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";
Niederlausitz (wine region) Niederlausitz (wine region) Niederlausitz (Lower Lusatia) is a small region for table wine and country wine in eastern Germany, which was defined in an amendment to the German wine law in 2007. It is located in Brandenburg, which is the federal state surrounding Berlin. The designation Brandenburger Landwein is used for country wines from this region. Lower Lusatia is not part of the 13 well-established German wine regions for quality wine (usually referred to as "Anbaugebiete"), and is located to the north of all of them, but south of Stargarder Land, which was defined in 2004. This means that Lower