You could fill books on this subject (as some have: https://www.amazon.it/vino-nellantica-Roma-bevevano-Romani/dp/8898689705), but we limit ourselves here to a few things, if only to be able to come back to them many times later.
As described in the previous post, the Greeks introduced winegrowing in Southern Italy. Part of the Greek wine culture came along with it. A symposium, nowadays a rather dry gathering, meant for the Greeks an (elitist) occasion at which people sat, conversed and drank according to a certain protocol. Not only was the wine consumed only after the meal, it was also diluted with water. Sometimes it was even seawater, perhaps something to try on a holiday at the coast (although the wines were radically different from today’s). Women were not welcome, except for entertainment, for which young boys were in fact preferred.
Not so at the Roman equivalent of the symposium, the convivium, where women were welcome. The rules were generally looser, because eating and drinking wine went perfectly together and the Romans had no lessons to learn from the Greeks when it came to debauchery. The biggest difference between the Greeks and the Romans, however, is not found in the higher echelons of society, but among the lower classes. It was the Romans, after all, who made wine accessible to a broad public or, put differently, turned wine into a mass product (although the trend had already begun in Greece). Around 300 BC Rome as a whole consumed an estimated 180 million litres of wine, the equivalent of more than half a litre per person per day.
Quite a lot is known about wine in ancient Rome because many Roman authors wrote about it. Pliny the Elder was one of them. We have him to thank for the saying ‘in vino veritas’. Pliny the Younger, his adopted nephew, wrote an account (in two letters to Tacitus) of the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii, and is therefore perhaps somewhat better known than his uncle. The port of Pompeii was, by the way, an important logistical hub for the supply of wine to Rome, with major shortages as a result of the eruption (one of the most striking sights in Pompeii is, incidentally, the exceptionally well-preserved wine bar).
Another author is Columella, who in his 12-volume ‘De Re Rustica’ gave an overview of the agricultural techniques of the time. Three volumes are devoted exclusively to winegrowing. Despite all this information, there is one thing we will never know: what wine tasted like in ancient Rome. The techniques described suggest that the taste must have been very different from today’s wine, and moreover wine was an elastic concept. It was diluted, herbs were added, it was stored in amphorae and came into contact with resins and so on. There is a suspicion that a number of grape varieties were already grown on a large scale at the time: Fiano, Greco and Piedirosso. If you taste our Espira, Due Versure or the Fiano Sannio from La Fortezza, you may still catch a small hint of the past.
The Romans were responsible not only for spreading wine among their own population but also across Europe. Many of the areas they conquered were (and still are) extremely suitable for winegrowing. And so the Romans can be called the founders of the European wine industry. More on the spread of winegrowing in Europe in a next post.