Vineyards and Wine in Medieval Silesia

Medieval Silesia was not simply a land of beer and mead. This book challenges the long-standing view that viticulture was marginal, showing instead that vineyards and wine formed a significant part of the region’s economic, social, religious and urban life. Drawing on documentary, archaeological, cartographic, onomastic and iconographic evidence, Dagmara Adamska traces vine cultivation from its uncertain beginnings through its thirteenth- and fourteenth-century expansion to later contraction. She reconstructs more than fifty wine-growing zones and examines growers, cultivation and production, local and imported wines, trade, municipal wine houses and patterns of consumption. Placing Silesia within a wider Central European context, the book reveals how environment, settlement, ecclesiastical demand, urban institutions, social status and changing tastes shaped wine culture, and argues that viticulture was more extensive and enduring than earlier scholarship has generally recognised.

Medieval Silesia was not simply a land of beer and mead. This book challenges the long-standing view that viticulture was marginal, showing instead that vineyards and wine formed a significant part of the region’s economic, social, religious and urban life. Drawing on documentary, archaeological, cartographic, onomastic and iconographic evidence, Dagmara Adamska traces vine cultivation from its uncertain beginnings through its thirteenth- and fourteenth-century expansion to later contraction. She reconstructs more than fifty wine-growing zones and examines growers, cultivation and production, local and imported wines, trade, municipal wine houses and patterns of consumption. Placing Silesia within a wider Central European context, the book reveals how environment, settlement, ecclesiastical demand, urban institutions, social status and changing tastes shaped wine culture, and argues that viticulture was more extensive and enduring than earlier scholarship has generally recognised.