History Flashcards
What is a Dolia?
A flat jar used for storing snacks in wine bars in Pompei.
Who was King Jamshid?
A Persian king in a Persian legend that purportedly invented wine.
What ancient wine writer is credited with being the first to give names to grapes?
Pliny
What was the Terebinth tree?
The sap from the tree was used to create resin for sealing containers.
What was a Posca Roman Wine?
A mix of thin sour wine and water.
What was a Mulsum Roman Wine?
A sweet mixture of wine and honey.
What religious order was Clos de Vougeot associated with?
The Cistercians.
When was the Opimium Vintage?
121 B.C.
Who was Christopher Merret?
An Englishmen credited with being the first to purposely create sparkling wine.
In the 1600s, what was Madeira in Charleston and Savannah often named after?
The ship that transported it.
Who was Sir Kenelm Digby?
Owner of a British glass factory that made strong glass as early as 1632.
Who was Arnaud de Pontac?
First to charge high prices for wine from Bordeaux, the estate of Haut-Brion.
Who was Duggie Jooste?
Recreated Vin de Constance in 1980m released in 1989.
Who was famous for diluting their wine?
The Greeks
Who was Georges Ravenscroft?
The first person to add lead to glass, creating very strong but clear glass for use in bottles and decanters.
What was Homer’s preferred ratio of water to wine?
20:1
When are the “blood vintages” of Champagne?
Champagne vintages from 1914 and 1915.
What is believed to be the oldest wine bottle that still exists today?
A 1540 Steinwein form Germany.
What wine was mentioned in Shakespeare’s Falstaff?
Sherris sack (Sherry)
What was the name of the law that enforced prohibition in the U.S.?
The Volstead Act.
When was the law enforcing prohibition in the US in effect?
January 17, 1920 - December 5, 1933.
Where are some likely locations for the first wines to have been made?
The Transcaucuses - (in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan)
Turkey’s Southern Anatolia
Zagros Mountains of Iran.
What are the Transcaucasus?
An area south of the Caucasus mountains including Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. May have been where wine was first made.
What are the Zagros Mountains?
A mountain range in Iran, where wine may have originated.
What is the Southern Analotia?
A region of Turkey where it is possible that wine was first made.
What did the Georgians call wine?
Gvino - they may have been the first to give wine a name.
Who was Enkidu?
A character in the Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh”. A “wild man of the woods”, cited as an ancient example of wine in literature.
What is Shiraz named after?
The town of Shiraz in ancient Persia.
Who was Dionysus?
The Greek god of wine.
Who was Eubulus?
A Greek poet who wrote about the effects of the ten bowls of wine relating to their effect on activity.
What two types of wine did the ancient Greeks drink?
Early picked, thin, raw, quick to go sour.
Sweet wines made by drying the grapes.
Where did the Greeks spread their wine?
The Roman Empire, France, North Africa, and western Russia.
Where in Italy did the Greeks settle prior to the Romans?
Southern Italy and Sicily.
What was Dionysus known as by the Romans?
Bacchus
Where were the first examples found of wine in jars marked with the style, year, area of production, and name of the producer?
Egypt - the tomb of Tutankhamun.
How did we learn so much about wine making in ancient Egypt?
Murals on the walls in tombs of less exalted figures, eg. Khaemwaset, which shows a particularly comprehensive view of the process of wine making.
Who developed the first amphorae?
The Egyptians.
What are amphorae?
Tall earthenware jars whose pointed bottoms could be buried in sand and transported without breaking, and had narrow necks to seal to prevent air from attacking the wine.
Who is believed to have first invented the glass for drinking wine?
The Phoenicians, possibly the Syrians or Egyptians.
When was glass for drinking first made?
Some think as early as 1500 BC in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It reemerged in the 8th century BC in the same area as well as mesopotamia.
How was the first Phoenician drinking glass made?
By molding with molten glass and sand.
When and where did glass blowing originate?
Phoenicia or Syria, in about the 1st century BC.
What ancient city in Persia was known for its wine production?
Shiraz.
What was Byblos?
A northern Phoenician town famous in Greece for its wines.
Where are some areas the Phoenicians are believed to have brought vines to?
Cyprus, areas around the Douro and Tagus rivers in Portugal, and Ebro in Spain, as far as Rioja.
Who are some Romans who wrote about wine?
Cato, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, Galen.
Who first wrote about how wine improves with age?
Horace
Who first wrote about the virtues of late-harvesting grapes and how to install drainage in damp vineyards?
Virgil
Who was Cato?
A Roman writer who set down the rules for efficient large-scale wine estates.
Who was Columella?
A Roman writer who described methods of pruning and trellising, yield, harvest dates, and other details that are still valid today.
What did Pliny write about wine?
He classified wines into different ranks, and was the first person to begin to categorize grape varieties. He found 80 varieties, some of which still exist today.
What are some grapes that are believed to have been around during Roman times?
Greco di Tufo
Fiano
Piedirosso
What wine still in existence to day is made in a way similar to Roman wine?
Vin Santo in Tuscany
Madeira
How long has wine been made in Georgia?
8000 years.
What was the Opimian Vintage?
The most famous Roman wine made near Naples. Was still able to be drunk 100 years later.
What is a fumarium?
A loft over a smoke room, where wine was heated, oxidized, and pasteurized, all at the same time, similar to Madeira today.
Where did the Romans bring vines while “empire-building”?
Catalonia, the Duero Valley, Rioja
The Rhine and Mosel
The Rhone Valley, Burgundy, the Loire, Champagne and Bordeaux.
Who described, in his book “Natural History” , resin having the color of honey with a fleshy consistency?
Pliny
Who generally liked the taste of resin in their wines, and who did not?
The Romans liked it, the Greeks not so much.
What ancient city was Rome’s wine port?
Pompeii
Where did the idea of the wealthy running vineyards not for profit but to show off their wealth originate?
The hills around Pompeii in the first century.
What were amphoriskos?
Tiny glass jars about 4 inches high and 2 inches across used for serving wine in Rome.
What order of monasteries were the first great order to influence the world of wine?
The Benedictines.
Which two orders of monasteries had abbeys in Burgundy in the Middle Ages?
The Cisterians and the Benedictines.
Where did the Benedictines build up vineyards?
Burgundy’s Gevrey-Chambertin and Vosne-Romanee
The Rhone, Champagne, and the Loire.
Mosel and Rhine Valleys, Franken
Austria/Switzerland
Where did the Cistercians develop vineyards?
Champagne, the Loire, Provence
Germany
Burgundy’s Cote d’Or
When and why was the Cistercian order founded?
In 1112 to counter the less austere Benedictines.
What city in France was a prosperous wine port during the middle ages?
La Rochelle
When and why did Aquitaine become part of England?
1151, when Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine.
When did the Dutch drain the Medoc in Bordeaux?
The 17th century.
Why did the 1540 Steinwein survive so long?
It had both high acidity, and was from an unusually warm vintage so was able to ripen well. They were also allowed to add sulphur to wine as of 1487.
Where did the 1540 Steinwein come from?
The Wurzburger Stein vineyards in the cellars of the Prince-Bishops.
Who were likely the first wine growers to use grapes that had noble rot?
The Hungarians.
What wine was once said to contain gold?
Tokaj
What does the Hungarian word Aszu mean in English?
Shrivelled, desiccated grapes, and grapes whose sugar is concentrated by noble rot.
When was the first mention of Aszu grape wine?
1571.
When did Germany first start purposefully nobly rotting their grapes?
1775.
What is the legend concerning the first azsu wine?
Szepsi Mate postponed the vintage at the Oremus vineyard of 1630, fearing an attack by the Turks.
What was Verre Anglais?
“English Glass”, a bottle strong enough to withstand the pressure from sparkling wine.
Where did the original use of a second fermentation in the bottle used for sparkling wine develop?
In England with the cidermakers of Hereford, Somerset and Gloucester.
What was English Champagne?
What many in London called bottle-fermented ciders.
Who was Christopher Merret?
The Englishman who may have been the first to determine how to make sparkling wine by adding sugar to cause a second fermentation..
When was cork first used for stopping wine bottles on a regular basis?
The 1740.
Who first used cork as an occasional stopper?
The Greeks and Romans.
When did wine bottles first start being produced with the aim of aging the wine in mind?
The middle of the 18th century.
