Click to be +/- on this low volume, highly intellectual list.Oenology news ping.
Posted on 02/16/2006 10:23:56 AM PST by blam
Tutankhamen liked his wine white
16 February 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition
IT SEEMS that Tutankhamen, the teenage king of ancient Egypt, sloped off to the afterlife with a good supply of fine white wine. It's a surprising discovery, considering there is no record of white wine in Egypt until the 3rd century AD, 1600 years after the young pharaoh died.
Rosa Lamuela-Raventós and her colleagues from the University of Barcelona, Spain, used liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyse the residue from six of the jars in Tutankhamen's tomb. All contained tartaric acid, a chemical characteristic of grapes, but only one contained syringic acid, found in the skin of red grapes. It's this skin that gives red wine its colour.
The absence of the chemical in the other five jars suggests the wine in them was white. Because it is unlikely Egyptian wine makers would have removed red grape skins to create white wines as modern wine makers do, white grapes probably did exist in Tutankhamen's time.
In ancient Egypt, red wine was placed in tombs to accompany people into the afterlife. Now it appears that white wine was on the menu too.
"It must have been considered a very good drink," says Lamuela-Raventós, whose findings are reported in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
From issue 2539 of New Scientist magazine, 16 February 2006, page 22
But it didn't lengthen his life, did it?
Ping!
The below article was posted On 10-30-2005
I wonder if he liked cigars too?
I wish these folks would make up their minds...maybe it hasn't dawned on them it's a rose? ;-)
Click to be +/- on this low volume, highly intellectual list.Oenology news ping.
I've read that the water quality was so bad in ancient times that those who could drank beer or wine instead of water, just to stay well.
That's my excuse every trip south of the border.
Good point then and now, no telling what's floating around in the Nile. :-}
He's my favorite honkey.
Taking this opportunity to plug a particularly interesting wine:
A Marine Mom friend bought a case of it recently. She loves it.
Well, the Muscat grape didn't have to travel far.
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the older one:
King Tut Liked Red Wine
sciencedaily.com | 2005-04-03
Posted on 04/03/2005 8:32:09 AM PDT by quantim
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1376544/posts
Ah, yes, nothing like a good white wine with dinner.
Blonde Novice: "Thank God, I am sooo tired of White Zinfandel!"
[rimshot!]
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