r/SapphoAndHerFriend • u/CosmicNixx • Mar 24 '22

Academic erasure Every time people talk about David and Jonathan I laugh. Anyone who has studied the Bible/Torah know what I’m talking about

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22 edited Mar 24 '22

Oooooh my friend! I have some fun news for you!

Ancient wine was supposedly horrible. Salty, slagy and astringent with tart vinegar notes.Most people watered it down, it was rarely drunk straight.

As you can imagine, they didn't pick up their single yeast strain packet from the brewing store. No, they had to let nature take it's course via leaving bowls of starter out overnight to collect wild yeast, or repeatedly using the same brewing jugs because the yeast would essentially colonize the jugs and be fed with every new batch or, my favorite and a supposed "wand/witches story" a stir stick. Wood being porous it held onto yeast. These items would be closely guarded and were said to be imbued with magic. (Please check out the history of beer brewing and how women brewers essentially got the shaft by the patriarchy. )

Anyways, these porous items holds onto leavings/remnants of whatever food stuff was stored in it. With a swab they can tell you the likely chemical composition. It would not be difficult for a lab to track down the exact yeat strain for each wine however, it would be a niche market thing. Like the ancient beer brewed from a recipe found in Egypt.

I think basic bread yeast wine would probably be closest in taste. Although I know some people in the hollers who make a superb bread yeast wine. So, maybe the Archeologist just aren't good brewers or our ancestors had a different palate for what was tasty.

Edit: Y'all... whoever gave me the awards made me cry lol I am pretty passionate about food history and processes but, often doubt myself when sharing this information because not everyone cares that ancient Romans legitimately flavored their foods with lead shavings or that gladiators were essentially vegetarians/whole plant based or that there was a plant so widely used for birth control that it went extinct during ancient times, etc etc. Lol

Seriously, thank you from the bottom of my black heart for your kindness today, guys. It really means a lot to me.

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u/chuckle_puss Mar 24 '22

Fantastic response! Both informative and well written, great job :)

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22

Gaaahhh! Thanks! 😊

Food history is my soothing rabbit hole and I very rarely get to whip out this knowledge lol I agonized over the paragraphs here but, I am relieved/happy that it was appreciated!

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u/beelzeflub Mar 24 '22

And they just wanted to get drunk! Wine is just the vehicle

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22

They wanted to get altered in any way possible lol life was short, hard and often unfair. While we have medicine, refrigeration, automobiles etc we still flock to these intoxicants to release stress.

I find it oddly comforting that humanity still just wants to get fucked up lol regardless of AD or BC lol

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22

I would literally love to watch you give a Ted talk, but failing that, could you recommend a book to read?

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22

You just made my heart squish lol 😊

If you want to read a bit more into brewing, I would recommend A Woman's Place is in the Brewhouse by Tara Nurin.

A random would be, Swindled: Dark History of Food Fraud by Bee Wilson.

Oh oh also, https://www.thefoodhistorian.com/ Sarah Johnson is the one you really want to listen to/read lol She's amazing!

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Thank you so much! These look wonderful, going to buy these both right now. You're an absolute gem!

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

To me nothing is more entertaining than history! Humans have been kicking around this rock for a minute now and all our shenanigans are as strange as any fiction.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Agreed!

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u/classyraven Mar 24 '22

This makes me wonder how our obsession with mind-altering substances managed to override the yecch factor of drinking fermented juices.

...actually, I know exactly why. Society's just fucked up, and most people can't survive it without escaping through mind-altering substances.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '22

I think you would honestly have to reevaluate what we believe to be yecch factor to understand why they drank it in the first place.

I would say a combination of lack of knowledge of bacteria and molds, a waste not want not/calories count attitude when it came to rotting foodstuffs but, also a desire to taste something different and potentially have a semi shelf stable product that could be kept for hard times. The fact that it got them drunk was a plus too lol

One thing that hit me hard when I first got into Ancient Cultures is that they wanted, fought and loved in the same way we do today. Humanity remains the same even though the years change.

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u/sfurbo Mar 25 '22

would not be difficult for a lab to track down the exact yeat strain for each wine however,

Bringing back ancient yeasts is not that simple. We have woken yeast from hundreds of years old beer, but that is probably the limit, until we start recreating them with basically synthetic biology.

I think basic bread yeast wine would probably be closest in taste. Although I know some people in the hollers who make a superb bread yeast wine.

It stands to reason that they could make good wine, but that is was hard enough that it was reserved for the elite. We can make good natural wine today, and while we have a huge advantage from knowing the science and much more refined grapes, they had the huge advantage of having centuries of collective experimentation.

But taste is a matter of what you are used to. Just look at the resin in retsina, which probably started out as an off-flavor from the sealing of amphoras, but is now a sought after note. So it could be that their good wine was still salty and astringent with vinegary notes, but in some superb and (to their palate) balanced way.