Fortified wine because he was inspired by a German wine flavoured with wormwood, an herb most famously used in distilling absinthe. However, wine flavoured with wormwood goes back to ancient Rome. The modern German word "Wermut" ("Wermuth" in the spelling of Carpano's time) means both "wormwood" and "vermouth". The herbs were originally used to mask raw flavours of cheaper wines, imparting a slightly medicinal "tonic" flavor. Vins doux naturels are lightly fortified wines typically made from white Muscat grapes or red Grenache grapes in the south of France. The production of vins doux naturels was perfected by Arnaud de Villeneuve at the
Wormwood (Bible) Huns as led by king Attila, pointing to chronological consistencies between the timeline of prophecy they have accepted and the history of the Huns' campaign in Europe. Others point to Arius, the emperor Constantine, Origen or the ascetic monk Pelagius, who denied the doctrine of Original sin. A number of Bible scholars consider the term "Wormwood" to be a purely symbolic representation of the bitterness that will fill the earth during troubled times, noting that the plant for which Wormwood is named, "Artemisia absinthium", or Mugwort, "Artemisia vulgaris", is a known Biblical metaphor for things that are unpalatably bitter. The