Posca- ancient Roman drink

Posca was the name of the mixture of vinegar and water which constituted the drink of the soldiers, the lower classes, and the slaves of ancient Rome. Posca was made by watering down the low-quality wine and by adding herbs and spices. It was drunk from the 300-200 BC and into the Byzantine period.

It originated in Greece as a medicinal mixture. The name may have derived from the Greek word epoxos, which means “very sharp.”

As early as the middle of the Roman Republic era (509-27 BC), the military rationed posca to troops along with grains and, very occasionally, meat and cheese. It was usually made by watering down low-quality wine and then adding spices to make it taste better. The Roman legions used to receive a lot of vinegar in rations. The soldiers used to add water to the vinegar to turn it into drinkable posca.

Posca was good enough to keep a Roman army marching - in his soldiering days, Cato the Elder drank posca to fend off raging thirst.

Posca was increasingly heavily used by the Roman army during the Republican period when it became a standard beverage for soldiers.

Aëtius of Amida and Paul of Aegina, both Byzantine Greek physicians of the sixth and seventh centuries, respectively, included recipes for a “palatable and laxative” posca that included cumin, fennel seed, celery seed, anise, thyme, and salt
Posca- ancient Roman drink

History of wine in Italy

Italy is one of the major worldwide producers of wines, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of high quality and large variety.

Winemaking began 4,000 BC pre-historic people crushing wild grapes and the juice magically intoxicated them. Greeks colonized Southern Italy and called it “Oenotria”, land of the vine.

In Italy, wines which the viticulture dates from the Roman period, both domestic species and grapes obtained from international wine grapes are being produced.

The first grapevine in Italy were known to have been raised during the Etruscan civilization. Etruscans were subtle and serene practitioners of the art of winemaking in the hills of central Italy, as attested by the art and artifacts left in their spacious tombs.

In the era of Romans, this effort, which has become more organized and ordinated, has become an important commercial value. The Romans propagated the cult of Bacchus to all corners of the empire, developing a flourishing trade in wine throughout Mediterranean lands and beyond.

The great empire helped make the wines from their regions the world’s most extensive. Over the centuries, independent kingdoms and states within the peninsula created their own wines from indigenous varietals and popularized them with names of their locations.

Roman wine production was fertile and well organized, large scale production and various storage methods such as barrel bottling were improved.

19th Century brought advancements in storage, such as the cork and allowed Italian wines to be household names in other parts of Europe.
History of wine in Italy

General history of distillation process

The first distillation apparatus found in Mesopotamia (today´s Iraq) comes from the period 3500 BC. Distillation is a very old technique which was used by the Chinese 3000 years BC, the East Indians 2500 years BC, the Egyptians 2000 years BC, the Greeks 1000 years BC, and the Romans 200 years BC.

Aristotle (B.C. 384—322) in his Meteorology says, " sea water can be made drinkable by vaporization; other liquids behave in the same way." He also speaks of the formation of dew from the moisture in the air.

Nicander (183—135 BC), a Greek poet and physician, spoke of the extraction of perfumes from plants by what should now call as a process of distillation.

The earliest certain chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in the 1st century AD but these were not distillations of alcohol.

The earliest distillation of Attar (an essential oil derived from botanical sources) was mentioned in the Hindu Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita. The Harshacharita, written in 7th century A.D. in Northern India mentions use of fragrant agar wood oil.

The medieval Arabs adopted the distillation technique of the Alexandrian Greeks, and written records in Arabic begin in the 9th century, but again these were not distillations of alcohol.

Al-Kindi (801-873), wrote in the 9th century a book on perfumes which he named ‘Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations’. It contained more than hundred recipes for fragrant oils, salves, aromatic waters and substitutes or imitations of costly drugs. The book also described one hundred and seven methods and recipes for perfume-making.

Geber or Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān, about A.D. 800, and his followers described and practiced various methods of distillation, applied in the preparation of nitric acid, aqua regia, and many other substances. They distilled wine and obtained an alcoholic spirit which Rhases (AD 860—940) also prepared from malted wheat or wheat which had been made to germinate in the ground.

Although there are rare Arab references, towards the end of the first millennium, to the distillation of wine, it seems probable that for religious reasons they did not exploit it. Distillation of alcohol for drinking seems first to have developed in Europe in the twelfth century and thereafter.

In 1250, Arnaud de Villeneuve was the first to distill wines in France; he called the product which resulted from this process eau-de-vie or water of life. He attributed to it the virtue of prolonging life.

The derivations of the words ‘alcohol’ and alambic, from the Arabic word al-koh’l and al-anbiq, indicate that it was from the Islamic word that the practice of distillation first entered Europe. Until the end of the 15th century, distilled wine (aqua vitae) seems to have been used largely as a medicine.

But in 1493, a Nuremburg doctor noted everyone in the city had got into the habit of drinking. As a result, three years later the city authorities forbade the sale of alcohol on feast days. One of the first books on distillation written by J. French has been published in London in 1651.

The Dutch, French, Irish, Scottish, and others started producing distilled spirits around the 15th and the 16th century. They created gin (Holland), whiskey (Scotland and Ireland), Armagnac (France), and Cognac (France).
General history of distillation process

Ancient drink: Posca

The Romans often drank sour wine mixed with water, a drink they called posca, a word derived either from the Latin Potor (to drink) or from the Greek epoxos (very sharp).

Posca is an old, stale wine that was beginning to sour & had been watered down. It is the ancient equivalent to cheap 3-2 beer of today. Holding little intoxicating value, it was an inexpensive & readily available drink that would not spoil over long periods of time.

As early as the time of Plautus (second century B.C.), posca was a drink of the Roman lower classes, and this association continued into the Principate. As with other foodstuffs of the common people, posca probably also featured in Roman military diet, although it has never been directly attested.

Romans sometimes valued wine for its age more than its other qualities. Roman wine was also notable for the use of herbs and spices as flavorants. This feature was inherited from the style of Greek wines. The aroma of wine was very important for Romans.

Posca was a low-quality wine made from a mixture of water and sour wines and infuse with herbs. Posca was popular among soldiers due to its low price and low alcohol content. Such mixtures use medicinally in earlier Greece, sometime taken as a drink, sometimes applied externally but they had no general name.
Ancient drink: Posca

History of spring water

Spring water has been used for basic survival, medicinal purposes and for man’s entertainment, pleasure and dalliance. The utilization and tapping spring water is an ancient art.

In early recorded history, the Egyptians and Arabian’s discussed the use of mineral waters for healing the ill.

In ancient Rome, there were23 springs, which initially supplied water throughout the city, while at the height of the Roman Empire 11 long aqueduct delivered spring water to the city from distances ranging from 16 to 91 km.

The term spa is derived from the town of Spa, now in Belgium, which is about 26 km southwest of Liege, this in turn comes from a Walloon word espa meaning a fountain.

Over time, the word spa came to be used in a generic sense, to mean a mineral spring considered to have health-giving properties or a place or resort with such a spring.

In Babylon, the Assyrian King Sanherib, son of Sargon II, constructed an intake on the Khanis spring systems and one of the first aqueducts to deliver water to the city walls.

The practice of bottling water in the United States began about 1820 when an enterprising preacher named Rev. Dr. Darius Griswold began to bottle the naturally effervescent spring water of Saratoga Springs, New York.

Europeans had travelled to ‘take the waters’ at Saratoga Springs, since even before the American Revolutions.

At first, Dr Darius sparkling water seems to have been used primarily as a cure for upset stomachs. As glass bottles became cheaper and more widely available in the middles 1800s, bottle spring waters came to be more as sources of relatively clean drinking water.

Labeled Saratoga Mineral Water, the product was the first commercially successful bottled water in the United States.

The Romans may have initiated the uses of mineral waters, but the French are traditionally the modern developers and promoters of bottled waters, Evian was exported to the United Stated as early as 1905.
History of spring water

History of apple cider in England

The word ‘cider’ has its roots in ancient Hebrew. Sheker, which means strong drink, was translated into the Greek sikera, the Latin sicera, and then the French cidre.  The English called it cyder or cider.

The Spanish were making sidra when the Romans invaded Britain in 55 BC and found the Celts fermenting the juice of native crab apples to make cider.

Interest in cider in Britain faded after the fall of Rome because many orchards were abandoned when invading Jutes and Danes attacked British settlements.

After the Norman Conquest on 1066, cider consumption became widespread in England and orchards were established specifically to produce cider apples. The Normans had developed a number of apple varieties which they then introduced to England. In the 15th century, real progress was made in its presentation. Cider is a way of life.

During medieval times, cider was used to pay workers at the monasteries.

An English noble, Lord Scudamore, is credited worth having bottles cider as early as the 1640s, when almost all cider was stored in wooden barrels and drawn off ‘on draft’ as needed.

By the seventeenth century it was so beloved that the English wrote poems and songs about cider.

Cider production in England was estimated at 55 million gallons in 1900.  In the early 1980s cider sales had risen to over 60 million gallons per year.
History of apple cider in England

History of wine in Italy

The history of wine in Italy stretches back thousands of years. The Etruscans may well have enjoyed wine. 

The early Etruscans were already producing wine in southern Italy from the 8th to the 4th century BC. When the ancient Greeks arrived, wine already existed there.

During the Roman Empire, garum fish sauce with water was a favored drink, and Roman waged naval campaign to secure garum from Spain and North Africa. Because garum was costly Roman legions often had to make do with fermented grape juice shipped to distant outpost.

Rome expands its territory by conquering, where they encounter the Greek colonies. They are exposed to high quality Greek wines, the technology associated with them and the Greek god of wine.

During the Kingdom and much of the Republic, the Greek influence in winemaking and drinking dominated. The preferred wines are sweet with high alcohol content. It has been estimated that the average Roman consumed fourteen liters of wine a month.

Old Roman wines, like wines today, varied from gourmet selections to early undrinkable swill. The Romans add resin, herbs, spices and perfumes to many wines. Often, the purpose is to mask the bad taste of a vinegary wine.

The Romans expanded the era of Europe under vine immensely taking wine and a wine culture with them as they eventually conquered most of the continent.

At the turn of the first century BC, several Roman vineyards gain popularity and respect. The most famous of them is Falernum. Wine was traded to Gaul from Roman Empire form the 3rd century BC.

Wine was particularly in demand from the late 2nd century BC in southern Gaul, where viticulture had not yet been introduced.

Major advancements in viticultural and vinicultural practices were developed by the Roman and they bred many ancestors of today’s top grapes.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church maintained a wine culture in Italy as it did for the rest of Europe.

With the introduction of more advanced winemaking science and new technologies like the cork to seal bottles, Italian wines became a major force in export markets in the early 1800s.

In 1963, the Italian government introduced laws called the ‘denominazione di origine controllata’ to control wine production. This led to a rise in standards and Italy’s place as one of the world’s leading wine exporter.

In 2006, Italy outproduced France and became the world’s largest wine producing country.
History of wine in Italy

Wine in ancient Roman

In the Roman period, from 150 BC to AD 150, wine – a fermented grape juice and pulp – was a comestible of complex associations. 

Wine was produced north of the Alps even before the region was conquered by the Romans. The grapes were even cultivated in England under the Roman Empire. 

Wine was one of the chief indicators of the élite life style which gave cultural coherence to the systems as Greek and Roman civilization. It acted as a differentiator, even within exclusive high ranking circles. 

Wine drinking had not been the regular Roman habit in the earlier Republic that it became during the Empire. 

In earlier times Romans had been content with water and home-made brews concocted out of all manner of fruits, flowers and vegetables: figs, medlars, roses, parsley, saffron and other strong flavorings mixed sometimes no doubt with juice of the grape. 

Wine was traded to Gaul from Italy from the 3rd century BC. But a great expansion wine export began in the second half of the 2nd century BC from Etruria, Latium and Campania to all areas of Roman territory. 

Wine was particularly in demand from the late 2nd century BC in southern Gaul, where viticulture had not yet been introduced. 

Wine became national drinks of the Romans. Usually mixed with water and honey, it was served even to young children. 

The wine in ancient Romans was often unlike wine as tasted today. It was more medium to which a multitude of ingredients were added, from such understandable additions as herbs and spices, to more improbable ingredients of seawater, pitch and resin. 

Wine in ancient Roman