How does posca taste?

I mean an ancient roman drink. Did you ever taste it?

1 Answer

  • 9 months ago

    Although we know that it was watered-down wine vinegar probably flavoured with herbs, there are no surviving recipes.

    But wines back then were less alcoholic and didn’t keep well without starting to turn to vinegar. So Posca probably wasn’t made with pure wine vinegar but with soured wine which was the low grade wine sold to ordinary people. Diluting it with water will have reduced the sourness but also would have been a way of reducing the alcohol content even further whilst making the water safer to drink, as the alcohol plus the acetic acid would act as preservatives and the water would have been boiled with herbs (basically herbal tea) and the act of boiling kills most germs and some herbs/teas have antiviral properties. Not that the Romans knew that, all they knew was that it meant by drinking Posca their troops stayed hydrated and healthy.

    Many centuries later the British Royal Navy did something similar by serving “grog”: a mixture of water and rum.

    • Robsteriark
      Lv 7
      9 months agoReport

      So it will taste like many European rough sour local wines do to this day, but watered down and with whatever herbal flavourings might be added. Such as Greek Retsina which has added pine resin (which turns out to be very powerfully antiviral).

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