Archaeologist Emlyn Dodd and wine educator Diego Meraviglia explore the history and legacy of ancient Roman winemaking.
This program was presented at the Getty Villa on Sunday July 23, 2023, https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3881.html.
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Good afternoon and welcome my name is Kenneth lotten I’m curator of Antiquities here at the Getty Villa or maybe today I’m bakus himself we’ll we’ll see in either case I’m delighted that you’ve all decided to join us for another in our bakas uncor series today’s program is entitled
Making wine in ancient Rome from spectac to reality as many of you I think already know our bacus Uncorked wine programs explore Ancient Art wine and the culture of the ancient world through talks on the archaeological context of wine cultivation and drinking practices now it’s not really that often
That we here at the GTI Villa are terribly topical but a major feature article on the subject subject of today’s program the site of the villa de quinti in Rome and the research of our first Speaker imin Dodd appeared just this morning in the Washington Post and
I encourage you all to have a look at that when you have a chance now our first Speaker today is imin do a lecturer in The Institute of classical studies at the University of London previously he served as assistant director for archaeology at the British school in Rome home and he’s also a
Research affiliate of the Australian archaeological Institute in Athens an honorary fellow at mcari University an elected fellow of the Society of antiquaries London and the Royal Historical Society he is an active field archaeologist co-directing the feri Novi project in central Italy as well as survey projects in the cyclides in
Greece investigating the production of wine oil and agricultural technology in the classical to the late antique eras he’s also an active collaborator with the Ania adum archaeological research project in southern turkey where he will be in about three or four days from here and he’s previously
Worked on the Greek island of Doos in the Athenian agara and the Acropolis as well as at Pompei Atlantis and elsewhere in Italy today he will share with us his fascinating Research into the luxurious Imperial wine making establishment at the Villa quinti just outside of Rome after eveland’s talk of about half an
Hour we will be joined on the podium by Diego maravia who might be known to many of you from previous Baka SAR programs Diego is President and Director of Education for the North American Somalia Association he holds the gold pin certification from both the Italian Somalia Association and the worldwide
Somalia Association he is a certified Master taster how do you get that job to be a c I think you have to study a lot but he’ll tell you more about that he’s a certified Master taster and a certified specialist in wine with the Society of wine Educators in the United
States in 2009 he was awarded the international vandi award for innovation in the profession of somal and in 2011 he finished fifth at the international Somalia association’s best Somalia in the world competition a native Italian Diego is passionate about archaeology and ancient European history with a focus on his
Native land’s Celtic and Gish Heritage he cooperates with various wineries as a consultant and is a regular public speaker so without further Ado I give you first e then Diego [Applause] Maria thank you very much Ken uh for your kind generous and extensive introduction uh with plenty of useful
Information uh and I hope that I will give you some more useful and interesting information over the next half an hour but before we get to that I’d like us to First zoom out and take a broader perspective to observe not just the equipment and the technologies that
Wine was made with uh in the Roman era that wine was stored and fermented in and and underwent its entire production process but also to look at some broader examples from across the GRE Roman World using this great quantity of evidence that we as archaeologists now have at
Our disposal it’s possible for us to start observing some Trends uh and some patterns that are emerging uh as well as to acknowledge that wine production in the ancient world took place on a vast spectrum of scales and methods and processes and it’s in this manner that our
Observations as modern uh as researchers in today’s world looking back into the past are starting to become much more nuanced for example we now know that there are uh many examples of facilities focused purely on practical aspects of production without any notion of going Beyond uh the essential processes uh of
Extracting juice from grapes uh in a manner that need not be complicated but there are also facilities as we’ll explore later on that were much more lavish uh the complete other end of the spectrum of opulence uh performativity and sensation rivaling even some of the finest bathouses and religious spaces in
The ancient world so in what follows uh I will explore some examples of all of this ranging from the most practical to the most luxurious uh the most theatrical to the most downto Earth sometimes linked as well to specific Regional uh and local production habits I’d like as well to start with a
Very brief overview a crash course if you will for those not so expert in ancient wine production uh as well as some of our key archaeological and artistic evidence for all of this before any production could occur of course grapes had to be harvested uh and we have plethora of information for
This throughout the ancient world uh often occurring in relief on things like s sarcophagi like this fantastic example one of my favorite examples from the from the Roman period which is held uh in fact here in the Getty collection uh and as well this example in Mosaic from the Santa Costanza mosum just
Outside of Rome both depicting uh cherubs or putty in in the bottom example harvesting grapes picking them before they could be turned into wine a lot of these depictions revolve around Fantastical Notions kind of mythical Notions of wine production and a celebration of the vendemia this ancient vintage
Harvest now of course the Romans couldn’t really let lay claim to these production habits and and these cultivation aspects these had already been around for Millennia and the recent discovery uh very recent I think in the last few years which actually appeared in National Geographic of a very large
Wine making facility in the Levant which is visualized here gives us some fantastic evidence for this this was discovered in what is now modern Lebanon and is a Phoenician facility once the grapes had been cultivated they were dumped in large Vats like this from a much earlier
Period onwards uh and still used in the Roman era and even up to to today to be trodden and we hear from our ancient agricultural writers sources like plen the Elder and columela and palladius who give us very specific instructions on treading the grapes and they tell us
That this produced the highest and the second highest qualities of wine so we start to understand a bit about qualities in the ancient world uh for wine through this too this can even be taken further back uh much earlier than the Roman period on the left an example from Bronze Age
Greece a site called vetro in cre where we have SIMPLE ceramic tubs into which grapes were put and trotten on uh and the grape juice flowed into the lower tub before it was fermented into wine we have many depictions as well on on your kind of typical classical black figure
Uh uh painted uh jars and uh and uh vases and so on of saers and minid more Fantastical Notions of this vmia this vintage Festival um making wine and treading on grapes in the Greek depictions interestingly enough much earlier than the Roman period they often use these wooden kind of uh structures
That they’re treading grapes on this is frustrating to archaeologists because they never survived down to today so we have very little information on them apart from what we get in the art following all of these treading processes what was left of the grape pulp and the Skins the seeds and so on
Was gathered up and it was put into either woven baskets or inside wooden boxes and and then placed under one of a variety of pressing mechanisms that already existed by the Roman era these could take the shape of a large wooden lever and you can see an example of this
Reconstructed on the right from Pompei or it could take the place of a screw mechanism which placed pressure directly down onto the grapes and you can see this depicted in the left from a mosaic in the Eastern Mediterranean much later there are a wide variety of pressing mechanisms that uh that were
Used and existed by the Roman era and the Romans really uh took this uh to another level in terms of technological change and Innovation but as you’ll see over the next uh half hour or so this doesn’t mean that technology uh progressed in a linear fashion we have thousands of Millennia old technology
Used alongside new inventions like the screw uh very frequently after the grapes were were pressed were trotten and then pressed the juice or the must as we call it was expressed uh and was channeled into various Vats or large ceramic jars we call these dollia as archaeologists
Modern wine makers also call them am for but they’re essentially the same concept these large ceramic jars sunk into the ground to create a nice constant microclimate for the wine to ferment in and to be stored in uh and a special note uh and just a kind of small
Degression here these celing uh production processes uh and infrastructure that’s associated with it is is inherently micro regionalized we we know already by anti it that the Romans and the Greeks before them understood that climate and so on Changed by Micro by micro region and they adapted their equipment to suit
That we see doia used only in certain parts of the ancient Mediterranean and we see other um types of selling processes occurring in other parts of the Mediterranean where the climate was different now much of this has inspired uh modern archaeologists uh as well as modern wine makers to collaborate uh and
This has kind of occurred in tandem with the rise of experimental archaeology as an Avenue of scientific investigation and we’ve seen numerous attempts in uh reconstructing and recreating ancient Roman wine making and the the wine itself and perhaps one of the best known of these along with another very
Well-known example uh that took place in Pompei which some of you may have tasted the vame my wine uh perhaps another one of the best examples is this that you can see on the screen which is actually in southern France where an enormous to scale Roman Winery was was reconstructed
Over the the actual Roman villa site and you can visit it today you can watch them recreate the Vintage and the wine production process using this enormous lever and and winch mechanism to press the grapes and create the wine and they actually sell the wine that they produce
Uh here at this Winery they they try to be as authentic as possible they add spices and flavors and herbs and sea waterer and all these kind of weird and wacky things that we know the Romans and the Greeks added into their wine uh and
You can buy it and and have a taste and see if you like it now before we get into the the high-end stuff the the wine of the Emperors as as Ken was alluding to at the Villa of the quinti it’s equally equally as important uh from my perspective to recognize the
Myriad evidence we now have for practical small scale wine production across the Roman and the ancient Mediterranean world and as a first example I’d like to focus momentarily on these Rock Cut facilities uh which were certainly used to produce wine in antiquity uh and you’ll see in the title
Of this slide we’re also probably used to produce olive oil uh in certain places and we can’t rule out this as a pol possibility many times too so these facilities include very simple basins or Vats heu out of the Bedrock or rocky outcrops in certain uh parts of the
Mediterranean into which grapes were placed and then trodden or pressed or crushed with the resulting liquid collected in a vat also often cut out of the rock too so they represent a very basic method of leveraging natural top tography and resources to produce wine and a visualization for us of using
Incredibly simple methods in a process that need not necessarily be complicated now I approach these facilities in particular with with a small caveat and that is that they’re incredibly difficult for us as archaeologists to date unless they’ve been excavated with well- defined strateg graphy uh some of them are
Undoutedly ancient and we have good evidence for this but many others are probably Byzantine or medieval or even early modern for example in Italy we have we have many examples of these they’re often called palmen uh and they were used well into the 19th century to produce wine but what’s more important
Here is that they’re found in a relatively consistent form uh and shape across an exceptionally broad geographical area the obvious examples that we have are located in Italy in places like Sicily and Sardinia as well but countless examples can also be seen across the Western Mediterranean as far
As Portugal and Spain uh across the other end to the East in Cypress and cre and the Levant and turkey the region of uh North Syria presents an incredibly interesting uh data set with over a thousand of these facilities clustered around the late Roman Villages uh showing us that there
Was an incredibly dense production landscape over what is now called the the the Limestone mif region however this this uh continues much further to the east than we might traditionally expect uh and Facilities almost identical to these that are found all across the Mediterranean are found much further to the east in significant
Numbers in what is now the SWAT Valley in modern Pakistan and recent research into these facilities in this particular area and I really need to acknowledge here an ongoing PhD project by uh proj Jal at Toronto provides very convincing evidence for these to be used as wine production facilities no later than the
Fth century CE so we’re we’re thinking the late Roman period here but in this area there connected into Buddhist settlements uh where Buddhist uh activities are controlling The Agrarian landscape of Northern Pakistan and to give you a sense of density and scale we have uh in one area one facility for
Every five hectares so we’re seeing uh considerable effort to to control uh and to make the most of this production landscape so what do we make of all of these Rock Cut wineries that present themselves almost identically over an enormous geographical and temporal scope firstly they provide an intriguing
Example to us uh of the almost timelessness of wine production in Antiquity and even extending up to the early modern period with slow moving technological change or even no change implemented when it wasn’t necessary and comparatively simple methods used to extract liquid from grapes in a process
That didn’t need to be complicated they also show us just how Global Wine production could be in Antiquity visualized almost identically over an immense area but at the same time time we start to see smaller and more nuanced aspects of localized production habits becoming uh coming through for example
In the north Syrian facilities uh and more broadly across the Eastern Mediterranean as well we often find uh Stone rollers connected to these facilities and in situ and this is because these particular facilities were used to produce a particular type of wine and that is wine made from sundried
Grapes or raisined grapes which required a much harder Stone crushing surface to extract the juice and were used to produce a very particular type of sweet wine which the Romans called pum and this was very commonly used in the kitchen uh there’s been some wild theories put forth that
Women particularly like to drink pum in the Roman period because it was easily accessible to the in the kitchen um I I’ve published on this and I think it’s not true to to put it kindly um but but but we know that pass was particular popular in particular contexts uh and it
Was produced primarily in these areas of the Eastern Mediterranean so we start to see here a local response no doubt informed by the the local topography as well as traditional cultural practices uh used in the production of region specific Wines in the Roman period but also dependent uh on a particular
Regional landscape and in this case one with a plentiful Stone resources available now a similar form of wine production can be seen uh in perhaps both scale and process in urban areas in the fabric of many Roman towns while all of these Rock Cut examples we’ve just discussed are predominantly
Found in rural contexts outside the town walls a similar degree of simplified wine making uh shows us that we should not necessarily view wine making or even ancient agriculture more broadly as happening in the countryside all the time many times it also happened much in the same manner inside the town
Walls now as is often the case for better or worse Pompei provides some of the best example uh the best evidence in this respect due of course to its exceptionally well-preserved nature as a Roman town here inside Pompei tucked within the the insula the city blocks of
This dense and busy Urban fabric modes size wine production facilities can be found and and we know of at least four locations confidently attributed to Wine production all of which are clustered in this Southeastern area of the town you can see uh indicated with the Stars on the map here interestingly enough also
Clustered around the amphitheater of Pompei perhaps the most well-known is this uh example the so-called for foro boario uh facility interestingly enough for boario means cattle market when it was excavated uh first over a 100 years ago they thought it was a cattle market for Pompei in the 1960s when it was
Re-excavated they actually discovered that it was a Vineyard a really sizable Vineyard uh but funnily enough on all the tourist guides and Maps you will still see it labeled for aario even though we know better now they really need to update it um the forio though the the the the
Vineyard has largely been replanted now thanks to a fantastic collaboration between uh the archaological park and the modern wine producer master berardino and in its adjoining structure just here it housed a small wine making facility you can see in plan here uh what was retrieved from the 1960s excavations undertaken by wilh helina
Jmy a fantastic American archaeologist and she managed to locate uh all of the the locations of the vine Roots uh Vine trenches and Stakes uh being able to reconstruct in its entirety this amazing ancient Vineyard inside the the adjoining structure we have great evidence of a very uh modes size wine production
Facility inside the town walls of Pompei we have 10 uh doia you can see eight of them in this picture here large ceramic jars set into the into the ground uh into which gra must flowed from the adjoining room where there was a a Le a
Press uh in a treading area uh in a vat so we’ve got the entire wine production process happening uh alongside the vineyard from which The Grapes were taken it’s worth noting that this uh production inside the town of Pompei is nowhere near the scale of the cellers we
Have just outside the walls of Pompei in some of the Villas at nearby bosor which is not far from Pompei there are wine production uh facilities with about 70 or 80 of these doia so much larger selling facilities uh this is again some of the biggest we have in Italy but if
You go to France or Spain uh at a relatively contemporary uh period there are fillers with 100 200 or even more dollia so absolutely Mammoth wine production happening in France and Spain in the Roman period so inside these Urban context we see relatively modes size facilities the other the other examples
Inside the town walls of Pompei one of which is on the screen here uh usually use Simple treading areas with raised edges uh and coated in what we call kotap pesto which is a waterproof plaster or or cement kind of material uh where the grapes would be dumped in uh
And the juice collected in again Adia just set next to the treading floor interestingly enough in this facility in Region 2 uh juice also flowed through this wall into uh a Perry style Garden inside the house itself uh and in this way kind of brought production from the garden into the domestic spaces
Interestingly enough another another facility in nearby region one of Pompei is more restricted to the Garden area you can see a photo of it here we have as well uh in this location an underground Cellar uh and it’s it’s difficult to access these days but from the 1960s
Excavations you get a great image here uh with a person to give you a sense of the scale of it perhaps the most interesting thing about the cellar is that it has several vents punched through its roof leading up to the surface here and you can see them coming
Through the ground the most interesting of which is this one above what is a large vat inside the cellar and we think that wine was produced uh in the treading area which is just off the photo down here the juice was then transported over here and poured through
This hole into the vat itself to ferment uh and be stored so we’ve got a really nice different example of ground level and Subterranean wine production going on this Urban setting that we see uh in Pompei exemplified in Pompei and that you can find in many other Roman towns
And the placement of wineries that we see uh within these houses and the gardens with direct connections as well to to birai these shops and you can see an example here of a a Vineyard behind and then easily connected into the shop which fronts onto the road illustrate a
Really different example o of production organization from the rural and Rock Cut facilities we saw before we might start to imagine in locations like Pompei that grapes were growing and processed into wine on the same property owned by by the same family and then sold at the at
The same persons to Berner fronting onto the street we start to see uh therefore a sort of int household economy where production was kept all within the same area we might also Imagine the other Vineyards that we see inside and outside the city walls where we don’t have
Evidence for the actual production of wine we’re then transporting and delivering their grapes to these Urban facilities for processing and hence we see a sort of Cooperative emerging like we uh still see today in in modern Italy especially for the production of olive oil so this connectivity between areas
Of of cultivation and production uh and sale and consumption all joining up in this en Urban environment illustrates to us as modern archaeologists this concept of of the rural and urban divide that we really need to remove we need to view these landscapes in Roman Antiquity with considerably more Nuance uh and
Considerable flexibility melting away this kind of rural and urban divide and viewing the this connection between AG Agriculture and urban towns similarly the movement of produce within and around the town we imagine grapes as I said being carted to Wineries and wines wine being transported from production
Facility to toai and shops all of this would have created a very particular Urban spatial dynamic in these areas of the town and we start to imagine uh with some of the the tber you can see visualized here just recently excavated in 2018 in Region 5 and a reconstruction
Of how these tierni opened out into the street uh and you can imagine the carts going up and down with the wine and with the grapes inside them all of this would have created a very particular feel for these areas of the town and if we go
Back to the map here uh this area of Pompei with the wineries clustered around it perhaps starting to become known as a sort of production area for the town or or a wine production kind of District the finally uh the most interesting thing to note in terms of
This facility here which is the 4i Vineyard and production site we actually have two uh trinia or areas where people could recline to dine and eat and drink just on the sides of this property right here opposite the amphitheater so we can also start to imagine now wine being sold not just in
The Taberna the shop of this property but also being sold as a kind of uh experiential uh wine consumption uh activity where people would go to their gladiatorial event at the amphitheater or whatever else was happening at the amphitheater and either the way or after the event they could stop into the
Vineyard they could recline in the trinia and eat and drink the local produce now for the remainder of this talk I’d like to discuss a very particular uh and recently discovered site that Ken alluded to uh sitting at the complete other end of this production Spectrum it’s not just larger
Scale in terms of production capacity but it’s opulent and spectacular in terms of decoration uh and architecture the winery itself that we’ll be talking about forms part of the complex at the Villa of the quinti which sits just outside Rome uh on the via apia antia
The ancient viia which led from the city was one of the oldest Consular roads that the Romans built and led across Italy down to the hill of the peninsula the winery itself as I said forms part of this larger Villa complex and you can see just how immense The
Villa as a whole is it’s this entire property uh with uh an an immense monumental bathing complex and residential area a huge uh porticoed Garden U and then several rooms off it uh and obviously a great deal that has not been excavated still the Via Appia Antica to give you a sense of
Orientation uh is this road just here so you could even enter the Villa off the Via Appia through this Monumental Fountain structure that they they built but the winery is located just on the edge of it here and is built over another another structure which I’ll
Show you uh in a second and you can see it there we know that this Winery was built sometime at the end of the 2nd Century or early 3r Century CE uh on top as I said of another structure which was built by Commodus slightly earlier and
We know this because we found a stamp at the winery of the the name of an emperor the emperor gordian uh which gives us quite a compressed chronology to date either the construction of the winery or the renovation of the winery too the winery which you can see uh from
The air here uh possesses features rather typical of Roman binaries nothing that’s particularly surprising in terms of its um processes and Technology you get a very nice impression here of just how it’s built over an earlier structure now this is actually the Starting Gate of a circus that Commodus the Emperor
Commodus had built here uh so Commodus when he took over this property he he killed the quinti brothers who built the Villa originally and took over their over their Villas and other other properties I’m very happy to chat about that over a drink later it’s a completely different story um but Comm
Built a circus here when he took over the property to have his uh private chariot races uh happening out when Commodus uh was was finished let’s say uh it was demolished and a winery was built uh just after on top of the starting Gates of this circus where that
Horses would depart from and as I said this Winery possesses features rather typical of ancient Roman wineries it has a large treading area up here it has two areas for the pressing of grapes using big levers one here which is very nice ly preserved with the circular channel
For the collection of juice to lead it back into the vat another press would have been located here um but uh fortunately or unfortunately modern Farmers have um plowed it uh completely and destroyed it so we don’t have any evidence of that press it has a large
Vat here for the collection of the grape juice the must and a big cering area down here which we’ll see uh a bit more of in a second to now although these features as I said are rather typical of ancient Roman wineries the the decoration and the architectural
Arrangement and the quality of materials used are almost unparalleled for any production contexts in the Roman world and even the ancient world more broadly the treading floor for example up here which as you saw in the pompan example was usually coated in a rather mundane waterproof cement very practical
Material here it’s coated in red marble giving a completely different uh impression uh to those uh engaging with the facility and also making it very difficult for the people trying to Tread On The Grapes to work marble gets very slippery when it’s wet if any of you have visited the Athenian Acropolis
Which is of course all marble it’s very difficult to walk on it when it’s wet so we get a we start to get a sense of the priorities in the construction of this facility the prioritization of luxury materials for visual and other Impressions over practicality but here it’s here is where
It starts to get really theatrical and interesting the distribution between the treading and pressing areas up here and the cellar down here took the form of this niched facade which is reminiscent of a n these Monumental fountains that the Romans would build the facade takes the shape of these five niches
Alternating in semicircular and rectangular shapes the three in the middle conveyed wine in a fountain kind of uh Movement we can imagine the wine sitting in the vat here and coming out of these holes fountaining into these channels down here interestingly enough the two on the outside didn’t convey wine they actually
Conveyed water it was channeled in from an aqueduct from outside the property came out of the fountains on the exterior and was then channeled back underground through a system of lead pipes so we start again to get a sense of really interesting priorities at this facility a sense of spectacle and theatrics
Emerging once the wine came out of the fountain uh Fountain facade here it was conveyed into the cellar area through these channels and these channels once again we should probably not be surprised at this point in time are coated in Marble veneer White marble channels so you can imagine the gra must
Coming out of it whether it was uh a red or an orange or a white color contrasting with this bright white marble from here it was channeled into into doia these big camic jars set into the ground of which there were eight uh in this area and another eight down here
So we get a bit of a sense of production scale with 16 dollia in this instance now aside from this remarkable level of decoration in theater which sets this production facility completely apart from the The Rock Cut examples and the urban examples that we saw uh earlier the quinti winery also presents
An interesting example of what we might term conspicuous production or conspicuous consumption we also have at the facility arranged around the celing area which is in the middle here three of these these rooms which we’ve interpreted as dining rooms or or areas for for relaxing and eating the one room that was excavated
And there’s another room back here and another room over here which are unexcavated when we’re hoping to find funding to continue Excavating the one room that was excavated here uh and you can see the pavement is covered up uh in this Photograph uh for conservation reasons but is paved entirely uh like
This all colored decorative marble in a in a geometric shape we call this sea and this particular design uh which is a multi-star articular design we can date quite nicely to the 2 to 3rd Century CE so it lines up very nicely with the the stamp of the emperor gordian that we
Found in the in the um in the collection that giving us a bit more of a concrete idea of the date for this facility now this decoration which is obviously very luxurious and very expensive uh along with the wide entrances for these rooms you can see provide an expansive view across the
Whole facility the celling and even up into the areas where people would have been working suggests that they were used by the elite or even uh this is an imperial Villa it was owned by the emperor and the Imperial family at the time so perhaps even the emperor uh
Might have sat here uh providing an area to eat and to drink and to watch this spectacle of production that unfolded now it’s immediately tempting at this point in time to draw comparison to the only other luxury wine making facility that we know of uh this is at a site called Villa Mana
Uh only 50 km to the southeast so relatively close by uh to the southeast of Rome and dating only 100 years earlier than the Villa of the quinti site so just before uh the quinti production uh facility was built and at Villa Mana we have a winery again with
Similar marble clad spaces here you can see a closeup of the floor of this Cellar area which is in uh marble White marble bricks in an opus spartum Herring bone design providing again again an incredibly luxurious and lavish production space we know as well that vam Mana was
An imperial property owned by the emperor at the time and indeed we have some fantastic literary evidence to support this uh and this is where our friend Marcus aelius comes into the picture at V Mana at this point in time Marcus aelius was soon to be Emperor his
Father was Emperor he wasn’t quite there yet and he tells us in his letters to fronto his tutor uh where he describes how he B banqueted and dined at Villa Mana at this very Villa uh watching and listening to the workers treading grapes uh and producing wine and you can see
The quote on the screen here where he talks about after they bathed uh after the Harvest they they dined in this pressing room and they watched the workers he calls them peasants treading The Grapes it’s even possible uh as well that some of the production infrastructure was moved from this Villa
At Villa Mana uh and then implemented in the Villa of the quinti site shortly after indeed yes so so the the the chronology between the two sites makes it possible that some of the the equipment at Villa Mana was moved and put in place to the Villa of the quinti
Some of these doia were uh considerably aged by the time they were used at Villa mana and the doia at the Villa of the quinti were already 200 years old by the time they’re used here we’ve got some maker stamps on the rim of the doia
Telling us who made them uh which gives us a really nice idea of how old they are it’s possible as well that this was quite a common occurrence some excellent research by another colleague of mine Morin Carol has given some great evidence that the imperial family or the
Imperial patrimonium liked to keep their equipment and their property within the family she’s got a great case where some of these doia actually moved from the far south of Italy back up uh into Central Italy but what does this entirely different style of facility add to our
Knowledge of this vast Spectrum uh of Roman wine production well clearly shows to us that production was not always practical uh serving a direct agroeconomic purpose and using methods and architectures and technologies that simply did their job production could also fuse this sense of practicality with opulence and we see this uh
Exemplified in the Villa of the quinell facility especially it could be both utilitarian and elegant in style the quinti winery as well might suggest a ceremonial or a ritual use tied to the opening of the Vintage this bandemia that we saw depicted in the the reliefs
And the mosaics at the start of the talk and Lisa Fentress another colleague of mine has convincingly uh argued for this at the Villa Mania facility connected into the literary evidence we have and suggesting that the Roman Emperor would go there at the opening of the wine
Harvest uh in central Italy uh and undertake a ritual there extravagant marble decoration in both of these sites marked spaces fit for the emperor and his Imperial Court and the winery then became a kind of theater for this sacred performance if we look just going back one more at the
Actual arrangement of the Villa of the quinti facility we can start to get a some sort of idea at this we have the treading area raised up here for the Workman to work at like a sort of stage in a theater we have the celling area set down and centralized like the the
Orchestra in a theater and we’ve got these dining rooms situated around the side looking in like a kind of CA a seating area for The Spectator and as Nicholas pcel uh the the well-known ancient historian has previously described ideological goals for for the Roman Elite then became Inseparable from the business of
Production so where have we arrived after all of this well we’ve traced several examples of ancient Roman wine production facilities from perhaps one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of scale and practicality and opulence and while it’s become clear that the elite of antiquity did did
Occasionally fuse utilitarian uh and luxury structures to create spaces of extravagant production the overwhelming majority of wine making facilities and production spaces were almost certainly of those types that we saw in the first two sections smaller scale production complexes with inherent practicality that dominated the Mediterranean vinicultural
Landscape and this trend but also the diversity that we’ve seen just in these few examples provides some real insight to us as archaeologists studying wine production in the ancient world not just in the Roman world but in the ancient Mediterranean more broadly whether this involved people treading grapes out in
The sun using these Rock Cut facilities heu from the bedrock in the countryside whether it was producers harvesting grapes uh in Vineyards tucked away behind their homes in the city blocks of a town like Pompei then taking them into nearby buildings to transform them into
Wine or if it was at the other end of the spectrum the elite or even the emperor reclining and banqueting and watching workers tread grapes to the sound of Music in these extravagant facilities like the Villa of the quenti this diversity from from kind of spectacle to reality simply shows to us
That wine making cannot so be cannot so easily be pigeonholed and that it was far more varied and nuanced uh and bespoke than we might have traditionally imagined and from here I’ll pass over to Diego to tell you some more about modern wine thank you very much okay well welcome ladies and
Gentlemen thank you very much everyone for joining us um hopefully it’s uh not your first time at backas sunc if it is and you’re in for a great treat uh thank you for the Getty at everyone thank you to everyone at the Getty for having me over another
Time this is one of the events that I look forward to the most every year uh and thank you very much to uh Dr DOD for an absolutely incredible presentation one of the ones that I’ve enjoyed the most because as a wine enthusiast and a person who’s made wine
Uh his life professionally and non profession professionally uh this presentation allows me to go into a lot of discussions on technical aspects of what would the wine have been what would it have tasted like can we recreate it in modern day and what has changed from the ancient Roman world of 2,000 years
Ago uh putting into context the V de quinti in this case to what we would be enjoying and consuming today so the question what was wine like 2,000 years ago at the Villa De quinti and those beautiful production facilities that we saw not just the villa de quinti but all
The other ones that we not that we’ve uh that we observed in the previous presentation and the even bigger question is would we want to drink them because I think that when you think about wine being the product of Mother Nature and man 50% mother nature and 50%
Man right the fact the notion that there can be no no wine that doesn’t start in the vineyard that wine is made in the vineyard it’s still a philosophy of most if not all of the uh wine producing companies or individuals around the world but how much does that percentage
Change throughout history how much does man become more prominent in the profile of wines that we’ve enjoyed in the last decades all the way to today and how much would be mother nature so we will observe the philosophy of wine back in the ancient world and
How they would enjoy it how they would consume it uh evidence of the types of wines that they would have back then uh then we would look at the areas that they would cultivate uh how they would cultivate and what grapes uh what grape varietals would be cultivated back in
Those days I think that before the end of the 1800s it is safe to say that there wasn’t really a notion of microbi biochemistry in terms of wine it was only with the works of uh pastor at the end of the 1800s that we discovered yeast uh through the
Microscope that we actually realized that there’s a microorganism that lives on the skin of the grapes that lives in the air of the environments of The Vineyards and in the cellers and that once that grape is crushed and the juice flows out and the sugar is exposed that microorganism
Starts to eat that sugar and transform it into ethyl alcohol creating Heat and carbon dioxide as a bip as a byproduct now in the ancient world they wouldn’t have had a notion of that they would have seen the bubbling definitely through the process of fermentation that
Was the CO2 but they wouldn’t have known it was CO2 they wouldn’t have known of the existence of yeasts and hence it is at the end of the 1800s that we start seeing the imprint of man becoming a lot more evident in the profile of the wine and and the way the
Wine smells and the way the wine tastes back in those days it’s safe to say it would have been far more a matter of circumstance of environment of Mother Nature um and of factors that were not in the control of whoever was producing the wine but one thing for sure and we
Shall see that was under their control and was definitely under their knowledge was the vineyard sites the types of grapes the flavors that they gave in the wines where they were grown where they would perform perform better how they would perform better too we will see how different grapes were cultivated and
There’s evidence of this through the ancient world in different ways different training of the vines different yields of the vines uh which meant as evidence that they definitely had an understanding that wine started in the vineyard but as far as the wine is concerned in terms of enjoyment
Why it was so prominent throughout the ancient world we can safely say throughout many many re uh researches and evidence uh and archaeological evidence that you know wi in Roman times were used for celebration right to free and to relax the mind I mean it’s we’ve heard it just recently with the pandemic
And how wine is Recession Proof right because if you’re happy you drink to celebrate and if you’re sad you drink to forget so wine basically has always has a place in society and will never go away which is a really good thing for recreational purposes right as a thought-provoking and philosophy
Catalyst and I love this because I think that we’ve lost a bit of that ancient Symposium concept of how wine was a lubricant of the mind uh a substance to enjoy but also to act as a catalyst for discussion for Philosophy for debating uh Symposium itself coming from the
Ancient Greek uh notion of a drinking party right often you know with discussion with talk with debating uh on whatever terms there may be I’ve tried to lubricate my mind since I was 5 years old more or less being Italian uh I don’t know if it worked or it didn’t but
We shall see and definitely as a status symbol definitely as a status symbol so we see these L these very luscious Villas filled with luxury the villa de quinti being a prime example and wine being associated with a certain level of status the ancient world the ancient Roman
World is full of very uh widespread very commonly found quotes in Latin regarding wine right when wine goes in wisdom goes out bronze is the mirror of the body and wine is the mirror of the mind again we’re back to this lubricant of thought this lubricant of the spirit and of the
Mind and then the most famous of course in vino veritas right and in wine there is truth uh this these Notions have carried out through on throughout Society for centuries I mean Benjamin Franklin was the individual who said that in beer there is strength in wine
There is wisdom and in water there is bacteria so Central to the Villa life is this product of man and nature right uh utilized to host enter and entertain important guests uh to boast The Prestige of the identity of the villa and I’m sure there was a certain
Competitiveness as well in terms of the quality of the wine the production of the wine the ancient world is is is full of examples and evidence that there were wines that had a bigger reputation right not just the ferum uh which is the famous you know wine of the
Of the ancient Roman era that we shall look at briefly later but also the nepente made in Sardinia right Neen right that concept of a medicine to make you forget your sorrow right a wine that’s still produced to this day both fero and Nea are still produced uh where
They were thousands and thousands of years ago and even the notion of us like the somes right the wine stewards was born with the houseis back in those days so we had already this notion of these wine stewards that were meant to curate the wine uh serve it in the proper way
Uh you know seller it in the proper way advise talk about it you know and and and what so would do in in in modern day um in the modern day Western World so what were the wines that they were enjoying 2,000 years ago what would what
Would have been you know some Notions of the types of wines that they would be drinking and consuming uh in the v de quinti and other vas about 2,000 plus years ago so we know for a fact that in ancient Rome uh wines were diluted they were spiced and they were sweetened uh
That doesn’t mean that they were always uh consumed that way they may have been individuals that did not uh alter uh the wines in any shape or form but we do know throughout ancient Roman uh history that it was common to do this diluted with you know a sauce called gum diluted with
Seawater for instance uh spiced with various spices or sweetened with honey a sort of modification of the wine to suit an individual’s pette to please one’s flavor profile to research some kind of preference or personal preference of of enjoying and consuming the wine now this would be sailed today right any wine
Maker would would would you know probably have nightmares if he knew that you were putting honey in his wine or spices or diluting it I don’t advise you dilute it with sea water definitely not here in in in the Pacific Ocean of LA but um but for sure this must have had a
Component not just of personal preference but also of the fact that going back to this lack of understanding in science in microbi chemistry and in in the concept of fermentation they would have often probably had wines that were faulty or flawed or altered you know things that would be like today
You’d call them funky right uh that probably would have been very very common if you think about the lack of Sanitation that would have been around in those years and pressing the grapes without having any uh filtering for instance that that did not exist and temperature control during the
Fermentation that did not exist and even the lack of knowledge of ye yeasts today it’s common that wineries add yeasts that they’ve selected you know to the Vats with the pressed juice uh before fermentation so that they know what kind of result they’re going to achieve uh there are certain levels of Sanitation
Today that wouldn’t have been around in those days so it’s pretty safe to say that most likely most of the time you probably would not want to drink the wine that was being enjoyed back in the day but we have evidence we have evidence in the wine bars of Pompei in
The menus that were found in the wine bars and pompe painting painted on the walls that they did have a series of categories of wine that were more based on the grape varietal and the origin of the wine not so much in the method of production so the wines were divided by
The color of the grapes that they would come from all the way from a straw light yellow white wine down to a dark red and even AUM so dry and potent think of a tanic big powerful red wine coming from the more bold grape varietal and coming from certain environments certain terroirs so
To speak that French term that signifies a sense of place or an environment An Origin of The Vineyards uh we still use Alo uh as a term today in Italy uh to Define wine and that carried through thousands of years so definitely The Vineyards definitely the origin of the
Grapes and going a little bit fit into some technicalities of wine production contrary to what we see in modern in the modern day world and I love this picture I gave myself the liberty of stealing it from Dr Dodd I apologize but uh it is a great starting point to start
Understanding what could have been different in the wines back then and the wines today first of all no Oak and no barrels right we don’t see that this is very important we know from plyy the Elder that it was the GIC Tri tribes of the northern part of the Empire so the
Chisel Pine Gul which is north uh Western Italy and the transalpine ga which would have been you know modern day France we know from Ply’s writings that when he visited up there he saw that these Gauls that had become Roman citizens had these containers and he mentions them calling them these wooden
Containers as big as houses that would uh house the wine uh that would contain the wine wood was the primary raw material of the Galls it was the primary raw material back then they did not use clay containers primarily they would use wooden containers they quickly learned of
Course that the wood would alter the flavor of the wine correct these Oaky notes that we like maybe in our Napa Cabernet svon and our French bordeau that spice that vanilla that chocy note that comes from the oak uh the micro oxygenation as well that the oak provides the wine that softens its
Pallet it softens its profile so it does impact the wine you would have had none of that 2,000 years ago in the area of the villa de quinti they would not have been using a wooden barrels they would have been using the dollia buried underground these clay containers so you
Would not have gotten those profiles also one thing that we must uh realize is that there was no differentiation between white grapes and red grapes in terms of the wine making in modern day wine making uh it is commonplace that when you harvest white grapes you press them and
You illuminate the skins and you ferment just the juice to retain that Purity that freshness uh that lighter bodied style that you research in a white wine that you want in a white wine uh red grapes is different red grapes go through mation on the Skins to extract
The tannin to extract the color in the ancient world it is safe to say and we have evidence of that that they were treated in the same way so we would have had white wines that would have been quite different to the white wines that you enjoy today although we are seeing
In the last decade or so a Resurgence a Renaissance in the modern wine world of making white wines this way of massera them on the skins of Aging them and fermenting them in these clay doia Northeastern Italy in the region of fi bordering with Slovenia there’s a lot of
Examples there we can go to the uh country of Georgia uh where the the things are still done that way and if you’ve ever had a chance to try these wines they’re very different different from any white wine that you would commonly expect the wines would have been heavily
Oxidized too the uh lack of the modern technology to protect the wine from oxygen uh would have caused the majority of wines to be heavily oxidized so these darker colored white wines these Brown tinted white wines with more of these honey oxidative barley cereal kind of flavors that come from the oxidation
So if you think of your modern day pinoo super clean Super crisp all floral that would not have existed for sure uh 2,000 years ago uh in in in these times and the minimal intervention again the lack of selected yeast uh these spontaneous fermentations that would have occurred that could have gone well
Or they could have gone bad uh they would have made the wines far more rustic far more earthy I’m sure many of you have heard in wine terminology uh the term Barnyard or wines that smell of you know wet dog in a phone booth some people say you know these funky animaly
Kind of smells and flavors that would have come from Wild yeast fermentations that it would have been a fluke if it turned out great and fruity and clean but most likely the majority of the time they would have had this funky uh character so the notion of The Vineyards
Remains Central to what the Romans carried out uh and gave to us through history the ausans when were they were incorporated into Roman uh Society were prominent agricultural consultants for grape growing uh and Vine cultivation and we see throughout history and throughout the study of the ancient
Roman world that there was a definite clear notion of Vineyard in Pompeii we don’t just see evidence of wines being divided by type but we see evidence of wines being divided by origin where you do find a menu in one of the wine bars in Pompei on the wall
That says you pay this amount for a white wine this amount for a bigger stronger you know uh red wine and then you pay the higher premium for the fernum and fernum is a specific place it’s a specific Vineyard right there and it’s located in Northern Campania right
On the border with the region of ltio which is the region where Rome uh is located so all these ancient wine names of the ancient Roman World focusing primarily on the region of Lao around Rome the region of Campania near Naples and the island of Sicily would have been
What we could call today single Vineyards so a wine that carries the name of the vineyard where the grapes are coming from this meant that they realized that there was something special or something unique about grapes grown in that area and the unique concept that we see throughout all of
The ancient Vineyards and ancient wineries located in this area is the notion of the volcanic environment uh all the way in uh um the beginning of Lazio with the extinct volcanoes but down into even the semi or let’s say recently extinct volcanoes to the active ones still to this day the
Vvus so there was definitely we can trace that the most famous wines of the ancient Roman world uh the most written about the most mentioned or that where there’s evidence of a mention come from areas that contain volcanic activity and that means volcanic soils and we know how important this concept is for
Quality wine making still to this day those volcanic soils rich in Min in minerals rich in uh substances that provide flavor that provide character uh they’re also soils that have an excellent drainage which is a very very good thing for Vineyard uh cultivation Vine is not a plant that likes stagnant
Water so these were Notions that the Romans definitely had in mind and they would have produced wines of complexity they would have produced wines of structure of Elegance uh and of very distinct personality fernum being one of them still produced to this day and we shall see a picture of The Vineyards now
Where would have the most important or famous Wines in the Roman world come from at least in this area if we focus on the villa de quinti we can deduce that the grapes would have come from around the villa in that area but the wines enjoyed throughout that period
Would have come primarily from two locations the first one the very very famous Campania Felix which is the happy Countryside the region of Campania in Italy comes from the ancient term of CA Felix that the Romans would call it the happy Countryside why happy because the climate the soil oils provided a quality
Of crop with flavor and character that was unparalleled in the Italian Peninsula back then you would have had two harvests per year not of grapes because the vine is a cyclical plant only one Harvest but definitely of tomatoes definitely of fruits definitely of other uh produce uh Vuvu is also
Famous for some specific Tomatoes if you’ve ever had a chance to try the pomio they are absolutely incredible the flavor is just abs absolutely incredible so this notion of CIA being a prime crop growing region in the ancient Roman world is clearcut and in this area we find Grape varietal two whites Fang
Three whites excuse me Fang Fano and Greco and two red grapes salano and ped Roo which are traditional ancient and typical of this area ferum being made with fanga this gra varietal that takes its name from from the fanks because it’s a high yield producing grape and
They would plant the spears the military Spears in the ground to tie the vines to and increase the production you know higher Vine training more grapes lower Vine training less grapes but you trade off quality so this notion was definitely present back in the ancient
Day this is pompe with the vvus where Dr DOD spoke uh adamantly about and we talked about the uh uh Vineyard of Mastro berardino that does the produces the V de mysteri wine this is fernum so right at the top of CIA bordering with Lazio not too far from Rome at all is
The area still produced to this day of the fero Del maso which is the fernum this is a picture I took a couple of years ago in a winery called Villa matilde this would have been The Vineyards of fernum uh still this is 2 three years ago and uh this was the
Ancient site and the beautiful thing about the winery is the Museum that they house where you can see every single year when they Till The Vineyards they come up with some ancient Roman tool some ancient Roman piece of aora some ancient Roman piece of equipment uh every single and they’re all like
Cleaned and housed in this Museum section of the winery that shows you as proof how the Romans were focusing on this area to produce grapes for one of their most famous wines if we look at the map we find ourselves uh pinpointing the location of the villa de Quin
And not too far south very very close you have two volcanic lakes that used to be volcanic craters one is the Lago dami and one is the Lago di Albano and in this area called the Castell Romani we find a series of towns around this ancient volcanic site like frascati
Marino uh vetri uh that are and Marino yeah marasti vet that are uh actual wine denominations so you can still go to the area today and drink a vetri dolc you can drink a frascati DLC and you will tonight and you can drink a Marino dolc so these towns all producing their wine
Wine taking the name of the town focused around these volcanic lakes and these are some of the most ancient traditional and historical wines of the region of latio so it’s safe to say that they would have been the wines enjoyed at the time in the area a little further east
We encounter where the majority of the red Vineyards red grapes uh are grown and located uh a little more to the east in the area of the Castell Romani that I just talked about so this area here we’re focusing primarily on whites so what are the grape varietals grape varietals for the
Ancient times and grape varietals for this evening too so trian a very ancient grape that’s actually Italy’s most planted white grape uh would have definitely been around in those days um it was distributed throughout the Roman Empire quite adamantly the Romans brought it to France uh in their
Expansion and it was planted in France where it’s called uni Blanc in French and it’s utilized for distillation so if you drink a conac or you drink an armanac it is made uh largely with Tano in Italy it is the most planted grape it’s very widespread grape and it has
These characteristics of being a neutral varietal a varietal that doesn’t have any particular flavor but it does produce a lot of grapes so we have a high yielding varietal Pleasant acidity that makes it thirst quenching it makes it Pleasant it makes it refreshing with a good acid and it’s normally blended
With a flavoring agent so to speak so another varietal that gives it the perfume and the Aromas uh that the wine showcases and that other varietal which is the other most planted grape in the region of Lao is called malvasia an ancient Greek grape that was brought
Into the uh Italian Peninsula uh by uh uh the Greeks and then utilized by the Romans and expanded by the Romans throughout the Empire and the beautiful thing about malvas is that it’s an aromatic grape so it’s a very perfumey and very intense grape think something
Similar to like a moscato in terms of varietal something very distinctive in um scientific uh terms aromatic varietal are grapes that you can smell and taste the flavors of the gra of the varietal just by eating the grapes without even have without even having to ferment them before you can distinguish between one
Varietal or the other so this is the most important flavoring agent in the region of Lao and and uh the wines that we will try this evening will contain amounts of this varietal the white wines as far as the reds are concerned this evening we will focus on lao’s most
Ancient and important red grape which is the chesan evidence that it’s lazio’s most indigenous varietal and evidence that it’s lazio’s most ancient grapes so most likely it would have been there during the time uh around the area of Rome and around the area indeed of the V
Quinti it is a very versatile red grape because you can produce quaffable and light bodied red wines at the same time as potent powerful and tanic red wines depending on the two biotypes so there’s two versions of chesan one called cune and one called aile which produce the
Two distinctive types the cune being lighter bodied and quaffable which you will try as your first R this evening and the afida being more potent more tanic and better suited for aging a varietal that was kind of abandoned throughout the decades because it’s a difficult grape to grow but that has
Seen a Resurgence in the last 10 to 15 years so after these uh two lectures that I hope were not too long and boring you’ll be able to finally go up and drink lubricate your mind uh in uh participate in a lovely Symposium altogether and now it’s time to drink
Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen