wine thus falsified was found to be superior to the wine of the same growth contained in the other casks. The Romans were but children in the art of adulteration, when compared with the Greeks. Palladius gives several receipts which were used by the Greeks for improving the flavour, colour, and strength of their wines, and likewise to give to new the qualities of old wine; in one, a mixture of hepatic aloes had a considerable share. Cato favours us also with a curious receipt for making an artificial Chian wine with the Falernian. He directs that the sea-water should be taken up at a great distance from the land, and that it should be kept in casks for some time before being used.
The Cæcuban wine is described as a generous, strong-bodied wine, which would keep, but which would affect the head if taken in quantity: in a word, it was a heady liquor, which the modern French would call, as they do the vin de Jurançon, “capiteux.” Like most heady wines, too, it required long keeping ere it was ripe. It was one of the favourite wines of Horace, and was generally reserved for important festivals:—
“Antehac nefas depormere Cæcubum