Talk:Ancient Greece and wine

Origins
The last paragraph in the Origins section reads in part: "and it is from Crete that the Mycenaean is believed to have spread viticulture...." The subject that Mycenaean is modifying is missing. Perhaps Mycenaean culture is meant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JGC1010 (talk • contribs) 07:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes. Bad wording on my part but it is fixed now. Thanks for the heads up. :) AgneCheese/Wine 16:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Does The Oxford Companion to Wine really say that "Through trade with ancient Egypt, the Minoan civilization on Crete were introduced to Egyptian winemaking methods"? At a later date Egypt was importing wine because the grape didn't flourish in Egypt's heat.--Wetman (talk) 19:36, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * My ignorance. Now I'm reading that First Dynasty kings of the old Kingdom had wine jars sealed with the name of the vintner and some of the labels survive.--Wetman (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Aristotle and Lemnian wine
I have tagged the claim that Aristotle mentions Lemnian wine with "citation needed" and "dubious" because wine merchants have been making this claim and I have been trying to determine where Aristotle may have said this for several years, being an admirer of both The Philosopher and the delicious modern Greek Limnio blends, but alas, though I would be delighted if it were true, there appears to be no evidence of it. It seems to have been the product of a modern marketer's wishful thinking. Besides ordinary web searches, I have done complete text searches of Aristotle's surviving works (Oxford revised ed. Jonathan Barnes), Diogenes Laërtius' Lives, where curious tidbits about ancient philosophers may be found, and Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, where in fifteen volumes we hear almost nothing but praises of and gossip about ancient Greek food, wine, poets, courtesans, and philosophers, yet I found nothing relating Aristotle and Limnio, or any other variety of wine, with the exception of this dubious claim: "And Aristotle says, that the wine called the Samagorean wine was so strong, that more than forty men were made drunk with a pint and a half of it after it had been mixed with water." However I find no Samagorean wine on offer today so I cannot put this claim to the test. (Conceivably, it may have been flavored with a psychoactive herb or the like.)

Aristotle's own comments on wine in his surviving works and fragments relate almost entirely to its physical, physiological, psychological, and social/ethical properties. Of course there are other possible sources, including Theophrastus who has more surviving material on botanical subjects and may mention wine in connection with Aristotle, his friend and mentor, or maybe Pliny or Cicero, who knew Aristotelian works we do not have, but considering the following source, I suspect this claim should be deleted if no one comes up with a better source. See | "Time to debunk another, very modern Greek myth". —Blanchette (talk) 03:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

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Undiluted wine being lethal or causing insanity
What sources are there on this being a Greek belief, really? The two in this article (about Cleomenes I and Brennus) are both by the same author, Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD. Then there's Diogenes Laërtius, 3rd century, who gives a story of Chrysippus dying this way (or alternatively dying of laughter at the idea of giving undiluted wine to a donkey, the meaning of which is obscure).

I note that these writers both lived after the invention of distillation, by Greeks. We have no evidence that it was used for alcohol until a thousand years later. Nevertheless, the circumstances are suggestive. Which really ancient Greek sources, if any, suggest that undiluted wine might make a person insane, or dead? Of course there are many sources to say that dilution was normal, but this may have simply been a way to have more wine to drink to keep a party going. Which sources specify danger? Card Zero (talk) 01:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)