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336 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2005
"...herbs, honey, and other additives were commonly added to lesser wines to conceal imperfections. Some Romans even carried herbs and other flavorings with them while traveling, to improve the taste of bad wine.
While modern wine drinkers may turn up their noses at the Greek and Roman use of additives, it is not that different from the modern use of oak as a flavoring agent, often to make otherwise unremarkable wines more palatable.
Below these adulterated wines was posca, a drink made by mixing water with wine that had turned sour and vinegar-like. Posca was commonly issued to Roman soldiers when better wines were unavailable, for example, during long campaigns. It was, in effect, a form of portable water-purification technology for the Roman army. When a Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge dipped in wine during his crucifixion, the wine in question would have been posca."
Shortly before his death in 1605, Pope Clement VIII was asked to state the Catholic church's position on coffee. At the time, the drink was a novelty little known in Europe except among botanists and medical men, including those at the University of Padua, a leading center for medical research. Coffee's religious opponents argued that coffee was evil: They contended that since Muslims were unable to drink wine, the holy drink of Christians, the devil had punished them with coffee instead. But the pope had the final say. A Venetian merchant provided a small sample for inspection, and Clement decided to taste the new drink before making his decision. The story goes that he was so enchanted by its taste and aroma that he approved its consumption by Christians.
Infants benefited too, since the antibacterial phenolics in tea pass easily into the breast milk of nursing mothers. This lowered infant mortality and provided a large labor pool just as the Industrial Revolution took hold.