Rumney wine was a popular form of

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 ...

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and

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during the 14th to 16th centuries. Its name was derived from its exporter ''Romania'', which was at that time a common name for

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and the southern

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, the lands of the

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. 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 Patras and other ports. Although modern methods are different, the Mavrodafni of Patras might be regarded as a modern equivalent of medieval Rumney wine. At the same period, Monemvasia, on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese, was the centre for the export of Malmsey wine; Cretan wine was the third of the medieval trio of Greek wines that were prized in western Europe.

References

{{reflist Medieval wine Greek wine mentioned in Chapter 9 of 'The Spring of the Ram' by Dorothy Dunnett