The Greeks had a word for it — ‘watering’

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 14

The Greeks had a word for it — ‘watering’

ON THE GRAPEVINE

By

Maurice Hunter

There has been so much hoo-ha about watering wines recently that 1 have taken a dip into the past — and discovered that the ancient Greek equivalent of the imperturbable Jeeves would never have survived. If he had not watered the wine he would have been cast to the wolves, or subjected to whatever dire punishment was reserved for offenders against the system of the day.

The Greeks, in fact, went to great trouble to ensure that the wine was not only watered, but watered, properly. They devised a special bowl, the krater, for mixing their wine with water. And they designed the kantharos, a two handled serving cup, for pouring it into the kylix, a shallow goblet the shape of a champagne glass. At an Athenian dinner party the guests reclined on sofas while the slaves did their thing with the water and wine, after which a libation, or toast, would be offered. The host would then decide on the. quantity and strength of the wine to be served for the rest of the evening, a practice which I am sure our Ministry of Transport would like to see revived. Greek winemakers adopted some intriguing ideas to enhance their products; such as putting honey into the amphorae, and using potter’s ' earth, powdered marble and salt water in the production. The salt water was not just a brine, but water taken from the sea when it was calm, boiled to onethird of its volume, flavoured with spices and stored for several years before use. It was then

added to the must before fermentation. In ancient Greece there was no unholy rush to be first on the market with the new season's vintage. Great growth would be kept until they were sticky and as thick as honey, and many would havto be strained before use. Apart from the fact that the Greeks liked their

wine well diluted, watering was the only way to make them drinkable. The practice of mixing resin with wine, surviving today in the form of Retsina, came from the Romans who smeared both the outside and the inside of their wine jars with it.

But the Romans also imparted a smoky flavour by storing the jars in a loft above the fumarium.Both flavours were considered to be essential to a quality wine of the day. Pliny records his tasting, at a pretentious supper party given by a nouveau riche tycoon, one Trimalchio, of a wine labelled “Opimian Mus-ca-dine, a century old.” It was made in the vintage year of 121 B.C. and was so dried and thick that it had to be scraped off the sides of the amphora and mixed with a younger wine. At the same party Trimalchio also offered his guests a “vino cotto — boiled off to a third part and stored underground to preserve its strength.”

Of the well known wines of the day, Maro-

nean was described by Pliny as the most ancient of all. Grown near the Thracian shore and dark in colour, it was generally mixed with eight parts of water to one of wine.

Chian, according to the contemporary wine writers, was the best of the Greek wines, “never causing a headache.” When Horace decided to throw a party, he got in a cask of Chian and gave orders that one-half should be mixed in the proportion of nine cups of water to three of wine for the temperate guests, and the other half as nine cups of wine to three of water for the hard drinkers.

But it seems that then, as now, the industry was the subject of allegations of malpractice. Just as, not so long ago, the revelation of cheap Algerian wines being sold as Beaujolais left many wine authorities red-faced, so Pliny complained bitterly of the importation of wine from Narbonne, some of which might also have been adulterated with obnoxious herbs and spices, having been given a forced ageing by smoking.

And Cato described a wine called Coan, from the island of Cos as being heavily mixed with sea water and white in colour, saying that it could be faked by using Italian wine and salt. So where does this leave us, 2000 years later, faced with the possibility that the wine we love is watered? It is sad, but true, that most people remember lhe bad things but forget the good. The Health Department report that many cheap commercial wines contain an undue proportion of water is remembered to the extent that quite a few wine en-

thusiasts now regard the selection of premium wines with a jaundiced eye and ask: “Which are the ones without water?”

They forget about the D.S.I.R. reports which revealed that the number of excessively diluted wines had dropped from 54 out of 68 in 1971, to 33 out of 123 in 1977, and that adulteration of wines produced by companies with an eye on the export market is now most unlikely. In view of the fact that the Health Department has taken 55 years to start thinking about legislation introduced in 1924 to prohibit the practice — and it will probably be another 55 before enforcement action is taken — perhaps the best light in which we can look at the watering of our wines is that it is part of the evolution of the industry. In the meantime, consider the words of Peter Sichel, a German authority who is also a partner in the company which produces the Blue Nun range, and which enjoys a world sales volume the envy of its competitors.

“. . . in certain wines in mass consumer production, selling for an inexpensive price, it (the addition of water) may actually make a very pleasant light wine. However, I think people shouldn’t worry about adding water to wine as long as the end product tastes all right."