Rose Wine and Violet Wine (Rosatum, Violatium)

History

Rosatum and violatium sit near the front of Book I, the section titled in Greek as Epimeles ("the careful housekeeper"), which opens the compilation with spiced and flavored wines such as conditum and wormwood wine. The method is patient rather than complex: rose petals, their bitter white bases removed, are sewn into linen, steeped in wine for seven days, then replaced with fresh petals twice more before the wine is strained and sweetened with honey only at the moment of drinking. Violet wine is made the same way with violets in place of roses. A following entry even counterfeits the drink, steeping citrus leaves in unfermented must so a cook could "make rose wine without roses." Honey-sweetened flower wines like these were prized as digestives, and an early translator glossed them as a mild laxative medicine. Roses themselves were a marker of Roman luxury, scattered at feasts, floated in wine, and catalogued by Pliny the Elder for their many medicinal uses; the lavish petal-showers ascribed to emperors such as Elagabalus are moralizing anecdotes rather than kitchen record. The recipe survives only because it was gathered into De re coquinaria, a late anonymous compilation of roughly the fourth or fifth century AD that carries the name of Marcus Gavius Apicius, a first-century gourmet who was almost certainly not its author.

Ingredients

• rose petals
• wine
• honey
• violets
• fresh citron leaves
• must (fresh grape juice)

Instructions

1. Strip the white base from rose petals, thread and sew them, and steep as many as possible in wine for seven days.
2. Remove the roses, add fresh sewn petals, steep seven more days, then remove; repeat a third time.
3. Strain the wine; when serving, stir in honey. Use roses that are dry of dew and sound.
4. Make violet wine the same way from violets, sweetening with honey.
5. Rose-less version: steep fresh green citron leaves (in a palm basket) in unfermented must for forty days, then remove; add honey when needed.