How I uncovered a potential ancient Rome wine scam

If the wines were sweetened after fermentation, then how were they stabilized? Something needs to be added to stop fermentation (or it must be fermented very strong).

"However honey isn't a trivial component to produce"....indeed it is not, apiaries were built on boats in roman times as a means to insure polenation for crops along water ways and increase honey production with an eye on shipping logistics to get it to the highest paying markets. there is cave art that depicts honey gathering from truely ancient times and it is impossible to think that humanities ancestors were not oportunistic honey gatherers, with the bee's wax having a multitude of good uses as well. the liklyhood is that honey and wax were sometimes scarce and sometimes in abundance, and sometimes popular as additives and loathed by others. there are various claims and evidence for the earliest deliberate fermentation, but a general agreement that fermentation is truely ancient, with some evidence to suggest that fermentation was the impetus for the first permanent settlements, and as (some) humans ability to metabolise alcohol is a recent genetic adaptation to produce the nessesary enzymes, we will get more evidence as to who, where and when that happened, or kept happening..... edit: my point(if I have one) is that it could be argued that grapes were first to be snuck in as an aduterant, with honey and other ingredients having much longer prior use

Define recently? Domesticated bees are mentioned explicitly in Plato’s laws, with instructions on how people should be compensated if someone kills someone else’s bees, so it must have been around for quite a while before then.

The article specifically discusses how it's common to find ceramic beehives.

Nonsense. There is no definition of "relatively recently" that has anything to do with humans where that is true. Bees were probably one of the first things we humans ever made farms for:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34749846

We have been doing it before we had written language and even perhaps before our spoken language had evolved past the imperative.

So yeah, the romans absolutely kept bees, and they made "manmade beehives" like this:

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

The hives ought to have an aspect due east, but never looking towards the north-east or the west. The best hives are those made of bark, the next best those of fennel-giant, and the next of osier: many persons, too, have them made of mirror-stone, for the purpose of watching the bees at work within. It is the best plan to anoint the hives all over with cow-dung. The lid of the hive should be made to slide from behind, so as to admit of being shut to within, in case the hive should prove too large or their labours unproductive; for, if this is not done, the bees are apt to become discouraged and abandon their work. The slide may then be gradually withdrawn, the increase of space being imperceptible to the bees as the work progresses. In winter, too, the hives should be covered with straw, and subjected to repeated fumigations, with burnt cow- dung more particularly. As this is of kindred origin with the bees, the smoke produced by it is particularly beneficial in killing all such insects as may happen to breed there, such as spiders, for instance, moths, and wood-worms; while, at the same time, it stimulates the bees themselves to increased activity. In fact, there is little difficulty in getting rid of the spiders, but to destroy the moths, which are a much greater plague, a night must be chosen in spring, just when the mallow is ripening, there being no moon, but a clear sky: flam- beaux are then lighted before the hives, upon which the moths precipitate themselves in swarms into the flame.

Actually, they are often made with "leftover stock," or stock that was rejected by the real manufacturer.

I suspect that's a big problem, with fake chips.

> Because they aren’t fake in any physical sense, they’re fake only in an abstract legal sense. Unauthorized.

And this is an example of fake thinking, citizen. Legal boundaries define reality, right?