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";
Sauternes (wine) October, Sémillon grapes were known to be infected by rot and vineyard workers had to separate rotted and clean berries but they are incomplete in regards to whether the rotted grapes were used in winemaking. By the 18th century, the practice of using nobly rotted grapes in Tokaji and Germany was well known. It seems that at this point the "unspoken secret" was more widely accepted and the reputation of Sauternes rose to rival those of the German and Hungarian dessert wines. By the end of the 18th century, the region's reputation for Sauternes was internationally known: Thomas Jefferson was