The inhabitants of Ancient Rome were known for their love of wine—growing, shipping and drinking it throughout their empire. But what exactly did their wine taste like? Would we find it palatable today?
New research on the winemaking practices of Ancient Rome has found that not only was Roman winemaking far more advanced than previous studies have found, but also that Roman wine had complex flavors and colors, with many similarities to modern wine—as well as some notable differences.
Published in Cambridge University Press’ journal Antiquity, “Making Wine in Earthenware Vessels: A Comparative Approach to Roman Vinification” provides evidence that ancient Roman vintners used familiar practices like controlled maceration, oxidation and pigéage, or punchdowns, to craft wines with various colors, tastes and aromas that were far more sophisticated than past research has suggested.
Lead researcher Dr. Dimitri Van Limbergen, an archaeologist and specialist in ancient viticulture at the University of Verona, explains that based on his findings, ancient Roman wines would have been most similar to today’s pétillant naturels, orange wines and red Saperavis of Georgia, where qvevri, or earthenware clay vessels, are still used for fermentation and aging. Qvevri are similar to the ancient Roman dolia investigated in the study.
“Winemaking in qvevri and dolia is both extremely straightforward and an ingenious way of producing wine,” Van Limbergen told Wine Spectator. He believes that to understand the sensory profile of Roman wines, we need to look at wines fermented in similar vessels and with similar techniques.
“Modern wine classification ideas are unhelpful to capture the nature of Roman wine,” said Van Limbergen. “Wine colors, for example, were not subdivided between white and red, as is done today. Roman wines belonged to a wide spectrum of colors ranging from white, yellow, amber, brown and then red and black.”
Archaeology Unearths Ancient Winemaking Techniques and Tastes
For their research, Van Limbergen and his team carefully analyzed dolia that had been discovered at various archaeological excavations of Roman villas in population-dense parts of the empire, such as Rome itself, as well as Ravenna and Pompeii. Each of these sites had a plethora of what are known as dolia defossa cellars—intricately designed storage and aging facilities used by the Romans to keep the dolia and the wine they contained in a temperature-controlled environment, just as winemakers the world over still do today.
The researchers found that ancient Roman vintners used many techniques akin to those of the modern day, including lees stirring, skin contact, pressings and extended aging. They also had an understanding of how complex variables such as temperature control and oxidation levels would affect the flavor profile of each wine.
For example, the study describes how archaeologists found that many dolia were coated with different amounts of substances such as pitch to control the intake of oxygen through the earthenware’s pores. That’s a reductive procedure still practiced today through vessels like stainless steel tanks. Controlling exposure to oxygen during the fermentation and aging processes would have allowed Roman wines to undergo malolactic conversion, a key aspect of the flavor profiles of some of today’s most popular wines.
Another example of ancient vintner expertise is the use of surface yeasts, such as the flor employed to make Sherry. “These surface yeasts produce several chemical compounds, including acetaldehyde and acetoin, but most notably sotolon, which is responsible for the slightly spicy taste of flor wines and imparts aromas of toasted bread, apples, roasted walnuts and curry,” writes Van Limbergen and his team in the published paper.
An Empire of Wine: Ancient Industry Insights
The intricacies and widespread nature of the dolia defossa cellars led Van Limbergen and his colleagues to posit that these discoveries show “the development of a wine industry on a scale never attained before. Their presence attests to economic prosperity in the Roman world in Late Republican and Early Imperial times.”
“At the same time,” said Van Limbergen, there is also archeological proof that “many households could afford a dolium, and winemaking was probably part of daily life in many families.” In Georgia, this is still common practice today, he points out. “Many households in Georgia today make their own wine and keep it next to the kitchen or in a cellar inside a qvevri. This must have been quite similar in the Roman world.”
Van Limbergen is excited to continue his research by conducting further analyses on dolia to discover even more details on the chemical makeup of Roman wine. He is involved with the ArchaeoAdWine project in Italy, which aims to study ancient vine-growing practices in the northern Adriatic region through the reconstruction and replication of archaeobotanical data.
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