Drinks by theme

Ancient Roman Drinks: Recipes From Apicius, Columella and Pliny

Roman drinks to make today, from honeyed mulsum and spiced conditum to posca, oxymel and fresh grape juice, each with its ancient or later source.

Updated October 20, 2026

Cold water beside a dish of ice, posca, a small cup of milk and a defrutum cooler with its bowl of syrup.

Make it today

Start here

A plain earthenware beaker of very pale rosy vinegar water beside a small terracotta jug stained dark red at the rim, on a weathered plank over a dry-stone wall with dry hills behind.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Sodas & Soft Drinks · 2 min total

Posca, the Roman Soldier’s Vinegar Drink

Wine vinegar stirred into cold water: the sour, cheap drink of Roman soldiers and slaves, alcohol-free and ready in a minute.

Two small pale greenish glass beakers of clear gold honeyed wine beside a shallow clay dish of runny honey and a one-handled terracotta jug on a dark weathered table in a sunlit stone courtyard.

Ancient Rome · Wine, Beer & Mead · 35 min total

Mulsum, Roman Honeyed Wine

Four measures of wine to one of honey: the drink Romans poured with the first course of dinner, made in five minutes, then left to cool.

A greenish glass cup of cloudy pale green-gold grape juice with a little froth beside a wide terracotta bowl of crushed white grapes and a clay jug with linen tied over its mouth, on a stone table in a dim press room.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Sodas & Soft Drinks · 1 hr 20 min total

Mustum, Roman Fresh Grape Juice

Ripe grapes crushed and strained into cloudy fresh juice, the Roman mustum drunk before it could become wine, kept cold and drunk the same day.

What did ancient Romans drink?

Water first, then wine, almost always mixed with water and often sweetened with honey or spiced. Beside them stood drinks with no alcohol at all: posca, vinegar stirred into water; oxymel, honey boiled with vinegar; fresh grape juice and the syrups boiled down from it; and milk.

Water was easy to come by. “All the important towns of Italy had abundant supplies of water piped from hills,” Harold Whetstone Johnston wrote in The Private Life of the Romans (1903), and the rich chilled it with snow saved from the winter or kept it hot in bronze urns at table. Pliny the Elder gave a whole book of his Natural History to wine and still thought water should have been enough.

Wine itself was thinner than ours. Romans “always mixed it with water and used more water than wine,” Johnston wrote, and drinking it unmixed “was thought typical of barbarism.” Mulsum, four measures of wine to one of honey, came with the first course of dinner; the cookbook that goes under the name of Apicius opens with conditum paradoxum, honey boiled with wine and steeped with pepper, saffron and bay. Beer, Roman writers filed under other people’s habits.

The sober drinks had their uses. Posca was the soldier’s and the slave’s drink, cheap and quick; oxymel was medicine; and adynamon, a “wine without strength” of grape must boiled down with water, was given to people who were not allowed wine.

Every recipe here names its Roman or later source, and the alcohol-free ones are marked.

As if Nature had not given us water as a beverage, the one, in fact, of which all other animals make use.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Bostock and Riley translation (1855)

What did Romans drink besides wine?

Water, milk, vinegar drinks and grape juice, none with alcohol. Posca was the everyday one, oxymel the medicine.

A greenish glass cup of hazy pale amber oxymel stands on slate beside a terracotta jug and a small dish of coarse salt in a stone kitchen.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials · 40 min total

Oxymel, Pliny’s Honey and Vinegar Drink

Honey, old vinegar, sea salt and water, boiled into a sharp-sweet syrup: the sweetened cousin of the Roman soldier’s vinegar drink, and alcohol-free.

A greenish glass beaker of ruby-red drink stands beside a bowl of dark grape syrup with a bronze ladle and quartered quince on a stone courtyard table.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials · 1 hr 20 min total

Defrutum Cooler, Roman Grape Syrup and Water

Grape juice boiled down to half its volume into the Romans’ defrutum, then stirred into cold water: a dark, sweet, alcohol-free grape drink.

A pale green irregular Roman-style glass cup of golden quince-and-honey drink beside a terracotta syrup pot, cooked quince slices in a clay dish and one downy yellow quince on an old wooden shelf against whitewashed stone.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials · 13 hr 5 min total

Melomeli, Roman Quince and Honey Syrup

Ripe quince warmed in honey and steeped overnight: Columella’s quince-scented honey, stirred into cold water for an alcohol-free Roman drink.

Two low greenish glass cups of clear golden grape drink beside a terracotta jug on a worn limestone window ledge.

Always alcohol-free

Ancient Rome · Sodas & Soft Drinks · 1 hr 35 min total

Adynamon, Pliny’s Wine Without Strength

White grape must boiled with half its volume of water until the water is gone: the Roman ‘wine’ given to people who were not allowed wine. Alcohol-free.

What did Romans drink for breakfast?

Where breakfast grew into a regular meal, eggs were served with mulsum, the honeyed wine, and milk, as Harold Whetstone Johnston summed up the Roman evidence in The Private Life of the Romans (1903). Milk came from sheep and goats as well as cows.

Milk, water and the other drinks that came before wine are in What Did Romans Drink Besides Wine?.

What did Romans drink in the New Testament?

Vinegar, in the Gospels: at the crucifixion a sponge was filled from “a vessel full of vinegar” (John 19:29, King James Version). Whether it was posca, the vinegar and water that Roman soldiers drank in the field, the Gospel doesn’t say.