Friday 8 February 2013

Passum (Raisin Wine)

Passum (Raisin Wine)


Passum, a raisin wine supposedly originating in Carthage, was one of several sweeteners which the Romans added to their food.  If Polybius is to be believed, it was also a girly drink.  He writes that "among the Romans women are forbidden to drink wine; and they drink what is called passum." (Polybius, Histories, Fragments, 4.6.2)  Its manufacture sounds particularly complicated - see Columella, De agricultura, 12.39 (or click here if you fancy) for a lengthy description.

Characteristics


Rather unsurprisingly, Passum is a wine which tastes like raisins!  It is an almost sickeningly sweet wine, not unlike most dessert wines, so is best suited to cooking, where its flavour is tempered by other ingredients.

Finding it


Prepare to fork out an absolute fortune if you want the real thing.  If you're that way inclined, look out for wines with 'vin santo', 'passito', or 'straw wine' in the name.  Otherwise, let's make some cheat's Passum for ourselves:

Ingredients
  • 1 Pint Red or White Wine
  • 100g Raisins

Methods
  • Add the raisins to the wine, then cover.  Leave for 3 days, allowing the raisins to swell.
  • When the raisins have swollen, blend them with the wine.
  • Pour this mixture through a sieve, squeezing as much liquid out of the raisin pulp as possible.
  • Bottle it up - you're good to go!

Alternatives


The above method for making Passum is cheaper than any alternative wine might be, so unless you have some dessert wine going spare, I suggest making a batch.

4 comments:

  1. sound really tasty, mind you raisins are dehydrated grapes!!

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    Replies
    1. Tasty, but you couldn't go drinking too much at once!

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  2. When you say to cover, do you mean to leave in a jar just covered with a cheese cloth??
    It´s not to close the bottle with raisins inside, right?

    ReplyDelete