Taste and Content of Ancient Alcoholic Beverages: A Comparison with Modern Times

This is one of those questions you're never going to be able to answer with any certainty. People can speculate and make educated guesses, but no one alive today has, or will ever taste any alcohol made 1000 years ago, so they really don't know. However, it is likely that the tastes and contents of ancient alcoholic beverages were closer to the drinks of today than many people believe.

Improved Filtration and Stable Tastes

Filtration is considerably better nowadays, which means the tastes of all alcoholic beverages, from beer to spirits, are more stable over time. While ancient people might not have had the same filtration techniques, it is probable that the overall taste and content of most older drinks would be more similar to modern ones than previously assumed.

Changes in Ancient Drinks

Other factors, such as the ripeness and sweetness of fruits, played a significant role in the nature of ancient drinks. Older drinks like mead and wine predominantly were preferred when they were sweeter. For example, during the warm period of the Medieval age (800-1100 A.D.), wine grapes would have been close to modern ripeness levels.

However, later wines became less alcoholic and less sweet. Sweet wines, like dessert wines, were highly valued in regions such as Greece, Madeira, and elsewhere. By 1200, monks had figured out how to make extremely strong beers for periods of fasting. Apart from filtration, these drinks were relatively close to modern flavors.

Purity of Crops and Ingredients

One of the biggest problems for grain and grape-based drinks was the lack of purity of the crops. The grains were not necessarily all barley or all rye. It was too difficult to sort the seeds perfectly. While not perfect, some farmers managed to get as close to purity as modern standards allow. Mead, for example, would have been almost identical. It was typically reserved for nobility.

Limited Distillation and Refrigeration

Without distillation or refrigeration, only strong drinks like wine aged in cellars would be found. Ice skimmed winter wine would taste quite similar to sherry and brandy. Hops were uncommon for flavoring, and flower petals (Gruits) were used instead, making ales and beers “seasonally available.” Mead would have been the same; it is fairly hard to screw up such a simple recipe! Meade would often be preferred over ancient micro-brews when available.

Herodotus famously described the flavor of Egyptian beer as preferable to elephant semen, highlighting the high quality and pleasant taste of their beverages. Despite the lack of advanced technology, ancient peoples produced a wide variety of delicious and versatile drinks that, when filtered and aged properly, could rival modern counterparts.

In conclusion, while we cannot definitively state the taste and content of ancient alcoholic beverages, it is more plausible that they were similar to modern drinks than often assumed. Advances in filtration, improvements in crop purity, and the limited availability of distillation and refrigeration contributed to a closer similarity between ancient and current alcoholic beverages.