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

History of viticulture

Methods of winemaking and storage were invented in the Neolithic period around 8500 to 4000 BC.

Viticulture is estimated to have originated in the 6th or 7th century B.C in the region to the south of the Black Sea. From there the crop spread to the four corners of the earth.

Neolithic evidence of wild grape consumption includes seeds uncovered in a ninth millennium BC site in Çayönü and Can Hasan III (7200–6500 BC) in eastern Turkey and suggests the potential for rudimentary viticultural experimentation.

From its early days in Neolithic villages, viticulture quickly expanded, probably through trade. Archeological findings show that as early as 5,000BC, Neolithic farmers traveled by ship along the Mediterranean coast from the Middle East to the Atlantic.

Western scholars believe that the tomb of Ptah-Hotep built 6000 years ago depicts the scenes of viticulture, grape harvesting and winemaking in ancient Egypt, thus marking the beginning of human wine making.

Viticulture in Anatolia exist at the beginning of the the third millennium BCE. Seed evidence has been uncovered at several sites in Anatolia including Korucutepe.

The period referred to as the Old Assyrian Colony Age (ca. 2000–1750 BC) provides evidence of grape harvesting and wine production, although it is apparent that the Assyrian colonists likely derived their horticultural skills from their Anatolian natives.

The Romans learnt their viticulture and oenology techniques from the Greeks and implemented them across the Italian peninsula.

The Romans invaded most of Europe and planted vineyards everywhere: they needed wines to supply their troops. This was essentially done by the end of the first century.

The expansion of the Roman Empire led to viticulture and winemaking technologies spreading westward throughout most of Europe, particularly France, Spain and Germany, areas now classified as the “Old World” of wine.

Because of their higher alcohol content, wines could be kept longer than beer, and proved a suitable trading product over relatively long distances.
History of viticulture

History of Wine

History of Wine
People acquired a preference for grapes as the basic ingredient for wine very early on, although on some African societies dates, bananas and the sap of palm tree were sometimes used, and indeed they sometimes still are. But wherever grapes could be grown they supplanted all other fruit as the basis for wine, just as barley did in the case of beer.

Viticulture is estimated to have originated in the 6th or 7th century B.C in the region to the south of the Black Sea. From there the crop spread to the four corners of the earth. Because of their higher alcohol content, wines could be kept longer than beer, and proved a suitable trading product over relatively long distances.

As a result, in ancient Egypt, whether beer was the drink of the ordinary people imported wine was a luxury item for the higher classes who used it – among other things – in religious ceremonies and for its medicinal properties. Later on, the Egyptians become wine growers themselves; we have hieroglyphics representing an Egyptian winepress dating as early as 3200 B.C.

In the Hellenic civilizations, and later in the Roman Empire, wine made from grapes was the dominant popular drink. Whenever the climate favored grapes, they were always the preferred basis for wine and viticulture predominated over the production of beer.

The high yield obtained from cultivating grapes together with the simplicity of the fermentation process and wine’s relatively high alcohol content – making it more intoxicating than beer and easier to keep – underlay the supremacy of wine.

Alongside the qualitative differences between wine and beer there are also social and political differences between growing grapes for wine and growing grain for beer. Cereals are annuals. The crop is harvested only a few months after the seeds are sown. This means that even nomad agriculturalists could grow crop to supply themselves with beer; the social and political conditions to be fulfilled are minimal.

The cultivation of grape vines, on the other hand, is a long term investment, with the vines standing vulnerable on the land for a few years before they yield fruit. Lasting peace and a stable allocation of land within society are hence pre-requisites for commercial wine growing. Thus a certain degree of state formation – political stability and peace – is an absolute pre-requisite for a profitable wine growing business.
History of Wine