Gutenberg’s printing press brought religion into the homes of millions. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton put science into the minds of even more. Fleming’s penicillin saved countless lives. But the island of Crete gave the world something much more valuable than all three combined: cheap wine.
When the Romans conquered the island of Crete — the first civilization to master winemaking — in 67 A.D., it began shipping the sweet wine produced on the island throughout the Roman Empire. For 400 years, Cretan wine was shipped in clay jugs as far west as Britain, and as far east as Turkey and Israel, serving as the people’s wine, something common folks could afford.
Scott Gallimore, PhD, will speak about the role of Cretan wine in the ancient Roman economy at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Paleontology Hall on Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. (tickets are free).
Gallimore, whose interest was piqued in the subject in 2005 after travelling to Crete and seeing the importance of wine on the island, says Cretan wine served a very important role in ancient society, even if it was never considered “good.”
“One of the reasons it was so popular was that it was sort of a lower-end wine that everyone could afford,” Gallimore says. “Cretan wine was never regarded as having high quality. We have ancient accounts of people in high society consuming wines of high quality, and Cretan wine is never mentioned.
“You can think of various types of wines that are popular today because you can get them for $8 or $9 a bottle.”
Historian Will Durant referred to Crete as “the first link in the European chain,” and Gallimore says that’s why he was surprised Crete’s role in the wine habits and trade routes of the Roman Empire hadn’t been explored.
“I want to ask the question, ‘Why would people want to drink wine from Crete?’” Gallimore says.
That’s a good question. Even between the years 67 and 600 A.D. when Cretan wine was at its peak popularity — Crete supplied Rome with about 20 percent of it’s wine during that period — wine was still produced throughout the Roman Empire, both by large producers and at home. So what was special about Cretan wine besides it’s price? And what did it taste like?
“It was actually a type of sweet wine called passum, so it wasn’t quite what we’d think of as regular table wine. It was a little sweeter,” Gallimore says, adding that modern equivalents would be the Greek white wine retsina, or the sweet dessert wine, ice wine.
“There’s a few reasons why it would’ve been popular in the Roman world,” Gallimore says. “One is that you can mix it with honey to create a very sweet, almost dessert drink. Also, the wine was very common in recipes. It was often used as a cooking aid. Also, Crete was very famous for medicine, for having different types of medicinal plants, and its wine was regarded as medicinal as well. It was kind of used as a cough syrup, you can add medicine to it to make it a little more palatable.”
Sustaining the Cretan civilization while providing wine to homes across the known world is the legacy of the period that lingers on Crete, Gallimore says, adding that locals on Crete today are proud of the role their ancestors played in history.
“It does show that this appeal of an alcoholic beverage like wine seems to be very deeply imbedded within human nature,” Gallimore says. “We can date this all the way to back to some of the early human civilizations, and there does seem to be a connection between wine and social activities such as dinners or symposiums.”
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