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The origin

of Spirits and Licqour

medical alcohol
In order to support the health-promoting effect of wine, people tended to add intensive ingredients such as ginger, pepper, grains of paradise, nutmeg and clove in the past. Hippocras for example, a spiced red wine strongly sweetened with honey(read moreabout the origin of mulled wine), was considered to be a particularly effective healing wines in the Middle Ages. and in the 14th century, medics started to even sell ceald bags with aleady pre-mixed ingredients to prepare this wines at home – eventually a prototyp of the modern-day mulled wine!
Thus, in the Middle Ages, wine also served as the basis for the production of licqour and schnapps, which was primarily intended for medical purposes. The Catalan physician Arnald von Villanova (1235-1311) successfully researched the technique of distilling wine into schanps, which than became known around the world. This physician, who was very famous in his time, was the doctors of various popes and kings, also translating the works of Avicenna (Roman name of Ibn Sina; known from the film "The Medicus") from Arabic into latin. Villanova then brought the spirit of wine, which he called Aqua Vitae, into Western medicine and novelty. The term "water of life" reveals the siginificance he attached to the distillate, which for him was a kind of universal medicine. Villanova also obtained alcoholic extracts from medicinal herbs throug distillation. Extracting active ingredients from plants - known as maceration - is still used today in various areas, including viticulture.
Schnaps