Part 3
Ancient Rome
You can read Chapter 1 here...
Chapter 2
When the Vineyard Became a System
…Pompeii. The day before the eruption of AD 79. A small thermopolium not far from the Forum.
In the shop, someone is always complaining about the price of the wine. Someone else demands that his be diluted a little less. The owner replies that good wine always costs money. At the next table, people are arguing about yesterday’s games or local politics. Someone is in a hurry to get home. Someone orders another cup.
Someone asks for Falernian.
— Falernian? You’ll find that farther down the street, where the rich people drink. The people who come here are ordinary folk who have a drink after work.
And nearby, Vesuvius, rising high into the sky, has so far taken no part in the conversation. But it is about to. For now, it is simply visible through the open door of the shop.
Pompeii, AD 79. Another ordinary day was beginning in the thermopolium: the proprietor poured wine, customers discussed their affairs, while smoke was already rising from Vesuvius above the city. No one yet knew that this would be one of its last days
The owner gathers the cups from the table.
— Tomorrow we’ll open earlier, — he tells his assistant.
— Why?
— There’ll be plenty of people.
He extinguishes the lamp and closes the shop.
Tomorrow it will never open again
If we rise a little above the Bay of Naples, we can see Pliny the Elder noticing an extraordinary cloud above the summit of the still-quiet volcano—and setting out towards the catastrophe.
👉 Pliny the Elder wrote extensively about the land, vineyards and wines of Italy. But one day, nature—which he had spent his entire life trying to describe and understand—opened before him one of its most terrifying chapters.
This happened in AD 79. Pliny was at Misenum, where he commanded the Roman fleet. An extraordinary cloud rose above Vesuvius. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, would later compare it to an enormous pine tree: a tall trunk rose into the sky before the cloud spread outwards like branches.
In AD 79, Vesuvius brought the familiar life of Campania to an abrupt end. Pliny the Elder set out by sea towards the eruption—first as an observer of nature, and then as a man trying to help those caught in danger. The journey would be his last
Pliny the Elder did what, perhaps, a man who had spent his life gathering knowledge about nature was bound to do. He ordered a ship to be made ready.
At first, he was driven by a scholar’s curiosity. But very soon the journey turned into a rescue operation: appeals for help began arriving from people in danger along the coast. Pliny ordered ships to put to sea and headed across the bay towards the eruption.
Ash and pieces of pumice were already falling onto the vessels. The coast grew more terrifying by the hour. At night, numerous fires could be seen around Vesuvius. Pliny the Younger wrote that his uncle tried to reassure those around him, explaining that the flames came from abandoned country estates that had caught fire.
Somewhere out there were the famous vineyards as well. The very lands of Campania whose wines Pliny had described in his Natural History. Vines, estates, cellars—a world that year after year had produced great wines was disappearing beneath the ash falling from the sky.
Pliny reached Stabiae. By morning, the situation had grown even worse. Ash and pumice continued to fall. People tried to move closer to the sea.
Pliny did not leave. There, not far from Vesuvius, he died. The circumstances of his death are known to us primarily from the letter written by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
He was fifty-six years old.
There is an almost cruel historical symbolism in his death. The man who left future generations detailed accounts of Rome’s famous wines died amid lands where grapes had been cultivated for centuries. Within a matter of hours, Vesuvius changed those lands forever.
We do not know whether Pliny actually witnessed the destruction of particular vineyards. But he saw the burning shores of the bay. And perhaps, in the final hours of his life, a man who had thought so much about why one piece of land produced great wine while another did not understood just how quickly the land itself could destroy everything human beings had created upon it.
But Pliny’s writings survived. And so, almost two thousand years later, we can still open his book and discover which wines the Romans considered great, where they were made and how they differed from one another.
The vineyards disappeared. But the man who had managed to write about them preserved them for History. It is largely thanks to him that part of Rome’s wine map outlived Rome itself
📜 When the Winegrower’s Experience Became a Book
At the Campanian vineyard we visited earlier, the manager had told the owner:
— The vines grow better here.
— Why?
— Many factors: Land. Sun. Water. Wind. The vine. People.
He knew this because he had watched his vineyard. His father had watched it before him and passed what he had learned on to his son. This was how agricultural knowledge had accumulated over thousands of years.
Rome took the next step—it began to record and systematise that knowledge
This was no longer an isolated recipe for making a particular wine, nor a piece of advice passed from one neighbour to another. It was an attempt to turn agriculture into a working system.
How should the land be chosen? How could one tell whether it was suitable for a vineyard? Which variety of vine should be planted? How far apart should the vines be? How should they be tended? How many workers would be needed? How much should a vineyard cost, and what profit could it produce?
The Romans were interested in all of it. And that was very characteristic of their age.
A Greek might reflect on wine as part of culture, moderation and harmony.
The Roman went further and asked:
— Very well. But how do we make it work every year?
And here Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder enters the historical stage. Around the middle of the second century BC, he wrote De agri cultura – the oldest surviving complete prose work in Latin.
It is not a poem about the beauty of country life. Cato writes as a landowner. He is interested in practical results: land, workers, equipment, planting, harvests and expenses. For him, a vineyard is not merely a beautiful slope.
It is a working estate.
And an estate is expected to produce an income.
Next comes Marcus Terentius Varro. He wrote Res rusticae in the first century BC, in advanced old age, dedicating the work to his wife Fundania, who had recently acquired an estate.
What we have before us is, in effect, a handbook for a new estate owner.
But it was Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, writing in the first century AD, who devoted particularly close attention to the grapevine. His De re rustica consists of twelve books.
And here ancient viticulture begins to look surprisingly modern. Columella discusses the choice of site, soil, varieties of vine, planting, spacing, vineyard layout, pruning, training, propagation and cultivation.
He compares. He advises. He argues with his predecessors. He draws on practical experience. Sometimes he is wrong—he could not yet know the causes of many phenomena that only future science would explain.
But the way of thinking itself had changed. It was no longer enough to say:
— My father did it this way.
Now one could ask:
— But why? What happens on another plot? What did another agricultural writer say about it? Which method gives the better result?
Falernian was not the same as Caecuban. Setine was not the same as Alban. And even within a famous wine-growing area, one slope could differ from another.
The Romans did not yet possess our modern knowledge of soils, climate or plant physiology. But they were learning to observe the differences.
Why does a vine grow better here?
Why does the same variety behave differently there?
Why does one vineyard produce more wine, while another produces less—but the wine commands a higher price?
The answer was no longer simply:
— Because the gods especially favour this place.
The vineyard itself was becoming an object of observation. Soil. Exposure. Climate. Grape variety. Yield. Human skill. This was still a long way from the modern science of terroir. But the question itself was becoming almost scientific:
What is it about a particular place that makes its grapes—and the wine made from them different?
Roman agricultural writers were turning generations of accumulated experience into knowledge that could be written down, compared and passed on.
And now let us allow one of them to step out of his book and into a vineyard.
…Italy. Latium. Near the Alban Hills. Around AD 60.
The owner of an estate is walking through his vineyard with a guest—Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. He stops beside one of the vines, bends down, takes some soil in his hand, then looks at the vine and at the sun.
Columella saw the vineyard as a system in which everything mattered: the soil and slope, the choice of grape variety, the spacing between vines, pruning, and the timing of each task. In Rome, viticulture was gradually becoming not only a craft, but also a subject of systematic study
— A good vineyard? — the owner asks.
Columella looks around.
— Do you want me to praise your vineyard or inspect it?
The owner laughs.
— Inspect it.
— What have you planted here?
The owner names the variety.
— And your neighbour?
— A different one.
— Why?
— His grows better there.
Columella nods. That is precisely the point. No vine is equally good everywhere. Some tolerate cold and mist better. Others prefer heat. Some do better in wetter ground, others in drier soil. A slope may offer more wind and less moisture than the plain below. Simply choosing a good vine is not enough.
You have to choose the right vine for this particular place.
Columella bends down again and picks up a handful of soil.
— And what do you think of the soil? — the owner asks.
— There is no such thing as simply good soil or bad soil.
— Then what is there?
— Heavy soil. Loose soil. Wet soil. Dry soil. Soil that is too fertile. Soil that is too poor. Both extremes can create problems. The richest land does not necessarily produce the best wine.
The owner frowns.
— But fertile land gives more grapes.
— Perhaps.
— Is that bad?
— If you are simply selling grapes, it may be better for your purse.
— And if I make wine from them?
Columella smiles.
— Then ask the man who buys and drinks it.
They walk a little farther up the slope. Here the vines are smaller. There are fewer bunches.
The owner points towards them.
— I get less wine from that part of the vineyard.
— And what price do you get for it?
The owner names the price.
— Higher.
— Then you already know the answer.
Columella wrote about this distinction between quantity and quality. More convenient and fertile land could produce more wine. Hillsides might produce less—but the wine could have a better taste and command a higher price.
There was no abstract idea of a single “correct” vineyard. Instead, there was a system in which land, vines, people, animals and tools had to work together. The vineyard was becoming something that could be observed, compared and managed.
And behind all these practical recommendations, an idea was gradually taking shape that would become increasingly important in the history of wine:
A vineyard is not a single factor. It is the interaction of place, vine, climate and human work
💰 When Quality Became Economics
— Very well, — the owner says. — I’ll do everything you advise. I’ll choose the land carefully. Plant the right vine. Hire skilled workers. Prune properly. I won’t chase the highest possible yield.
He pauses.
— And when do I get my money back?
A vineyard required investment long before it began to produce an income.Land had to be acquired. The soil had to be prepared. Planting material had to be obtained. Vines had to be planted. Supports had to be installed. Workers had to be hired.
And then one had to wait.
Even after the vineyard began producing grapes, it continued to demand labour and investment. For the first few years, the return could be small.
Columella understood this perfectly well. And he tried to calculate it.
For a modern reader, there is nothing surprising about such an approach. But in the first century AD, it is striking to see an agricultural writer discussing the cost of land, the expense of establishing a vineyard, the price of vines and labour, and the return on invested capital. The agronomist was also becoming a vineyard economist.
Imagine the same Roman landowner sitting at a table with his accounts.
— This plot gives me a hundred amphorae of cheap wine.
— And that one?
— Sixty.
— Then the first is better?
— No. Wine from the second sells for three times as much.
The answer is simple: Do not count the amphorae. Count the money.
Quality was acquiring an economic dimension. If wine from a particular piece of land consistently sold for a higher price, then the land itself acquired additional value.
And so an old question:
— Why is the wine from here better?
—was joined by another:
— How much is land capable of producing such wine worth?
And now, instead of a poet, philosopher, or god of wine, as we saw with the Greeks, another figure walks onto the stage of wine history:
the Roman accountant.
🍷 From One As to a Fortune
Wine was drunk throughout Rome. But it was not all the same wine. For most people, wine was part of everyday life—like bread, oil, or cheese.
Let us return for a moment to a thermopolium in Pompeii.
…A large thermopolium on one of the city streets. Around AD 70.
A short list is written on the wall:
Ordinary wine—one as.
Good wine—two asses.
Falernian—four asses.
It is almost a Roman wine list. There are no producers’ names. No critics’ scores. No grape varieties. But there is already a hierarchy that a modern wine drinker would immediately recognise:
ordinary → better → prestigious.
👉 Of course, we cannot be certain that four asses would actually buy you genuine first-class Falernian from the finest slopes of Monte Massico. Researchers have suggested that the inexpensive “Falernian” served in an ordinary tavern may have been very different from the wine poured at elite Roman banquets. But that only makes the story more interesting.
If the name Falernian helped a tavern owner sell wine at a higher price, then the name itself already had commercial value. The customer was paying not only for the wine.
He was paying for the name.
And wherever a name acquires value, sooner or later someone will be tempted to take advantage of it.
Now let us leave the thermopolium and enter a very different Roman world.
…Rome. A patrician banquet. Around 20 BC.
— Bring the Falernian.
The slave pauses.
— Which one?
— The Opimian.
For a moment, the conversation at the table stops. This is no longer simply wine. A bottle does not yet exist. There is no château label, no vintage chart, no auction catalogue.
But the principle is already familiar. An old and famous wine is being opened. It carries prestige. It carries history. And it carries a price. Here, the four asses from the Pompeian thermopolium no longer matter.
In the home of a wealthy Roman, wine became a symbol of status and prestige. Old Falernian commanded particular reverence—especially the legendary Opimian vintage of 121 BC, whose fame endured for generations among the Romans
Pliny gives us a remarkable calculation. The Opimian vintage of 121 BC, he writes, was originally valued at one hundred sesterces per amphora. He then calculates what such wine would be worth after 160 years if its value increased at an annual rate of six percent. In other words, the Romans were already capable of imagining wine not merely as something to drink, but as something whose value could grow with time.
Fortunes could lie quietly in a cellar.
Rome learned not only to distinguish quality. It learned to put a price on it
🏺 The Amphora Becomes Wine’s Passport
We have already heard the owner of a Campanian vineyard say:
— The best wine comes from that slope.
But what happens when the amphora leaves the estate? It travels along a road. It reaches a port. It is loaded onto a ship. Weeks later, it may be standing in a warehouse in Massalia, hundreds of miles from the vineyard where its grapes were grown. The vineyard itself is no longer visible. So how is the buyer to know where the wine came from? Roman trade gradually developed an answer:
make the vessel itself speak about what it contains.
An amphora was not simply a large clay container. Today, archaeologists classify amphorae by their shape and can often associate particular types with particular regions and products. Roman merchants, sailors, and warehouse workers would also have been familiar with many of these forms.
But shape alone was not enough. Amphorae could also carry painted inscriptions—tituli picti—as well as scratched inscriptions and stamps. Their meaning varied according to period, place and product.
We should not imagine anything resembling a modern bottle from a château, with a neat label giving the producer, appellation, vintage and alcohol content. There was no single universal system.
But information was already travelling with the goods
…Ostia. Warehouses at the mouth of the Tiber. Around AD 60.
Rows of amphorae stand inside a warehouse. An official responsible for receiving the cargo cannot open every vessel and taste its contents. Some contain oil. Some contain fish sauce. Others contain wine. They have to be received, counted, stored and eventually sent on.
Ostia—Rome’s maritime gateway. In the port warehouses, amphorae were received, sorted, and sent on to their destinations. Inscriptions on the vessels identified the origin and contents of the cargo: the amphora became a kind of passport for the wine, accompanying it from producer to buyer
The markings on the vessels serve a practical purpose. They may indicate the contents, origin, quantity, ownership, or the people involved in production and trade. The longer the chain between producer and buyer becomes, the more important such information is. And once the name of a place begins to command a higher price, the problem becomes even more interesting. Falernian costs more than anonymous ordinary wine. So somewhere along the chain of trade, it becomes important to say:
This amphora contains Falernian!
This is not yet a wine label in the modern sense. But the logic is already familiar. The buyer is no longer asking simply:
— Is this wine?
He is asking:
— What wine is it?
Imagine two amphorae standing side by side in a warehouse. One simply says:
VINUM.
The other carries the name of a famous place of origin. The merchant asks a higher price for the second. At that moment, the inscription on the vessel is doing something very important:
it is protecting the economic value of origin.
Two similar amphorae—but to a Roman buyer they were no longer the same. One was marked simply VINUM—”wine”; the other, FALERNUM. The name of the place of origin was becoming a mark of reputation, quality, and price. The buyer was beginning to choose not only the wine, but also the name of the land it came from
But there is another side to the story. The more valuable a name becomes, the more tempting it is to exploit it. Rome did not possess anything resembling the modern system for protecting geographical names, and the surviving evidence does not allow us to reconstruct a complete Roman system for preventing wine fraud. But the economic problem itself had already appeared:
How can the buyer trust what is written on the vessel?
Centuries later, Europe would answer that question with classifications, appellations, official seals and systems for protecting geographical origin.
Rome had not yet reached that point. But the reason such systems would eventually become necessary was already there.
Origin had acquired a price. And anything that acquires a price sooner or later requires proof
🏺 The Amphora Becomes Wine’s Passport
Now let us return to the Campanian amphora.
It leaves the estate. The vineyard remains behind—the slope, the soil, the vines, the people who tended them. The amphora travels on: along a road, through a port, onto a ship, across the sea—perhaps as far as Massalia.
There, no one can see the vineyard from which the wine came. But part of its story can travel with the wine. The shape of the vessel, stamps, painted inscriptions, scratched marks—all these could carry information about its contents, origin, producer, owner or merchant.
Not always. Not in the same form. And certainly not as systematically as on a modern wine label. But the idea itself was becoming increasingly important:
wine travels far from the place where it was made—and therefore its origin must somehow travel with it
The amphora was no longer merely a container.
The amphora was becoming wine’s passport.
🚢 When the Sea Became a Road for Wine
Let us follow a single amphora. It leaves Campania, reaches a port, is loaded aboard a merchant ship and sets out across the Mediterranean. Days or weeks later, it may be unloaded in Massalia.
One amphora tells us little about Rome. So let us rise above the Mediterranean and look down. There are no longer hundreds of amphorae below us. Nor thousands.
There are millions.
Wine had travelled by sea long before Rome. Greek merchants had carried it across the Mediterranean for centuries, and Greek amphorae have been found far from the places where they were made.
Rome did not invent the wine trade. Rome changed its scale.
Roads connected inland estates with ports. Ports connected regions with sea routes. A vast political and economic space helped goods move across an increasingly integrated network of roads, ports and sea routes.
Perhaps the most striking monument to the scale of Roman trade is not a palace, a temple or an inscription. It is a hill.
Monte Testaccio, in Rome, consists largely of fragments of discarded amphorae—tens of millions of them. Most had carried olive oil, especially from Spain; wine amphorae formed a much smaller part of this enormous flow. Yet the hill gives us an extraordinary sense of the quantities in which goods moved through the Roman world. Many amphorae, particularly those used for oil, were not simply returned and reused. Once emptied, they could become waste—and over generations that waste itself became part of the landscape.
Wine amphorae, meanwhile, appear across the Mediterranean world: in ports and cities, villas and military camps, and on the seabed in the wrecks of merchant ships. Each fragment marks a journey. And behind those journeys, something else was beginning to move as well.
The vine itself.
Rome did not merely move wine farther. It also helped move winegrowing.
Merchants carried wine into new markets. Soldiers and settlers moved into new territories. Towns grew, roads reached farther, and demand followed them. Landowners responded by planting vines where wine had previously been imported from elsewhere. Gradually, the wine map expanded north and west.
Not every new vineyard became famous. Most never did. They supplied local markets, towns, military communities and ordinary households. Their names did not enter the works of Pliny, and no Roman poet celebrated their wines. But their importance lay elsewhere.
The spread of vineyards created new winegrowing regions—regions that would survive, change, disappear and sometimes reappear over the centuries. Without that expansion, the later wine geography of Europe would have looked very different.
The Greeks had taught the Mediterranean world to recognise wines by their places of origin.
The Romans took that idea and carried it farther. They developed famous vineyards, described them, compared them, gave their wines economic value—and built the roads and trade networks that allowed those wines to travel. But they did something more.
Rome made the vineyard part of the infrastructure of a vast world
Roads carried wine. Ships carried wine. Merchants carried demand.
And behind all three, slowly but persistently, the vine itself was travelling.
The roads and ships carried more than amphorae.
Merchants carried demand. Settlers and landowners carried experience. And wherever conditions allowed, the vine followed.
The senator paused.
For a moment, the Colosseum was silent.
Then he looked towards the other delegations.
— Our greatest contribution was not Falernian wine. Not the Opimian vintage. Not stamped amphorae. Not even the books of Columella and Pliny.
He let the words hang for a moment.
— Our greatest contribution was the wine geography of Europe—a geography that Rome helped to expand on an unprecedented scale.
He rolled up his scroll.
The Roman delegation had finished its speech.
Rome was bringing its presentation before Clio—History, the sole judge of the Olympiad—to a close. The amphorae, the famous names, and the unfurled map were its arguments: Rome had inherited the wine culture of the ancient world and helped radically expand its geography. The verdict remained with History
The Empire would disappear. Its roads would remain. Its cities would remain. And in some places, so would the vineyards.
Centuries would pass.
Then people in simple monastic robes would appear among the old vines. They would walk the slopes, look at the soil beneath their feet, taste the wines from neighboring plots—and begin to ask a question that Rome had never fully answered:
If two vineyards lie side by side, why does their wine taste different?
But that would be the speech of another delegation.
To be continued…
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