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Medieval Sweeteners Vino Cotto

Medieval Sweeteners Vino Cotto is a traditional Italian recipe for a classic sweetener made from boiled down must. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Italian version of: Medieval Sweeteners Vino Cotto.

prep time

10 minutes

cook time

60 minutes

Total Time:

70 minutes

Makes:

250ml

Rating:

Tags : Italy Recipes

I am an avid collector and redactor of medieval and historical recipes. Before modern transport and refrigeration and the common appearance of cane sugar (which came to southern Europe in the eighth century, but remained an expensive medicine in the hands of apothecaries for another eight centuries. Vinegar was also difficult to transport and expensive. Again, it was typically sold as a medicine.

Vino Cotto

Apart from honey, there are few other sources of sweetness in antiquity. This is why Vin Cotto (literally cooked wine in Italian) and which should probably more correctly be called Mosto Cotto (cooked must) was such an important sweetener in medieval times. This can also be called ‘Saba’ after its Latin name.

Must (from the Latin vinum mustum, "young wine") is freshly crushed fruit juice (usually grape juice) that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit. Must, made from true wine grapes can have up to 20% sugar content, with 12-15% being glucose.

You can make your own mosto cotto from table grapes (red and purple grapes are best for colour) but you will need to add brown sugar to make up the sweet content, as table grapes have considerably less sugar than wine grapes.

Traditional recipes for mosto cotto incorporated grape vine ash. Ash gives a subtle bitterness and a smoky flavour and acts as a fining agent (to help clarify) and as an acidity regulator due to the sodium hydroxide (lye). A note, however, if you are using ash in your cooking do no use aluminium pots as the natural ash lye will pit them and could release explosive quantities of hydrogen gas.

If you don’t have grape cuttings to hand to make grape ash, just use the ash from your barbecue (as long as you have added no chemicals, fire lighters etc). Simply pass the ash through a fine-meshed sieve and store in a screw-top jar just as you would any other spice. I have mulberry ash, sugarcane ash and French oak ash and the mulberry ash is my personal favourite. As it’s becoming trendy for chefs to cook with ash now, you may be able to get juniper ash and oak ash commercially at specialist online outlets.

In ancient Greece, must condensed by boiling was called siraion (σίραιον) and was used as a sweetener in the kitchen in various recipes (and as a syrup over teganitai (pancakes)). As many cooks in Roman houses were Greek, the use of boiled and reduced must as a sweetener also reached Roman culture and from there spread throughout the Mediterranean.

Ingredients:

1 ½ tsp (level) wood ash
2.25kg ripe table grapes stemmed (red or purple for preference)
100g (1/2 cup) brown sugar (optional)

Method:

Place the grapes in a bucket then use a potato masher to break them and release the juice. Once the grapes are well broken transfer the contents of the bucket into a large pot and scater over the wood ash.

Bring the mixture to just below simmering and stir in the sugar. Continue cooking, just below simmering point and continue cooking, stirring frequently, for 1 hour. This will thicken the liquid and release the pectins and colours from the grape skins.

After this time strain the must through a sieve lined with muslin (cheesecloth). Press down with the back of a spoon then gather up the ends of the cheesecloth and squeeze. Finally twist the cheesecloth to extract as much liquid as possible.

Pour the liquid into a clean pan, bring just below a simmer and cook down at this temperature, stirring frequently, for about 1-5 hours more (depending on the sweetness and liquid content of the grapes and whether or not you added extra sugar), or until the liquid is thick and has reduced down to about 250ml (1 cup).

Take off the heat and allow the liquid to cool slightly before pouring into a sterilized and warmed bottle. Stopper immediately. This will keep in a cool store cupboard for up to a year.

Though a little time consuming this is very easy to make. Mosto Cotto/Vino Cotto is available in some speciality stores, but if you can’t get it you can make your own.

Interestingly, balsamic vinegar is also made with must and you can make an approximate version of balsamic vinegar very cheaply by combining mosto cotto with decent quality red wine vinegar (you will need to experiment a little to get the balance of sweet and acid that you, personally, like).