Columella’s Wine: a Roman Enology Experiment

Abstract

The study of archaeological and written sources made it possible to commence an extensive research project on Roman viticulture, starting in 2013 on the slopes of Mount Etna, in Sicily (Indelicato, Malfitana and Cacciaguerra, 2017). The general aim is to thoroughly examine the knowledge of the Roman wine production cycle in the period between the first century BC and the second century AD, when wine production turned into an identifiable “industry”. The first result of these experiments was the creation of a vineyard (See Figure 1) which, after reaching its third year of life, in September 2016, provided its first harvest (around 20kg). This suggested to plan, for the following year – 2017, a wine-making experiment to understand what were the enological processes that transformed grapes into wine, today almost totally unknown.

Keywords

• wine
• food
• roman era
• italy