Ancient Rome and wine

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Ancient Rome and wine are so deeply entwined that the Romans themselves declared wine a daily necessity. That single belief shaped everything: it made wine democratic, available in some form to slaves, peasants, soldiers, and aristocrats alike. It drove the planting of vineyards across an entire continent. And it left wine-producing traditions in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain that persist to this day.

  The story begins long before Rome dominated the Mediterranean. Greeks, Phoenicians, and Etruscans all shaped the Italian Peninsula’s earliest relationship with the vine. But when Rome grew into an empire, it absorbed, refined, and spread those traditions with an ambition no previous culture had matched. What did Roman wine actually taste like? Who could drink it, and when? And how did a single emperor’s edict nearly unravel a wine industry that had taken centuries to build?

• 2. Roots Before Rome

  ›

  Grape pips found near Lake Geneva date viticulture in the region to roughly 10,000 BC, long before any Roman soldier set foot in Gaul. On the Italian Peninsula itself, Neolithic peoples exploited wild grapes, though whether they fermented them remains unclear. The earliest dateable evidence of Greek influence on Italian winemaking points to around 800 BC.

  Before that threshold, viticulture was already well established in Etruscan civilization, centered in the region that is now Tuscany. The ancient Greeks, who saw wine as both a domestic staple and a trade commodity, pushed their influence further by founding colonies in southern Italy. They named the region Oenotria, meaning “land of vines,” for the abundance of indigenous grape plants they encountered there.

  The Greek settlements of southern Italy came under Roman control by 270 BC. Around the same time, the Punic Wars with Carthage brought a crucial inheritance: the 26 volumes of the Carthaginian writer Mago’s agricultural treatise. Rome sacked Carthage’s libraries, but Mago’s work survived intact and was translated into Latin and Greek in 146 BC. Although the original did not survive to the modern era, it was extensively quoted by the Roman writers Pliny, Columella, Varro, and Gargilius Martialis, ensuring its influence outlasted Carthage itself.

• 3. The Golden Age

  ›

  The 2nd century BC brought what wine historians call the golden age of Roman winemaking, marked by the emergence of grand cru vineyards and a new ambition for quality. The most celebrated milestone came in 121 BC with what became known as the Opimian vintage, named for the consul Lucius Opimius who held office that year. Remarkable for both its abundant harvest and its unusually high quality, some bottles from that vintage were still being enjoyed more than a century later.

  Pliny the Elder catalogued the first growths of Rome in careful detail. Falernian, Alban, and Caecuban ranked among the most notable. Rhaeticum and Hadrianum came from Atri of the Adriatic, from what are now Lombardy and Venice. Lunense was produced in modern-day Tuscany, while Mamertinum held first-growth status in Sicily.

  Estimates of everyday consumption tell their own story. Scholars Phillips, Tchernia, and Van Limbergen all converge on roughly half a liter of undiluted wine per day for each member of Rome’s urban population, man, woman, or child. Wine was almost always diluted before drinking, sometimes by as much as an equal volume of water. The exceptions were the elderly, those pouring libations to the gods, and, notably, alcoholics. Falernian was particularly prized for its aging ability, thought to need at least ten years to mature and considered at its best between fifteen and twenty years.

• 4. Pompeii: Epicenter and Warning

  ›

  The slopes of Vesuvius produced some of the finest wines available to the Italian mainland, Rome, and the provinces. Pompeii, situated on the Campanian coast south of Naples, became one of the most important wine centers in the Roman world. Amphoras stamped with Pompeian merchant emblems have been found as far away as Bordeaux, Narbonne, Toulouse, and Spain. The city’s reputation was so powerful that counterfeit stamps on non-Pompeian wine suggest early wine fraud.

  The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed not just the city but its entire trade infrastructure. Ports, vineyards, and the warehouses holding the 78 AD vintage were obliterated. Prices spiked, wine became affordable only to the affluent at precisely the moment demand had spread to the less affluent majority. The scramble to fill the gap led to hurried vineyard planting nearer Rome and the conversion of grain fields to vines.

  That decision backfired. The wine surplus that followed depressed prices, hurt producers, and the loss of grain fields contributed to a food shortage. In 92 AD, Emperor Domitian issued an edict banning new vineyards in Rome and ordering half the vineyards in Roman wine-producing provinces to be uprooted. Wine historians have debated how much the edict, largely ignored in the provinces, suppressed the emerging industries of Spain and Gaul. It remained in force for nearly two centuries until Emperor Probus repealed it in 280 AD.

  The preserved ruins of Pompeii have since provided something unexpected: vine roots still in the ground, revealing planting patterns from Roman times. Whole vineyards have been excavated within the city walls, including at the former cattle-market known as the Forum Boarium. Some of those sites have been replanted with ancient grape varieties as part of experimental archaeology.

• 5. Spreading the Vine

  ›

  Julius Caesar arrived at Cabyllona in 59 BC during the Gallic Wars and found two Roman wine merchants already doing business with the local tribes. Trade, not the military, was the first arm of Roman wine influence, reaching enemy and ally alike.

  In Hispania, Rome’s conquest brought advanced wine technology and road networks to a region where Carthaginians and Phoenicians had already introduced viticulture. The poet Martial described a wine called ceretanum from the town of Ceret, which is now Jerez de la Frontera. Wine historian Hugh Johnson considers this an early ancestor of sherry. In 2019, the oldest surviving liquid wine, dating to the 1st century, was discovered in Carmona, Spain, in what was once Hispania Baetica, and its contents were identified as a type of sherry.

  In Gaul, the Romans’ scientific knowledge guided where they planted. They understood that cold air pools in valley frost pockets, making hillsides safer for vines. They also knew that regions where Quercus ilex oak trees grew had climates warm enough to ripen grapes. Pliny noted in the 1st century AD that the settlement of Vienne, near what is now the Cote-Rotie AOC, produced a resinated wine that fetched high prices in Rome. Wine historian Hanneke Wilson calls it the first truly French wine to receive international acclaim.

  Bordeaux began as a seaport supplied by wine from the Gaillac region inland. Pliny the Elder mentions plantings in Bordeaux in the 1st century AD, including the Balisca grape, also known under the name Biturica after the local Bituriges tribe. Ampelographers note that a corruption of Biturica is Vidure, a French synonym for Cabernet Sauvignon, suggesting this vine may be an ancestor of the Cabernet family that includes Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot.

  In Germania, the first definitive record of wine production appears in Ausonius’s 370 AD work titled Mosella, describing vibrant vineyards along the Mosel. Ausonius, a native of Bordeaux, compared the Mosel vineyards favorably to those of his home region. The Romans had been motivated by practical need: supplying Roman soldiers along the German frontier and avoiding the high cost of importing wine from Rome, Spain, or Bordeaux. Tacitus had described the local alternative as an inferior beer-like beverage.

  In Britain, the cultural impact was larger than the viticultural one. More than 400 artifacts depicting Bacchus have been found across the island. Excavations at Colchester, the early capital of Roman Britain, uncovered containers identifying over 60 different wine types from Italy, Spain, the Rhine, and Bordeaux.

• 6. The Writers Who Recorded It

  ›

  Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder wrote De agri cultura, the oldest surviving work of Latin prose, after being raised on his family’s farm in Reate, northeast of Rome. His guidance on winemaking was direct and unsentimental. He recommended that inferior wines be reserved for work-hands. He advised that slaves who became unproductive should have their rations cut and, when worn out, be sold. His stance on hygiene was rigorous: wine jars should be wiped clean twice a day with a new broom, jars sealed thoroughly after fermentation, and amphoras left with some head space to allow a controlled degree of oxidation. Cato’s manual became the standard textbook of Roman winemaking for centuries.

  Columella, a 1st-century AD writer native to Cadiz, produced the 12-volume De re rustica. He described boiling grape must in a lead vessel to concentrate sugars and impart sweetness, a practice that may have contributed to lead poisoning. His ideal vineyard had vines planted two paces apart, fastened with willow withies to chestnut stakes about the height of a man. He extolled the Balisca and Biturica grape varieties, believed to be ancestral to the Cabernet family.

  Pliny the Elder, author of the 37-volume Naturalis Historia, dedicated his encyclopedia to Emperor Titus. Book 14 contains his ranking of Rome’s first-growth vineyards. Book 17 formalizes an early concept of terroir: unique places produce unique wine. Pliny is also the source for the famous phrase “In vino veritas” or “There’s truth in wine.” His intent was not celebratory. He regretted that the excessive candour of drunkards led to serious breaches of etiquette and the thoughtless disclosure of matters best kept private.

  Virgil’s second book of the Georgics treats viticulture as a moral subject, linking the hard work of farming to Roman virtue. He advised leaving grapes on the vine until late November when they become stiff with frost, producing something like an early version of ice wine. His contemporary Horace took an Epicurean view: wine in moderation was one of life’s pleasures to be savored. Horace described deliberately choosing a wine from a guest’s birth-year vintage for a celebration, one of the earliest recorded examples of wine selection for a specific occasion. He wrote of his own death with more dread at leaving his wine cellar than at leaving his wife.

  Palladius, writing in the 4th century, organized his 15-volume Opus agriculturae around the calendar, with one volume per month covering the specific agricultural tasks due that month. His writings on viticulture were quoted through the Middle Ages and into the early Renaissance by Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus, and Pietro Crescenzi.

• 7. Making and Drinking

  ›

  Winemaking in Rome began at harvest with treading grapes by foot, in a manner similar to the French pigeage. The free-run juice produced this way was the most prized and kept separate from pressed juice. Pressing took place on an elevated concrete platform where horizontal wooden beams, attached by rope to a windlass, squeezed the crushed grapes. Because a press was expensive to build and operate, its use was largely confined to large estates. Smaller operations relied on treading alone.

  After pressing, grape must was stored in large earthenware jars known as dolia, sometimes holding several thousand liters, partially buried in barn or warehouse floors. Fermentation lasted two weeks to a month. Small holes in the top let carbon dioxide escape. Third pressings produced coarse, tannic wine of low quality called lora, recommended by both Cato and Varro for slaves. The next grade up was posca, a mix of water and sour wine used as soldiers’ rations; the Corpus Juris Civilis codified a daily ration of roughly a liter per soldier.

  Sweet white wine was the most highly regarded style. To concentrate sugars, winemakers boiled a portion of the must in the process called defrutum and blended it back into the fermenting batch. Honey could be added in significant quantities: as much as 3 kg recommended for sweetening 12 liters. Wines were sometimes aged by exposure to high temperatures in a process similar to that used to make modern Madeira. Amphoras were stored in a smoke chamber called a fumarium to add smokiness to a wine’s flavor. Wines might also be flavored with herbs, spices, or stored in resin-coated containers, producing flavors similar to modern vermouth or retsina.

  Falernian needed at least 10 years to mature, according to Pliny, and was considered at its peak between 15 and 20 years. White wine from Surrentine was said to require at least 25 years. The Surrentine’s longevity points to the seriousness with which Romans approached the question of aging.

• 8. Wine, Religion, and Medicine

  ›

  Rome’s early wine-god Liber pater was probably a minor deity when wine itself was still an import. The writer Aulus Gellius claimed that in Rome’s distant past, women were forbidden to drink wine for fear they might “lapse into some disgraceful act.” He cited Cato as his source, but Cato’s own writings make no mention of any such prohibition. Modern scholarship suggests that if any restriction existed, it applied specifically to elite women and to temetum, the undiluted sacrificial wine reserved for Roman men and Roman gods.

  Temetum was an essential element of the Bona Dea festival, a secretive, nocturnal, exclusively female ceremony during which it was freely consumed but referred to euphemistically as “milk” or “honey.” Ordinary diluted wine was under the protection of Venus and was considered profane, making it unsuitable for official state sacrifice. The Latin phrase sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, loosely translated as “without food and wine, Venus freezes,” was employed by the playwright Terence and echoed well into the Renaissance.

  The Bacchanalia began as private mystery cults arriving in Rome around 200 BC from Greek colonies in southern Italy and from Etruria. They started as occasional, women-only gatherings but grew in frequency and opened to initiates of both genders. The Roman Senate perceived the cults as a threat to its authority and suppressed them with ferocity in 186 BC. Of some seven thousand initiates and their leaders, most were put to death. Diminished remnants of the Bacchanalia continued under official supervision, and illicit gatherings persisted covertly for years afterward, particularly in southern Italy.

  Galen, the 2nd-century CE Greco-Roman physician, used wine extensively in his medical practice. As physician to the gladiators at Pergamon, he used wine as an antiseptic for wounds and an analgesic for surgery. He reported that not a single gladiator died under his care. When he became physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, he developed pharmaceutical preparations from wine called theriacs. Beliefs in their miraculous ability to cure everything from the plague to mouth sores persisted until the 18th century. In De Antidotis, Galen noted a shift in Roman tastes from thick, sweet wines toward lighter, drier wines that were easier to digest.

  Cato’s medical prescriptions were less sophisticated but equally confident. He recommended a wine made from vines treated with ashes, manure, and hellebore as a laxative. He described juniper and myrtle flowers soaked in wine as a remedy for snakebites and gout. The Roman politician Cicero wielded wine against political enemies in a different register, frequently labeling rivals as drunkards and dangers to Rome. His most notable target was Mark Antony, who apparently once drank to such excess that he vomited in the Senate.