Passum

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title: "Passum" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["ancient-wine", "dessert-wine", "carthage"] description: "Historical type of wine" topic_path: "general/ancient-wine" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passum" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Historical type of wine ::

Passum was a raisin wine (wine from semi-dried grapes) apparently developed in ancient Carthage (in now modern Tunisia) and transmitted from there to Italy, where it was popular in the Roman Empire. The earliest surviving instruction constitutes the only known Carthaginian recipe. It is a fragment from the Punic farming manual by Mago in its Latin translation by Decimus Junius Silanus in the 2nd century BC. It survives because it was summarised by Columella in the 1st century AD.

Mago

A recipe for passum was recorded in an agricultural manual by Mago, a Punic writer. The original Punic work is lost, but the recipe is quoted in a later Latin work, De Agricultura by Columella.

Later, less detailed, instructions are found in other Latin and Greek sources.

Passum was produced extensively in the eastern Mediterranean through the Roman period, and its popularity is referred to by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History. Research indicates that it found popularity amongst women in the kitchen, due to easy accessibility, in the medicinal world and also within religious contexts – possibly in Judaism and the early Christian eucharist.

"Passum de Magon" is a modern Tunisian natural sweet wine from Kelibia in the Cape Bon region, the traditional agricultural hub of Carthage, that honors the memory of Mago and is made in this antique fashion.

References

References

1. (2020). "Roman and late antique wine production in the eastern Mediterranean : a comparative archaeological study at Antiochia ad Cragum (Turkey) and Delos (Greece)". Archaeopress Archaeology.
2. Columella, ''De Agricultura'' 12.39.1.
3. "Passum de Magon".

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