![]() That the Court of Directors knew that the wine was drunk by at least two Englishmen and specifically questioned them about it, adds intrigue. In the span of 72 years we move from Ambassador Soranzo’s claim that no English wine was produced to English wine, vintage early 1620s, surviving the voyage to Jacatra, beings sold, and then made available for purchase. Image from Northern Illinois University Libraries. During the same set of minutes the pursers of the Mary, Star, and Speedwell were charged to provide locks and keys for the hold “to prevent the great abuse continually practiced by private men of carrying extra ordinary quantities of wine and beer to sell in the Indies.”īatavia Assiece en 1629 / Batavia A°.: 1629 Belegerd. Captain Swann felt it was due to the “badness of his beer” because “he thought it was brewed at an unseasonable time, the weather in August being too hot to brew for so long a voyage.” The English wine consumed might have been transported surreptitiously. Captain Swann clearly enjoyed wine for he was also questioned about the “extraordinary expense of wine” for his recent journey. To reduce confusion this post will use Jacatra. During the early 17th century the modern day city of Jakarta was known as Jacatra followed by Batavia. Both Captain John Bickley of the Hart and Captain Richard Swann of the Charles “acknowledged they had drunk English wine sold at Jacatra, but who carried it there they knew not”. One curious example of such winemaking appears in the Court Minutes of the East India Company for November 27-29, 1626. We do know that vineyards and winemaking did survive the dissolution. Ambassador Soranzo spent 41 months in England and upon leaving he commented, “Although they have vines they do not make wine of any sort, the plant serving as an ornament for their gardens rather than anything else, as the grapes do not ripen save in very small quantity, partly because the sun has not much power, and partly because precisely at the ripening season cold winds generally prevail, so that the grapes wither, but in lieu of wine they make beer…they also consume a great quantity of wine, which is brought from Candia, Spain, the Rhine, and from France, this last being prized more than the rest”. Hugh Barty-King wrote that the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 removed an element of viticulture “which placed the activity in the centre of English life.” The view of Ambassador Giacomo Soranzo, writing in 1554, suggests that wine was no longer being produced less than two decades later. A list of other participants appears at the end of this post. In this post I look at the seventeenth (17th) century history of English wine. This post is part of Wine and the Sea which is an online symposium where several wine and food bloggers wrote coordinated posts about the history of wine.
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