Roman Empire and wine

The antiquity of wine has been influenced by several empires during specific periods such as ancient Egypt, Greece, China, Phoenicia and Rome. Both the Etruscans to Rome’s north and the inhabitants of Magna Graecia in the south had grown, imported and consumed wine on the Italian peninsula well before Rome’s rise as an Italian and then Mediterranean power.

The Roman Empire played an important role in distribution of grapes and wine. The oldest botanical remains on the Apennine Peninsula are dated to the second half of the 1st millennium BC.

The southern part of Italy was fully controlled by ancient Rome from around 270 BC, and the viticultural skills and techniques possessed by the initial Greek settlements were also integrated into Rome. The Romans learned about wine and viticulture from the Greeks, Etruscans, and also from Egyptians and Carthaginiansas well as Phoenicians.

The Romans invented the wine press. The grapes were collected in a stone vat and a heavy stone was rolled over them and crushed them. The juice was collected from openings at the bottom of the vat.

Wine was everywhere in Roman life, from cooking to medicine to religion. Wine

was a frequent ingredient in cooking, as evidenced by Apicius’ de re coquinara. Wine was an integral part of everyday life since the earliest days of Rome. Wines, viticulture, varietals, pruning, aging and other wine-related issues have been discussed by Horace, Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Cato, and many others. At the 1st century BC, wine taverns were common in cities.

Wine was also prominent in religious settings, being, of course, a central feature in the worship of Bacchus, but also offered as a libation to other gods. Wine was even used to put out funeral pyres and is commonly found in burial sites.

With the rise of the Roman Empire, the winemaking technology improved and spread to other regions such as what is now modern Europe, countries such as France, Germany and Italy.

The Romans made sure to supply their troops with wine so that they had something safe to drink. In the first century, they even built a harbor and planted vineyards around Bordeaux in order to ship wines to their troops in England.

More refined vines were probably grown by the mid-5th century BC. Although wine was known generally, used for religious purposes, and drunk by the wealthy, it is unlikely to have been so widely available that the general populace drank it regularly.
Roman Empire and wine

2000 years of Cognac

Cognac dates back over 2,000 years ago, and was probably named after a pre-Roman chieftain called Comnos or Conos. At that time it was the Romans first brought vines to France. Romans also discovered the secret of sealing wines in amphorae to mature and preserve them. By the time they left 500 years later they had laid the foundation for almost all the greatest vineyards in the modern world.

For centuries later France continued to produce wine, considered a gift from gods. As trading expanded, the delicate wines couldn’t cope with rough and long journeys by the sea.

In order to transport the wine in better conditions, traders began to distill wine. Arnaud de Villeneuve (Catalonia, Spain) is reported to have distilled wine as early as 1250. It may also have been produced as early as 1100 in Dalerno. The Dutch called this new spirit brandewijnm, literally burnt wine. And that’s where the term brandy comes from.

Some commercial distilled –wine beverages apparently began to be produced in Armagnac in the mid-1400s. Cognac region’s brandewijn was distinct from that produced by other regions and so came to be called by its new name - Cognac.

Brandy production in Cognac started in the early 1600s. The brandies produced in Cognac have a long-standing and universal reputation for their elegance and refinement and are often symbols of status and prestige.
2000 years of Cognac

Champagne in Romans time

Champagne has been the wine of celebration and consolation for centuries. Champagne was not always famous for its sparkling wine. Rather, it started out in the time of the Roman Empire as a producer of still white wanes most of which were consumed by roman legions.

Champagne is the name of an old province in France some 90 miles north east of Paris.

The Romans fostered development and around 1000 BC began classifying grape varieties, charting ripening characteristics, identifying diseases and increasing yields through irrigation and fertilization.

Grapes were probably first being cultivated in northeastern province of France (at that time Roman Gaul) about 50 years after the birth of Christ. The Romans were great admirers of the fruit of the vine and brought cuttings to France’s Rhone Valley.

These Roman grapes ultimately mutated into some of France’s classic noble varieties: Syrah, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay.

The Roman developed wooden barrels to store the wines in place of the skins and jars previously used.

And as glass blowing became more common, the Romans may have been the first ones to put wine into glass container.

Yet everything stalled in AD 79 when Domitian, a protectionist Roman Emperor, decreed that the vineyard of Gaul be uprooted because wheat was more important.

Probus, a gardener’s son, lifted the ban 200 years later, and the hedonistic Romans soon became to love the wines from Champagne.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, communications with other regions deteriorated, commerce was interrupted, vineyards were destroyed, and winemaking disappeared.
Champagne in Romans time

Ancient history of champagne

At its greatest outward expansion, the Roman Empire included most of the Mediterranean lands and a good part of Europe, where grapes were already under cultivation.

Wine making grapes were probably first being cultivated in northeastern province of France during Roman Gaul about 50 years after birth of Christ.

Yet everything stalled in AD 79, when Domitian, protectionist Roman emperor, decreed that the vineyard of Gaul be uprooted.

Probus, a gardener’s son, lifted the ban 200 years later, and the hedonistic Romans soon came to love the wines from Champagne.

Though wine had been produced in the Champagne region of France since Roman times, it was not until the end of the 17th century that the product known as champagne was first created. It was the time when the first highly sparkling wines appeared and not until the early 19th century that champagne became synonymous with sparkling wine.

During 5th century, a pagan Frankish warlord called Clovis defeated the Romans and declared himself king of land around Reims.

According to history, Champagne has been present at momentous occasions since the year AD 496, when Clovis, the King of the Franks, was converted to Christianity and was anointed with champagne.

French kings were crowned in Reims, a city in the middle of the Champagne region, between 898 and 1825, and these celebrations included copious amounts of the sparkling champagne wine.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Catholic religious institutions, particularly the monasteries, became the repositories of the brewing and wine-making techniques developed in the ancient world.

French monks perfected the art of sparkling champagne, were probably the first to fortify sherry, and brought distillation into widespread use on the European continent.
Ancient history of champagne 

Beverages during ancient Roman

Romans did not drink pure wine but mixed it in varying proportions with water and they sometimes flavored it with honey or with resins. Romans, rich and poor drank wine with their meals.

Even the poorest Roman could afford a jug of posca, vinegar mixed with enough water to make it drinkable.

The Romans wine was considerably more cloudy and rich in sediment. Roman historians report that wine and other alcoholic beverages played a vital role in their societies. The fun-loving Romans went as far as worshipping a beverage deity: Bacchus, the god of wine.

Wine and brew shop could be found at every street corner of ancient Rome.

The ancient Romans also perfected the glass bottle as a beverage container. Transparent wine bottles allowed their content to be seen and served to enhance the attractiveness of the beverage.

During the second BC, as Rome’s political, military and commercial interest extended northward in Europe, Roman trade goods spread across the continent.

Caesar led expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC. Romans introduced wine to Britain, in the early first century BC.

Beer also remained prominent being a beverage of choice for many of the every troops safeguarding Roman dominance in Britain. The ancient Romans produced a beverage from corn, which they called cerevisia, the gift of Ceres. Theophrastus speaks of it as intoxicating and calls it the wine of barley.

At Manching in southern Germany, Roman wine amphoras appear already early in the second century BC. 

The wines produced in the sloped of Vesuvius were particularly renowned; the fertile volcanic soil there was cultivated almost up to the edges of the crater until the eruption of 79 AD.
Beverages during ancient Roman

Grape Juice and Wine

Grape Juice and Wine
Ancient Egyptian inscription indicate that the grape was grown there in 2375 B.C. Murals to Egyptian tombs carry depictions of grape vines, grape harvesting, and trampling to obtain the juice.

By way of classical Greece and later Rome, the grape vine expanded into all the lands of Europe and North Africa where it will grow.

The Greeks cultivated the grape vine wherever they went; Italy, north Africa, southern France and southern Spain, including the best known wine regions of the world, Bordeaux and Burgundy. The Greeks called Italy the Land of Vines.

Romans grew different varieties and appreciated their diversity. Grapes were grown on trees and trellises, preferentially on terraced hills and banks surrounding river valleys. Romans aged wine in barrels, which they invented. Before then it had been kept in earthenware amphorae.

Grape juice changes naturally into wine when sugar fermenting yeast is present. When grapes are crushed with the skins, yeast comes in contact with the juice. It grows in the juice, using the sugar as its source of energy, and in process transforms the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Alcohol in high concentrations is toxic, and when it reaches a certain level (between 12 and 14 percent), most strains of yeasts cannot grow any more. The wine is now ready. It is young wine and tastes very much likes grape juice alcohol. When the first fermentation is completed (sometimes even before), and especially if the wine is in a warm palace and exposed to the air, special bacteria start growing on the alcohol and transforming it into acetic acid. The wine spoils and turns to vinegar.

Since remotest antiquity, the principal problem was not to make wine but to keep it from spoiling. In classical Greece wines were drunk young and most were probably vinegary. To counter the acid taste a variety of methods were employed. Greeks learned that air speeds up the spoiling process. Amphorae had narrow necks to reduce the contact of wine with air, and they were kept tightly stoppered.

Because air could penetrate earthenware surfaces, the Greeks line their amphorae with resin. This preserved wine for use in commerce. The Romans took a step forward when they invented wooden barrels. They could be stoppered better than amphorae, and the oak imparted flavor from the wine. Some Roman wines apparently kept very well. There are reports of vintages that lasted to a hundred years.
Grape Juice and Wine