Conditum Paradoxum (Roman Spiced Wine)
Roman spiced wine with honey and mastic
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 1st Century
There was a lot of wine in ancient Rome, and it would take a very long time to cover it all. There were crude wines from the third pressings of grapes that was typically given to slaves all the way up to Falernian wine, which came from the god Bacchus and was served by Julius Caesar to celebrate his conquest of Spain.
This wine is interesting, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. The honey was very strong, and the spices popped out individually in an interesting way. You could still tell that it was wine, but the other flavors really overpowered it. Even so, it started to grow on me by the end. Try it out and see what you think!
“Incredible Spiced Wine.
Put 15 pounds of honey in a bronze vessel into which you have already put two pints of wine…Heat it over a slow fire…stirring with a stick as it cooks…When it is cooled, heat it again. This must be done a second and third time, then remove it from the fire and skim it the next day. Then add four ounces of ground pepper, three scruples of ground mastic, a dram each of aromatic leaf and saffron, five roasted date pits and the same dates softened in wine…and pounded. When this is prepared add 18 pints of light wine. If it is bitter, add charcoal.”
Ingredients:
- 1 750 ml bottle of wine, I used a pinot grigio
- 1 date and its pit, separated
- 2/3 cup (225 g) honey
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- A pinch of mastic powder*
- A pinch of ground spikenard or bay leaf
- A pinch of ground saffron threads
*See notes below.
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
- Soak the date in a little bit of the wine.
- Roast the date pit in the oven for 15 minutes.
- In a saucepan, combine the honey with 1/3 cup (75 ml) of the wine. Set it over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer, making sure it doesn’t boil over. Simmer for 5 minutes. Let it cool, then return it to the heat and bring it back to a simmer for 5 minutes. Do this a total of 3 times.
- Grind the date pit in a mortar and pestle as fine as you can. It’s really hard to do this, so just break it down a bit and that’s fine. Add the spices and the date (save the wine the date soaked in) and mash until you have a paste.
- Stir the date mixture into the wine and honey until well combined. Stir in the rest of the wine, including the wine you soaked the date in. Cover it and let it rest overnight.
- After the wine has sat overnight, give it a stir and strain it. I used a sieve first to get the larger pieces out, then used a few layers of cheesecloth. A coffee filter would work as well.
- Serve it forth.
Notes
- Mastic is a gum or resin from the mastic tree on the Greek island of Chios. It starts off bitter, then gets a sweet pine flavor that’s kind of like walking through a forest. Really wonderful in moderation.
- Link to mastic: https://amzn.to/3xP0QW5
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