Il 17/05/2011 22:21, cwdjrxyz ha scritto:

> If we turn to the period of a few hundred years on either side of the
> bc/ad transition, there is much information about wines in Rome,
> Greece, and a few other countries.

Very true. In these guys had an alcohol-meter it would be so easy

> So far as I know, these countries
> did not distill alcohol then. Distillation was introduced by Arabs
> several hundreds of years later, but likely before the time of a
> certain Arab prophet.

I've read about the discovery of distillation in arab countries around
VII century, the same century of Mohammed. Then it got to Europe many
centuries after, like 15th or 16th century.
Then, when we europesna started mastering distillation techniques, we
never stopped, LOL

> Thus fortified wines likely were unknown.

Exactly.

> If we consider everyday wines, some likely reached the alcohol content
> of modern wines fermented using natural yeast, but many, if not most,
> likely did not.

"everyday" is the word here. It looks like the romans used to have 2
kinds of wine: the aged wines (in amphoras) and the fresh wines
(straigth from the fermentation vat, maybe after some time has passed).

> But the rich Romans also had very expensive wines that were sometimes
> aged for many decades.

This is totally new to me. How were these wines aged? Taling about
containers, as you may think too.

> Very sweet wines were liked.

This makes sense, and a lot of it.

> The rich old Romans likely would have liked Tokaji essencia, so
> consider how essencia is made.

I don't know when the production of tokaji essencia started, maybe some
centuries later?
Anyway, I love tokaji essencia
--
Vilco
And the Family Stone
So che faccio il tuo gioco rispondendo a questo post ma mff