Meditrina is an ancient Roman Goddess of healing, health, and the new wine; She seems to be a late addition to the pantheon, perhaps conceived to help explain the ancient and somewhat obscure festival of the Meditrinalia, when the new wine from that year’s harvest was tasted.

There were several very ancient festivals dedicated to grapes, the vine, and wine in ancient Rome, likely going back to Rome’s agricultural beginnings: the Vinalia Rustica of August 19th, which marked the grape harvest, the Meditrinalia of October 11th, a festival of the new wine made from that year’s harvest, and the Vinalia Urbana (or Vinalia Prima) on April 23rd, celebrating the more mature wine made the previous year. All these festivals were dedicated to Jupiter, as wine was a sacred offering; they were also associated with Venus, as Goddess of all types of gardens.

The first step in wine making is to press the grapes, stems, seeds, skins, and all, to make what is called must—basically raw, unfiltered, rather thick grape juice. In modern wine making, the must is filtered and yeast added to start fermentation; in Roman times, the must was put into large earthenware storage containers called dolia, which were often partially buried in the earth, to ferment. After the fermentation was finished, anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month, the wine was removed from the dolia—presumably filtered or skimmed off the top—to be put in amphorae, where it could age and mellow.

As the Meditrinalia was not even two full months after the vine harvest, perhaps it was specifically a festival of the final step in the winemaking process—that of removing the new wine to the amphorae, marking it as ‘finished’. This new wine was offered as a sort of first fruit to the Deities; and though of course at that point the wine was very green and probably tasted like tannin-soaked twigs, it was mixed with the previous year’s vintage, and drunk as a sort of health tonic. Before drinking, it was traditional to say Novum vetus vinum bibo, novo veteri morbo medeor, meaning, ‘Wine new and old I drink, of illness new and old I'm cured’.

Mixing the old and new wines may symbolize the eternal continuity of the agricultural cycle, this year’s old being last year’s new, spiraling back on itself over and over through the ages, emphasizing the eternal renewal and fertility (and thus health) of the vine, much like the festival of Anna Perenna celebrated the end and beginning of the cycle of the year (and at which, much wine was also drunk). At any rate the Meditrinalia did seem to have an explicit connection with the idea of health; Marcus Terentius Varro, the famous author of the 2nd-1st century BCE, connected the name of the festival to the Latin verb mederi, meaning to heal, cure, comfort, or remedy.

Meditrina as Goddess of the Meditrinalia festival is first mentioned in a rather late source, Sextus Pompeius Festus, in the 2nd century CE. Like Fornax, the Roman Goddess of ovens, Meditrina may have been invented to explain an ancient festival whose origins had been lost to time. Be that as it may, as the Goddess of the Meditrinalia, Meditrina’s name shares the same etymology, making Her name mean ‘She Who Heals, Cures, or Comforts’, which would make Her a Goddess of health, medical cures, and healing. As red wine has been linked to health benefits in modern times (though that’s also been attributed to France’s universal health care), perhaps Meditrina could be said to be the Goddess of the healing properties of wine.

She may perhaps also be seen as a Goddess of the continuous cycle of life (and health) renewed, encompassing both its profane and holy aspects: though its origins are found in the rustic vineyard, wine is also a proper offering to the Gods.