The World That Was - Roman Spiced Wine "Conditum Paradoxum"

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

This week, I'm going to be making some honey spiced wine that was popular in the Eastern Mediterranean. The name of this comes from Apicius, and roughly translates to "surprise" or "marvellous" spiced wine. This recipe was also recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud, which reaffirms the claims for this drink's popularity in the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant! Given the time of year I'm posting this, it would be a fitting drink to serve for any festivities you might have planned for Saturnalia!

But before I begin, I just want to make it clear that this is a recipe for an alcoholic beverage, so please don't make this if you're under the legal drinking age where you are! It's 18 in Ireland, but it may be different where you are!

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above!

Ingredients

100g honey

700ml wine (preferably red)

2 bay leaves

2 saffron strands (or a tablespoon of ground turmeric)

2tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp fennel seeds (or 5g mastic gum)

Method

1 - Grind your Spices

To begin with, we need to grind our spices. You can use pre-ground spices, but they tend to have a milder taste than freshly-ground ones. Begin grinding your peppercorns into a fine powder.

Next, go grind up some fennel seeds. The original recipe explicitly calls for mastic gum - which is the resin from the mastic tree. This can be pretty hard to obtain, so fennel works as a cheaper and more readily available substitute! This will give a herbal, aniseed tone to the drink.

Finally, we need to grind up some saffron. Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world, with a history of cultivation dating back to the 7th century BC. You can break the saffron strands in between your fingers, if it’s easier for you. If you don't want to splash out and buy some saffron, a few teaspoons of ground turmeric would work in a pinch.

When you're done with your spices, it's time to turn to your wine.

2 - Prepare the Honey

Pour a third of a cup of your wine, and all of your honey into a pot. Put this over medium-high heat and stir it constantly until the mixture starts to boil, which should take around 10 minutes. When it hits a boil, bring it off the heat, and let the mix cool down. When it's cool, put it back on to the heat and bring it to a boil again. Do this process three times - and on the third time, leave your wine off the heat for a bit, but keep it warm. If it cools down to the point where it acts more like honey than wine, just reheat this over medium heat for a couple of minutes.

3 - Mix the Wine

When your honey and wine mix is done, go pour the remainder of your bottle of wine into a bowl or pot, followed by the liquid honey wine. On top of this, toss your ground pepper, fennel seeds (or mastic), bay leaves, and saffron. Stir this to combine and infuse for about 10 minutes. You can let the pot of wine sit overnight, if you want, to let the flavours mingle, but you can serve this immediately too.

Pour your wine through a fine mesh strainer, to catch any large pieces of your spices or leaves. Bottle this up, or drink as-is! You might want to water it down slightly, as it results in a much smoother drink than if you drink it straight from the pot, but either way is good!

The finished wine is cloudy, but very sweet! Depending on how you filter this, it might take on a more peppery taste than mine - which is also based on the amount of pepper corns you use too! It might also be clearer than mine. I'd recommend straining your mix through cheesecloth or a very fine sieve, as mine allowed a large amount of pepper through! 

This recipe for spiced wine is similar to another, somewhat simpler kind of wine recorded by Apicius - Traveller’s Honey Refresher - which also required a portion of the wine to be boiled - which would remove quite a bit of the alcohol within this (but please not that this is NOT a non-alcoholic recipe). Like I've said in other videos, the type of wine used here depends on the kind of group this was prepared for! So richer Romans would have been able to afford fine red wine for this (which is what I used here), but a rose or white wine would be a good substitute for what the wider Roman populations would have had access to - if they were even able to make a drink like this at all!

In any case, this wine is a delightfully spiced drink that will really warm you up on a cold winter night!