What did the Romans add to wine? Is it true that the ancient Greeks and Romans diluted their wine and did not drink it neat? Dionysus and his role

The ancient Romans, as you know, ate and drank while reclining. And this, looking in retrospect, seems to be a kind of guarantee of their subsequent degradation and complete dispersion. It’s hard to imagine having breakfast, lunch and dinner while lying down. It would be nice to have breakfast - the man is not quite awake yet, so he lies there. It would be nice to have dinner - a person is worn out during the day, you can lie down, especially since it’s time to go to the side soon. But lying down during dinner is beyond any understanding. Especially if you remember that it was not customary to get up, even if there was a very great need. And to demand a special pot to relieve yourself, without leaving a pleasant company, is a violation of all possible decency. If you are a true ancient Roman, then be patient and don’t show it. Like in the famous song: burst, but keep it in style.
How did they drink? Exactly - they drank, exactly - how, and not what. Whether it's wine or water, the difference is negligible. Water was tinted with wine, wine was diluted with water. All this moisture was absorbed while the endless meal dragged on, and then categorically demanded release. To this day, historians of antiquity have not figured out why they tempt the body in this way, and you can’t ask the ancient Romans themselves. Yes, they would not understand if they were approached with such a question, just as they would not understand a modern person who does not see the benefit of drinking diluted wine and supplied water.
Is it for nothing that the dictionary has the definition of “watery”, which means bad, liquid, diluted, meaningless, depending on the context. And water, by today’s standards, is better the less additives it contains. Drinking water is specially purified and filtered. Or they try to take from such deep wells, where the most unbridled imagination is not able to penetrate, where microbes and impurities cannot penetrate.
It would seem that nothing could be simpler. Lie as long as you can while the endless dinner drags on, take a sip of mineral water, carbonated or still, whatever you like, raise a glass of pure wine, one, two, three. If you get drunk, it’s not scary, you won’t fall, because you’ve been lying down for a long time. Vomiting - this is how the ancient Romans specifically took measures to make them vomit without directly crawling away from the table, because you can eat more on an empty stomach. The latter, again, is surprising for modern man. Eating a lot makes sense, but having eaten a lot, getting rid of food is mind-boggling. Just as it is not clear: if you want to drink, why drink “balalaika”, as they say, because you drink to get drunk. When there is no full-fledged drink, you can use mash, “pharmacy”, that is, tinctures made with alcohol, and alcohol-containing liquids, and finally, triple cologne, shoe polish solution. But having wine, sometimes very good, pouring water into it - isn’t this barbaric? The ancient Romans, however, believed that it was barbaric to drink wine undiluted and in large quantities. The offended barbarians beat them for this until they lost their antiquity. And rightly so.
It even makes no sense that the taste of the wine, which is then going to be diluted, has been complicated, refined, and diversified for a long time. For example, they added rose petals, violet petals, myrtle leaves and aloe leaves. They also used laurel leaves, spikenard, myrrh, and wormwood. If it happened in the summer, the wine was cooled, if in the winter, it was heated in special vessels.
It must be admitted that the sophisticated, extremely pampered ancient Romans loved drinks and additives that were very dubious. This is passum, a wine made from raisins, sapa and defrutum, special decoctions of grapes obtained through evaporation, they were used, among other things, as preservatives and additives for wine, laura, a drink made from grape juices that were mixed with water. How did this swill differ from “fruit and berry” wines or from Moldavian-made chatter? Especially taking into account that the Moldovans are the descendants of these same ancient Romans. True, they were very fined and exiled to eternal settlement in the endless Moldavian steppes, where there is enough space for everyone, even Ovid Nazon. By the way, one can assume that the recipes for Moldovan port and various fortified wines were inherited by local residents. If the guess is correct, we need to add these, so to speak, drinks to the list of world cultural heritage and serve them at the ceremonial meetings of UNESCO, so as not to be too clever.
Among other drinks revered by the ancient Romans, it is worth mentioning mulsum, a dark red drink with the addition of honey. The wine was supplemented with honey, spices were added, then, poured into ceramic vessels, it was left to ferment for several weeks (a simpler method involved boiling a mixture of wine and honey). Special snacks (promulsis) were served with mulsum, which is reflected in their name. They also drank mulsum to stimulate appetite, as an aperitif. The drink was believed to be beneficial.
And if we have to talk about it, let’s mention the proportion in which the ancients diluted wine. The proportions are as follows: two cups of wine for three cups of water (the result is sleep and escape from worries, pacification of passion), a cup of wine for two cups of water (excitement and intoxication within normal limits), a cup of wine for three cups of water (no intoxication, no special taste). Such proportions are compared with musical proportions: fifth, octave, fourth. This information was gleaned from Plutarch, who was not only the author of “Comparative Lives” and many other works, but also a Greek, and an ancient one at that. Therefore, he knew what he was talking about. And therefore it is even more strange that some ancient Romans, who drank wine, contrary to tradition, without diluting it, said that this is exactly how enlightened Greeks drink wine. If this were true, the ancient Greeks would not have turned into modern Greeks.
The recipe for mulled wine (conditum tinctum), the favorite drink of legionnaires, has already been given. But the drink posca was only mentioned. Meanwhile, this drink was extremely popular. Roman legionnaires and members of the lower classes drank it every day. Both because it was easy to prepare and because its ingredients were cheap. Wine vinegar, or wine turned into vinegar, was diluted with water, then aromatic herbs were added. There are many references to the addition of raw eggs. The drink perfectly quenched thirst, and if the taste of the water left much to be desired, then acid and aromatic additives could correct the situation. It was believed that due to vitamin C, poska serves as a preventative against scurvy. The acidic environment also destroyed bacteria.
As usual, the most popular and everyday things, because of their “common knowledge,” disappear into the distances of history more easily than rarities and unique items. Why write down what everyone knows? There are only mentions of this drink left, and its recipe can be restored very roughly. According to a specialist, this or a similar drink can be obtained if you take half a glass of honey for one and a half glasses of wine vinegar, add a tablespoon of coriander seeds, having previously crushed them, and four glasses of water. Boil water with vinegar and coriander, cool slightly, then add honey. The completely cooled drink is filtered. They drink, again, diluting it with water to taste.
To summarize, let's say that if bread and wine, according to the authors of late antiquity, were the two main foodstuffs for the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans, from our point of view, these ancients treated wine wastefully - spoiling it with additives, diluting it and letting it down. If they had treated things differently, they might have existed to this day. At least in alcoholic form.

A mosaic from the Bardo Museum (Tunisia) depicts a cup and a container of wine.

St. K-a

2016 All rights reserved.
Any copying of site materials only with permission from the administration of www.site

The wine production process was not easy. And it would take quite a long time to describe it if not for Cato. We are talking about Marcus Cato - the eldest of the famous Cato: both were known for their honesty, incorruptibility, integrity, contempt for pleasures and luxury and severity. The elder said “Carthage must be destroyed!”; the youngest (Mark's great-grandson) fought with Caesar and committed suicide by cutting his stomach and pulling out his entrails with his own hands.

Both Cato were tight-fisted and practical and achieved considerable success in business and management; Cato the Younger was not much poorer than Crassus or Lucullus - and even Pompey the Great did not consider it shameful to become related to the house of Cato. The foundation of family prosperity was laid by Marcus Cato on a family estate near Rome - “in the land of the Sabines.” And he wrote a book about effective estate management. “On Agriculture” is one of the oldest surviving examples of business literature.

In order for you to become better acquainted with the author, I will give a couple of excerpts from Plutarch’s “Comparative Lives”:

“Working diligently to increase his property, he came to the idea that farming was more of a pleasant pastime than a source of income, and therefore began to invest his money reliably and thoroughly: he acquired reservoirs, hot springs, plots suitable for setting up a fulling workshop, fertile lands with pastures and forests (neither of which require care), and all this brought him a lot of money, while, according to Cato himself, even Jupiter was not able to cause damage to his property. He was also involved in usury and, in addition, in its most vile form: lending money for overseas trade. That's how he did it. He founded a community and invited those who received a loan to join it. When there were fifty people and the same number of ships, Cato, through the freedman Quinction (who conducted all affairs together with the debtors and set sail with them), took for himself one share of the fifty. Thus, risking only a small part of the whole, he received huge profits. He also lent money to his own slaves; They bought boys, and then, a year later, having trained them properly at Cato’s expense, they sold them. Cato kept many for himself - for the price that the most generous buyer could give. Trying to instill in his son an interest in such activities, he said that it was not appropriate for a man, but only for a weak widow, to reduce his fortune. He spoke even more harshly, without hesitating to call a divine and admirable husband anyone whose accounts after his death show that during his life he acquired more than he received as an inheritance.

“He was a wonderful father, a good husband, a diligent owner and never considered the care of the house unimportant or insignificant. Therefore, it seems to me that it would not be superfluous to talk about this. He took a wife of good birth rather than a rich one, believing, however, that both birth and wealth are equally characterized by dignity and a certain pride, but hoping that a woman of noble birth, fearing everything base and shameful, would be especially sensitive to the good rules that he inspired in her husband. He who beats his wife or child, he said, raises his hand to the highest shrine. He considered the glory of a good husband more honorable than a great senator, and the only thing he admired about Socrates, the famous sage of antiquity, was how invariably condescending and affectionate he was with his quarrelsome wife and stupid children.

But enough about Cato, I guess - I promised about ancient Roman wine. Thanks to the already mentioned “De agri cultura”, I don’t even need to try - Cato described everything accurately and in detail. So, taking care of your estate:

“Note in which area the vineyard should be planted. In a place that will be considered the best for the vine and will be flooded with sun, plant small Aminaean grapes, double Eugenean grapes and small yellowish ones. Whichever place will be fatter or where there will be more fog, plant large Aminaean, Murgentinian, Apician and Lucanian. The remaining varieties, especially the “mixture” (miscella), are suitable for any site. On a suburban estate, it is best to have a garden with grape vines climbing through the trees. You can sell both firewood and branches, and the owner will have something to use. On such an estate one should plant everything that is suitable for it: different varieties of grapes - small Aminaean, large and Apician. The grapes are stored in pots in grape presses; It also preserves well in grape juice, syrup and pomace wine mixed with water. You can hang the hard-barked and large Aminian grapes; it preserves well as raisins in the forge"

“How should 100 yugers (about 29 hectares) of a vineyard be equipped? Needed: vilik (manager), vilik, 10 workers, 1 plowman, 1 donkey driver, 1 person who looks after the willow, 1 swineherd - a total of 16 people, a pair of oxen, a pair of donkeys that walk in a team, 1 donkey for the mill, 3 fully equipped presses, jugs that can hold five grapes - 300 skins, 20 jugs where grape marc is stored; 20 for grain, separate covers for each jug; 6 vessels braided with feather grass (spartum). 4 amphorae woven with feather grass, 2 funnels, 3 wicker filters, 2 filters for removing mold, 10 jugs for grape juice, 2 carts, 2 plows, 1 yoke for a cart, 1 yoke for working in the vineyard, 1 yoke for donkeys, 1 round copper dish, 1 mill drive, 1 copper cauldron with a capacity of a bellows, 1 lid for the cauldron, 3 iron hooks, 1 copper cauldron for cooking wine, with a capacity of a bellows, 2 water jugs, 1 watering can, 1 basin, 1 jug, 1 slop pail, 1 water pail, 1 small tray, 1 ladle, 1 lamp stand, 1 chamber pot, 4 beds, 1 bench, 2 tables, 1 kneading table, 1 clothes chest, 1 food chest 6 long benches, 1 water wheel, 1 modium (capacity, volume about 9 liters), covered with iron, 1 half-modium, 1 vat for washing, 1 bath, 1 vat for lupine, 10 smaller jugs; harness with set for 2 oxen, 3 blankets for donkeys with set, 3 packs, 3 baskets for wine grounds, 3 mills where donkeys work, 1 hand mill; iron tools: 5 sickles for rushwood, 6 knives for pruning leaves from forest trees, 3 garden knives, 5 axes, 4 wedges, 2 plowshares, 10 heavy shovels, 6 light ones, 4 scoop-shaped spades, 2 four-pronged rakes, 4 manure braids, 1 body made of rushnik for manure, 40 knives for cutting grapes, 2 braziers, 2 tongs, 1 poker; 20 American baskets, 40 wickerwork used for transplanting, or 40 troughs, 40 wooden shovels, 2 large troughs, 4 mattresses, 4 bedding, 6 pillows, 6 bedspreads, 3 towels, 6 patchwork blankets for slaves"

Having acquired such a simple farm, you can start producing wine. Here's how wine was made in Ancient Rome:

“Make sure that everything you need is ready for shooting grapes. Presses should be washed, baskets repaired, and jugs should be oiled in rainy weather. Baskets should be prepared and repaired, spelled should be ground, salted fish should be purchased, and fallen olives should be salted. Gather the miscella clusters when the time comes and make “early wine” for the workers to drink. Divide the grape juice squeezed out during the day evenly into jugs and keep it clean. If necessary, pour into the grape juice thick grape syrup, brewed from the juice that flowed from the bunches before they were put under the press; add 1/40 of this syrup or 1 1/2 pounds of salt to the fur. If you put crushed marble, put 1 pound on the skin; put it in a vessel, mix with grape juice; pour it into a jug. If you are going to put resin, then take 3 pounds of it on the skin of grape juice and grind it thoroughly; put them in a basket and leave it hanging in a jug of grape juice; Shake frequently to loosen the resin. When you pour in the syrup or add marble or resin, stir the wine frequently for 20 days; Crush grapes daily. Divide the grape juice obtained from the pomace between the jugs intended for it and add it evenly.
Greek wine should be made this way. Collect completely ripe bunches of apician grapes. When you select them, pour in 2 quadrantals one quarter ahead of the prepared sea water.
the skin of grape juice squeezed from them, or put a modium of pure salt, hang it in a basket and leave it to dissolve in the juice. If you want to make white wine, pour half the wine from yellow grapes and half from apicius; add 1/30 of the old grape syrup. Whatever wine you boil until syrup becomes thick, add 1/30th of the syrup.”

Once you have prepared enough wine, you can eat the grapes. And only then - think about slaves:

“When the grapes are ripe and harvested, order them to be preserved, first of all, for the family and household, and order them to be harvested completely ripe and dry, so that they do not lose their glory. Sift fresh grape pomace daily through a bed woven from straps or through a sieve prepared for this purpose. Fill tarred jugs or a tarred wine vat with the marc. Make sure to coat it well so that it can be given to oxen in winter. If you want, wash them a little. The result will be bad wine that the slaves will drink.
At the end of shooting the grapes, order the presses, baskets, braids, ropes, supports, and puffs to be hidden in their places. Make the jugs of wine wiped twice a day and order
have a separate broom for each jug to wipe the edges of the jugs with it. When thirty days have passed after shooting and the jugs are well cleaned of grape skins, cover them. If you want to drain the wine from the sludge, now is the best time to do it."

This is the kind of wine that the Roman patricians consumed. It would be interesting to try.

Italy is famous not only for its delicious pizza, pasta, salami and cheeses. This small state is also the largest producer of noble varieties of wine. The country has 20 wine regions, 250 varieties of grapes are cultivated and 3,500 varieties of wine are produced. The central region of Lazio, or the Roman province, plays a key role in Italy's wine industry. What wines are worth trying in Rome and the surrounding area? Let's tell you more...

Wines of Rome and Lazio region

Lazio is located in the very center of Italy. Its western coast is washed by the warm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the territory is divided into five provinces: Latina, Viterbo, Rieti, Rome and Fronzinone. The center of the region is Rome.
The region's picturesque landscape is quite diverse: a range of mountains borders fertile plains that are fed by water from numerous rivers. Sea breezes and cool mountain winds provide the region with an ideal climate for growing grapes.

Wine traditions of Lazio

Lazio is a white wine region. The best white wine is produced here from the oldest cultivated varieties - Malvasia and Trebbiano. More than half of the area of local vineyards is allocated to these varieties. Malvasia is a white grape that has been grown for two thousand years. It was most likely brought to the territory of modern Italy from Greece. Trebbiano is an equally ancient variety that was known to the Etruscans (a civilization that existed before Ancient Rome). The most popular varieties of Malvasia and Trebbiano:
Malvasia del Lazio;
Malvasia Bianca di Candia;
Trebbiano Toscano;
Trebbiano Giallo.

Despite the predominance of white varieties, which account for 90% of the finished product, red grape varieties are also grown in Lazio.

The most common ones are:

Montepulciano. Montepulciano ripens late, so it is grown only in the central and southern regions of Italy. Montepulciano wine is astringent.

Merlot. Merlot is one of the most common grape varieties. In Lazio, it is especially popular in the province of Latina, where it is used to make the amazing Merlot di Aprilia wine.

S angiovese. Sangiovese is originally from Tuscany, but the variety is also common in the rest of Italy. The wine from this grape is ruby in color with a fruity aroma and a slight bitterness.

The best white wines of Lazio. Frascati

The leading wine producing area in Lazio is Castelli Romani. The landscapes of these lands were formed due to volcanic activity. The extinct craters now contain bodies of water, and the soil is excellent for growing grapes.
Perhaps the most famous wine from this part of Lazio is Frascati. A young and delicate drink, the aftertaste of which is filled with shades of almond, pear and citrus, and the aroma is bright and original, with notes of nut, peach, pineapple and tropical fruits. The Frascati blend contains Malvasia, Trebbiano and Bonvino varieties. The main wine producer is Colli di Catone. Previously, to try Frascati, you had to come to Italy, because... wine is very capricious for long-term transportation. Now modern winemaking technologies have solved this problem.

The best white wines of Lazio. Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone

Another famous wine region of Lazio is Tuscia (Tuscia) in the province of Viterbo. Wine production in these parts began in ancient times: three thousand years ago the Etruscans grew grapes here. Now the pride of this region of Lazio is the world famous Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone. The drink combines varieties such as Trebbiano Toscano, Malvasia Bianca Toscana and Rossetto. Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone has a golden hue and a harmonious taste, filled with tart musk, hawthorn fruit and ripe fruity notes.

This wine received its unusual name back in the 12th century. Local legends say that Giovanni Defuc, an Italian bishop, accompanied the English king Henry V on a trip. Giovanni sent his page ahead to report on the arrival of the royal person and find a hotel where the best wine in all of Italy would be served. The doors of hotels in which the wine was of suitable quality were to be marked by the servant with the inscription Est, which means “to eat” in Latin. The wine in the small village of Montefiascone was so exquisite and unlike anything else the page had ever tasted that he could not resist writing the word three times, putting an exclamation mark after each.

The best red wine of Lazio. Merlot di Aprilia

The province of Latina, part of Lazio, is located 70 kilometers south of Rome. The local landscapes were not very suitable for growing grapes, as they were impenetrable swamps. But at the beginning of the 20th century they were drained and red varieties of wine grapes began to be grown here. The leading region of Latina is Aprilia, where the famous Merlot di Aprilia is produced - a garnet-colored wine with a slightly herbaceous taste.

To taste the best wines of the Lazio region, visit wineries and taste local delicacies, join us

Just click "submit a request" on the website or write to [email protected] or by phone +39 3275381738 (viber, whats"app) and we will select the most suitable tour for you

I cannot help but point out some inaccuracies in my colleague’s answer voiced here, and also voice some necessary additions. The Greeks and Romans drank wine diluted with water. It is worth keeping in mind here that the taste of the wine was very different from what we have today, and I have already answered questions on this topic. Let me note again: in the sources you can see that the recipe for making wine sometimes involves adding the most unexpected ingredients to it, including salt (or something salty, apparently as a preservative). This was important from the point of view of storage and trade, since the wine had to be well preserved during transportation. It is no coincidence that when served, the wine was not only diluted, but also often sweetened (with honey); spices were often added to it. So I would still argue about the taste. Drinking undiluted wine was considered a sign of bad taste: it is no coincidence that in the poem quoted by a colleague, Catullus points to the custom of drinking in Scythian style. In ancient times, there was a belief that only barbarians (= including the Scythians) drank wine this way. In this regard, it is worth recalling the story of how the Spartan king Cleomenes, having allegedly learned from the Scythians to drink undiluted wine, fell into madness, which led to his death (in Herodotus: Hist., VI, 84). This Spartan legend must be understood in the context of the specific understanding of wine in Greek culture: as a gift from Dionysus, wine had magical and ritual significance. It had to be used according to given rules. In Rome, it seems, wine was not given such a deeply mystical character, but the cultural tradition still remained. References to pure, undiluted wine in Roman literature are usually contextual. Thus, Suetonius, reporting on Tiberius’ drunkenness, points to his humorous nicknames, among which one indicates the use of supposedly pure wine. As for Catullus's poem, it should also be perceived in the context of the passionate and ardent nature of the poet himself.

On the use of wine among the Greeks: Lissarrag F. Wine in the flow of images. The aesthetics of an ancient Greek feast. M., New Literary Review, 2008. At one time I wrote a review of this book.

They didn’t drink like that, or they drank, but with condemnation?) So Seneca writes “so in us, when wine ferments, everything hidden in the depths rises and is brought out; that, overloaded with undiluted wine, people cannot keep in themselves either food or secrets and lay out everything - both their own and someone else's. Although this happens often, we discuss the most pressing matters with those we know are addicted to drinking no less often.”

Answer

We cannot say with certainty whether we drank or didn’t drink. These are not our neighbors, these are people who lived 2000 years ago. All we have are written sources that reveal the peculiarities of the lives of certain people or groups. They contain specific references to the use of undiluted wine, which should be explained separately. I personally believe that drinking undiluted wine occurred, but extremely rarely: the main tendency was still to mix wine with water. It is difficult to give specific examples of the use of pure wine (that is, not in a humorous or too general sense), since the very mention of undiluted wine was often a kind of phraseology (cf. our expression “drench your eyes” in the meaning of getting drunk, which cannot be interpreted literally).

Answer

Comment

Wine is as old as time. Together with civilization itself, it came to us from the East, as evidenced by tablets, papyri and scrolls found in Egyptian tombs. That humanity, to which we count ourselves, working, fighting and loving, could not do without the support of this life-giving drink.

We cannot draw any conclusions about wine in the era of the pharaohs from the numerous works of artists and sculptors - this time is too remote from us. Our era of wine, the origins of which are still discernible, begins with the Phoenicians who settled on the shores of

Mediterranean Sea around 1100 BC, and the Greeks who settled here 350 years later. Subsequently, these lands - Italy, France and Spain - became the true home of wine (although the Etruscans cultivated grapes already between the 8th and 4th centuries BC). The Greeks called Italy “the land hung with vines” - just as the Vikings, having visited America in 1000 AD, gave it the name Vinland for the abundance of local grapes. In North Africa, southern Spain, Provence, Sicily, mainland Italy and on the shores of the Black Sea, the first vineyards appeared during the Greek and Phoenician civilizations.

The wines of Greece itself are not God knows what from the point of view

The visions of later times were praised by poets, who left many testimonies about them. In Athens, there was even a widespread post-feast game, kottabos, during which players splashed the remaining wine from their cups, trying to get into a vessel balanced on a support. Refined young men were taught the intricacies of this game. However, this treatment of wine, as well as the information that it was almost invariably drunk from what we would call a “wine cup”, seasoned with herbs, spices, honey and diluted with water (at times even sea water), allows one to doubt its merits. One thing is certain - various Aegean wines, in particular from Chios, were valued above others, and the demand for them remained unchanged. It is impossible to know whether we would like these wines today.

The Greeks were engaged in industrial cultivation of grapes in southern Italy, the Etruscans - in Tuscany and north of it, and the Romans came after them. So much has been written about wine and winemaking in Ancient Rome that it is possible to sketch a rough map of the distribution of wines in the early Roman Empire. The greatest of writers, even Virgil himself, wrote instructions for winemakers. One of Virgil's maxims, "The vine loves the open hill," is probably the best advice that can be given to the European winemaker.

Other authors were more calculating and talked about how much a slave could do with a minimum of food and sleep, without reducing the efficiency of work. The Romans were engaged in winemaking on a large scale. It spread throughout the empire, so that over time Rome began to import amphorae from colonies in Spain, North Africa - from all over the Mediterranean. Since Pompeii was a resort and an important point of transit for the wine trade, the excellently preserved ruins of this city provide us with much detailed evidence.

How good were Roman wines? Some of them appear to have been stored for an unusually long time, suggesting careful craftsmanship. Heat was often used to concentrate the must, and the wine itself was kept over a fireplace, exposed to smoke, apparently to give it the qualities of today's Madeira.

Roman wines from the best vintages became the subject of general discussion, and they were consumed for much longer than we can imagine. The famous “Opimiyskoe”, harvested in the same year in which Opimius became consul - 121 BC, when the wine was 125 years old.

The Romans had everything they needed to age wine, although they didn't use the same materials that we do. Glass, for example, was not used to store wine. Wooden barrels were in use only in Gaul (which included part of Germany). Like the Greeks, the Romans used clay amphorae that held about 35 liters. 2,000 years ago, Italians probably drank the same wine that their current descendants drink: young, sharp, sometimes sharper and bitter, sometimes stronger and stronger, depending on the vintage. Even the Roman method of growing vines on trees, whose festoons became part of the friezes of classical buildings, is still used today, albeit to a lesser extent, in southern Italy and northern Portugal.

The Greeks brought grapes north to southern Gaul. The Romans acclimatized it, and by the time in the 5th century. after the 19th century they left what now became France, and the foundations were laid for almost all of the most famous vineyards in modern Europe. Starting from Provence, where vineyards planted by the Greeks had existed for several centuries, the Romans moved to the Rhone Valley and Languedoc (Narbonne). Even today, in the 21st century, we do not have reliable evidence of the beginning of viticulture in Bordeaux. The earliest mention is found in those dating back to the 4th century. BC in the works of Ausonius (the poet lived in Saint-Emilion, perhaps even in Chateau Ausone, but, most likely, grapes were grown in these parts long before him).

It seems that the ancient Egyptian gods drank wine with no less pleasure than people. Pharaoh Thutmose III from the 18th dynasty (1479-1425 BC) offers vessels filled with wine to the god Nun.

Early spread of the grapevine. Starting its journey from the Caucasus or Mesopotamia 1 in 6000 (possibly) BC, it came to Egypt and Phenicia 2 around 3000 BC. By 2000 BC, the vine reached Greece 3, and around 1000 BC it was already growing in Italy, Sicily and North Africa 4. In the next 500 years, it reached at least Spain, Portugal and the south of France 5, and perhaps even southern Russia. And finally (see map on the next page), it spread with the help of the Romans to northern Europe 6, even reaching Britain.

The wines that the Romans drank: a rough map of winemaking in Italy in 100 AD. The names of modern cities are in bold font, the names of wines are in regular font.

Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman coastal resorts that were destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, have not been fully explored to this day. However, their houses (the house of Lucius Caius Secundus is shown here), streets, cellars and drinking establishments allow us to get a clear idea of what and how the Romans drank.

This map shows the approximate distribution of the grapevine vitis vinifera in the Roman Empire in 100 AD. There are striking similarities to 21st-century vineyards, although there were far fewer of them in Spain, Portugal and France, and infinitely more in Eastern Europe (and presumably Britain).

The early development of viticulture took place in river valleys and along natural routes of communication, cleared of forests by the Romans initially in order to protect themselves from ambush attacks. The reason, among other things, is that wine was most conveniently transported on ships and boats. Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Trier on the Moselle (a city whose museum displays a stone-hewn Roman wine ship) probably emerged as centers of trade for Greek and Italian wines. Later, their own vineyards appeared, gradually replacing imported products.

By the 1st century There were already vineyards on the Loire and the Rhine by the 2nd century. - in Burgundy and further north, in Paris (not the best of ideas), in Champagne and the Moselle. The Côte d'Or in Burgundy remains the least accessible of the noteworthy viticultural regions - there are no convenient waterways. It lies where the main northern road (leading to Trier on the Moselle - to the north of the Roman Empire) skirts the rich province of Authon. Local residents, seeing great commercial opportunities in their situation, also found the most fertile slopes. Thus the foundation of the French wine industry was laid.

Similar recipes:

An important condition when choosing raw materials is the use of ripe, freshly picked fruits and berries. Fruits or berries are sorted, rotten, unripe ones are removed...
Good natural wines can be made from the juices of various cultivated and wild fruits and berries, and they can be used in any...
Since humanity learned the culture of agriculture, the vine and its gifts have been associated with holidays, religious ceremonies and food....