Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
during the 14th to 16th centuries. Its name was derived from its exporter ''Romania'', which was at that time a common name for
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
and the southern
Balkans
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
, the lands of the
Eastern Roman Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. The wine was called ''Rumney'' or ''Romney'' in English, ''Romenier'' or ''Rumenier'' in German, ''vino di Romania'' in Italian. Writers on food and diet list it among sweet and "hot" wines (hot in the dietary sense) of which no more than one or two glasses should be taken. It was not a "fortified" wine in the modern sense, rather a "cooked" wine (''vin cuit'') to which boiled-down must (grape syrup) was added.
History
Rumney was exported from Methoni in the southern Peloponnese (one English source calls it ''Rompney of Modonn'') and perhaps also from
and other ports. Although modern methods are different, the
Mavrodafni
Mavrodaphni, Mavrodaphne, or Mavrodafni (Greek: Μαυροδάφνη ''lit.'' 'black laurel') is both a black wine grapeMalmsey wine;
Cretan wine
Cretan wine is wine from the Greek island of Crete. It has a long history since wine was certainly being made by the Minoans since the Bronze Age. Wines from Crete are not listed among those specially prized in classical Greece, but under the Rom ...
was the third of the medieval trio of Greek wines that were prized in western Europe.
References
{{reflist
Medieval wineGreek wine mentioned in Chapter 9 of 'The Spring of the Ram' by Dorothy Dunnett