Help me learn about ancient wine

There are some bright folks here so I am hoping you can help me.
I am trying to find out about wine in the first century.
I read somewhere that the alcohol content was in the vicinity of 4%, and much less than the wine today.

I assume that it was not distilled, and just let ferment, and strained or whatever. However, I have almost no knowledge of it.

Can anyone direct me to a site or can tell me about how it was made, and its alcohol content vs today?

Thanks,
Jerry

Try these links from Google Search "Ancient Wine"
Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Hi Jerry, how old are you? Not trying to be rude just wondering if any of my personal knowledge of home made is
applicable. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sssh.gif
Topper /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Mike,
Thanks for the links.

Topper,

Maybe it might help. I am 71 until August.

My interest is brought about by wondering what the wine was in Biblical times, and the 1st century.

I know that wine was a staple drink. I also understand that when it was consumed during ceremonies or feasts that it was diluted with water from 3 to 1 up to 12 or more to 1. It was done so that one would not get drunk.

I assume that today's wine is distilled, but am doubtful that it was done in Biblical times. I suppose that distilled wine would have a greater alcohol content than if it were not distilled, but instead just allowed to ferment, and then I guess it would be strained.

But I am assuming a lot, so am hoping someone can help.

Jerry

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

I don't think that most wine is distilled. I took a couple of winery tours in Napa Valley almost 30 years ago, and I don't think that distilling is part of the process. I think they might heat the mash (or whatever they call it) to aid the fermentation process.

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

Wine is not distilled. If juice is fermented, you get wine-stuff. If grain is fermented, you get beer-stuff. If fermented stuff is distilled, you have a distilled spirit (whiskey, vodka, brandy, rum, etc).

There can be cross-over categories or oddball things, but plain wine is not fermented. Plain fermentation can give you an alcohol content up to about 12% easily, and up to the low teens% with some work. Higher than that and you have to have some distillation going on. Fortified wines have wine that has been kicked-up with some added distilled spirits.

Making a fermented drink is not all that hard to do. Making a good fermented drink takes a bit more skill. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

Thanks, and now I am learning what I wanted to know.

One thing is if grape juice is not refrigerated, will it automatically ferment into wine without adding anything?

MoonRise, did you mean to say that plain wine was not distilled instead of fermented?

I am reasonably sure that the ancients did not have sufficient refrigeration to keep grape juice from changing into wine or whatever it does. I wonder how much time elapsed until the juice would change.

I appreciate the help.

Jerry

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

Jerry,

Yes, wine is fermented. Beer is fermented.

Distillation is another process altogether. Distillation relies on the fact that many different liquids boil at different temperatures, so you can separate them out of a mixture by selectively boiling and recondensing out the different liquids from the original mixture.

Fermentation is when yeast eats the sugar in the juice and makes alcohol and carbon dioxide. The alcohol will not spoil and the sugar level has dropped (remember the yeast ate some of the original sugar in the juice), so wine is a bit more stable than plain grape juice. But there are still lots of things in the wine that other microbes can eat. If you leave wine around long enough, it will usually turn into vinegar because of bacteria.

Want to make some experimental wine? Get some grapes, put them in a container and mash them up, skins and all. Let them sit at room temperature in the open container for a few days. You should see the juice start to foam a bit, that's the wild yeasts fermenting the sugar in the grape juice. After about a week, strain out the skins and chunks.

Congratulations, you just made some wine. Remember though, making wine is easy. Making good wine takes some more skills. Instead of relying on wild yeast to ferment the grape juice, you can collect and save the yeast sediment from a prior good batch of wine and use that to ferment the next batch. Making good wine repeatably takes some knowledge and some skill, and often some luck too.

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

[ QUOTE ]
One thing is if grape juice is not refrigerated, will it automatically ferment into wine without adding anything?

[/ QUOTE ]
You need the presence of yeast to convert the sugar in the wine into alcohol. Yeasts are ubiquitous so yes there would likely be enough wild yeast on the skin of the grapes to cause spontaneous fermentation of the sugars in the grape juice. Modern wine makers add their own specially cultivated yeast strains as the strain of yeast will affect the taste of the resultant wine.

[ QUOTE ]
MoonRise, did you mean to say that plain wine was not distilled instead of fermented?

[/ QUOTE ]
I expect that Moonrise meant to say that "plain wine is not distilled".

[ QUOTE ]
I am reasonably sure that the ancients did not have sufficient refrigeration to keep grape juice from changing into wine or whatever it does. I wonder how much time elapsed until the juice would change.

[/ QUOTE ]
A matter of days. To get wine instead of vinegar one needs to keep air (oxygen) away during the fermentation, this is usually done by trapping the CO2 produced during teh fermentation.

Re: Help me learn about ancient wine

[ QUOTE ]
To get wine instead of vinegar one needs to keep air (oxygen) away during the fermentation, this is usually done by trapping the CO2 produced during teh fermentation.

[/ QUOTE ]

The air is not the cause of vinegar, bacteria are. These bacteria are carried by small fruit flies that are attracted by the smell of alcohol; try leaving an inch or two of wine in a finished bottle on a shelf for a few weeks, then look at the little flies you will find drowned in the liquid.

The reason for keeping out oxygen is to drive up the alcohol content. In the presence of air yeast multiply rapidly but produce little alcohol, when you remove the oxygen (via an air-lock) the yeast goes into a slower reproduction mode that results in much higher alcohol content being produced. If the temperature remains favourable the yeast will then continue to reproduce and produce alcohol until either their food runs out (i.e. sugar) or the alcohol content gets high enough to poison them. As mentioned earlier specially developed strains of yeast are used to not only give the characteristics required of the wine, but to also allow higher alcohol content to be achieved. Some special kits have yeast that can ferment up to 22% alcohol.