Wine vessels kept them fresh and free from a vinegar smell. In medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church supported wine because the clergy required it for the Mass. Monks in France made wine for years, aging it in caves. An old English recipe that survived in various forms until the 19th century calls for refining white wine from bastard—bad or tainted "bastardo" wine. The English word "wine" comes from the Proto-Germanic "*winam", an early borrowing from the Latin "vinum", "wine" or "(grape) vine", itself derived from the Proto-Indo-European stem *"win-o-" (cf. , "gini"; Ancient Greek: "oinos"; Aeolic Greek: "woinos"; Hittite: "wiyana";
Wine Country (California) Valley, and Russian River Valley in Sonoma County. Wine grapes are also grown at higher elevations, such as Atlas Peak and Mount Veeder AVAs. Cities and towns associated with the Wine Country include Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Sonoma, Kenwood, Petaluma, Sebastopol, Guerneville, Windsor, Geyserville, and Cloverdale in Sonoma County; Napa, Yountville, Rutherford, St. Helena and Calistoga in Napa County; and Hopland and Ukiah in Mendocino County. Lake County is an increasingly important part of the area, surpassing Mendocino County in 2014 in price paid per ton of grapes in the North Coast premium market. Wine Country is generally regarded as the