1895 Mixed Drinks by Herbert W Green

DISTILLED AND FERMENTED LIQUORS.

Ancient'Wines.

Tradition places the origin of the art of manufac turing wine at so remote a period that it is utterly impossible for inquisitive moderns to establish the credit among the ancients with any definite degree of certainty. The wise men and oral teachers,the priests, and later the classical writers of antiquity,looking back ward, even in their early time, down through the long vista of years, attributed the introduction of this fasci nating beverage to the gods,Osiris in Egypt,*Dionysu8 in Greece, and in Hebrew-speaking countries,to Noah. But modern writers who have investigated the subject, endeavoring to eliminate the fabulous from the real, or at least the vague from the obvious,seem to unite on »Here we do not refer to any of the real personages surnamed Dionysius, but to Dionysus, the god of the vine, who went on expedi tions to remote places, teaching the cultivation of the vine. There were,it is claimed, five distinct gods "Dionysus," each having different parentage. The worship of Dionysus spread so in Southern Italy, or Magna Grmcia, whither it was transplanted by Greek colonists, that Sophocles spoke of him as the god who ruled Italy.