Dinner & A Book

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup clear honey
• several mint leaves-crushed/muddled
• 1 bottle medium-dry white wine

Directions

1. Dissolve honey in 3/4 cup wine over low heat-do not boil
2. Add mint leaves
3. Return to bottle and chill before serving.

***  This, Mulsum, would be an everyday drink for a Roman household, even those not especially well off.  The Conditum Paradoxum was a sweetened and spiced wine typically consumed during the holidays-Saturnalia and Lupercalia.  Both drinks can be made with either red or white wine, but I prefer the use white for Mulsum and red for Conditum Paradoxum as the more intense flavors of the reds seem to stand up better to the spices.  Kykeon was a traditional Bronze age Greek restorative