(Fr. vin sec and vin d'Espagne), a species of wine used by our ancestors, regarding the peculiarity of which there have been various conjectures. It is generally supposed to have been a Spanish wine of the dry kind, while some have conceived it to be Rhemish and some Canary. Venner says of sack in 1628 that, "taken by itself, it is very hot and very penetrative; being taken with sugar, the heat is somewhat allayed, and the penetrative quality thereof also retarded." This statement has led some to imagine that sack was not a sweet wine, from the fact of its being occasionally taken with sugar. At a later period, however, when Falstaff spoke of it as sherris sack (properly Xeres sack, according to Blount in his Glossographia), the word seems to have been used as a general name for all sorts of sweet wines. In contradistinction to the French derivation of the term from the word sec, it has been conjectured to be derived from the Spanish saco,—a bag in which it was transported from place to place.