Boutari

For decades (and beyond), wine professionals have debated the origins of the names Vinsanto (Greek) and Vin Santo (Italian).

Today, the Boutari Social Media Project webmaster, Jeremy Parzen (who holds a Ph.D. in Italian) posted his take on the origin of the names and why the wines are related only linguistically. The answer to this philological conundrum, he believes, lies in the Venetians’s dominance of Greece from the Middle Ages through the 17th century. Have a look at Jeremy’s post: you might be surprised by what he had to say.

And in the meantime, here’s some background information, lifted from the entry for “Greece” in the Oxford Companion to Wine.

In the medieval Greece that was part of the Byzantine empire, wine was grown by private individuals and by monasteries… As in antiquity, the best wines came from the Aegean Islands, Khíos first of all, and Thásos and Crete… In the 12th century, Constantinople (on the site of modern Istanbul) was the centre of the Byzantine empire’s wine trade. Wines were shipped to Constantinople from the Aegean islands…

But the private growers and wine merchants of Greece faced a much greater problem than unfair competition from monks. In 1082, the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus had granted Venice trading facilities at Constantinople and in 32 towns without payment of taxes of any kind. As a result, so much money disappeared to the west that Byzantium was economically ruined. Wine producers and wine merchants suffered badly. With no duties to pay, the Venetians were able to sell wine much more cheaply than any Greek could. Often this was imported Italian wine, but most of the wine came from Crete, known then as Candia, which was a colony of Venice (and which was to remain one until the mid 17th century). Worse still, many taverns in Constantinople were owned by Venetians so, in Constantinople at least, they controlled the retail trade as well…

In the 15th century, tax was finally levied on wine imported by Venetians, but by then it was too late, for Byzantium’s wine trade was no longer viable. Crete and Cyprus, under Venetian ownership, continued to produce the strong, sweet wines that were capable of surviving the long sea voyage to western Europe.

This entry was posted on June 10, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Boutari, Venetian influence, Vinsanto. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: ancient Greece, Jeremy Parzen, Venice, Vin Santo, Vinsanto