Posted on 07/05/2022 1:08:57 PM PDT by Red Badger
Locally sourced grapes and imported tar pitches may have been the norms for winemakers along the coast of Italy during the Roman period, according to jars recovered from the ocean near the harbor of San Felice Circeo.
Three different wine jars, or amphorae, were recovered and analyzed, giving researchers a useful insight into the practices for producing wine in this particular region in 1–2 century BCE, part of the late Greco-Italic period.
What makes the research particularly notable is that it combines some of the latest chemical analysis techniques with other approaches used in archaeobotany to discover more about these jars than would otherwise be possible.
"[T]hree marine amphorae, retrieved in 2018 from the ancient anchorage of San Felice Circeo (Italy), offered a rare opportunity to develop interdisciplinary research through archaeobotanical and chemical analyses," write the researchers in their published paper.
One of the lab techniques used here was a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, different ways of separating and identifying chemical markers in a material – in this case, trained on the organic residue left in the jars.
The researchers also looked for pollen trapped in that residue. This kind of analysis has been done before, but not often on wine jars like these, and rarely with the purpose of trying to understand the wider historical context for an artifact.
A careful study of the grapevine pollen revealed that the jars were used to make both red and white wine, and that local plants were used – though it's not clear whether or not these plants were domesticated at the time.
Meanwhile, traces of pine suggest it was used to waterproof the jars and perhaps also to flavor the wine. The tar pitch that included the pine would have been sourced from outside the region, the researchers say, perhaps from Calabria or Sicily.
Some of the pollen grains used in the study. (Chassouant et al., PLOS One, 2022)
"The presence of both pollen and charcoal allowed a better understanding regarding the pitch origin, which is impossible to reach through organic residue analyses alone," write the researchers.
The findings around the San Felice Circeo harbor, some 90 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of Rome, include a variety of other ceramics and artifacts. Archaeologists think that the area may have been close to a Roman canal.
While the researchers can't be sure about all of the conclusions that they've reached in their study, they have been able to go further because of the range of interdisciplinary methods used in teasing out the chemical makeup of what's left in these jars.
That means combining chemical and botanical expertise with other historical and archaeological records, and previous studies into wine jars such as these – going beyond chemical analysis to dig into the surrounding history of the artifacts.
"By using different approaches to unravel the content and nature of the coating layer of Roman amphorae, we have pushed the conclusion further in the understanding of ancient practices than it would have been with a single approach," say the researchers.
The research has been published in PLOS One.
Pine Wine PinGGG!............
Use pitch to flavor wine?
I guess if you want it to suck...
I will pine no wine before it’s mine...................
Thanks Red Badger. Retsina ping?
It’s still B.C. and A.D. no matter how they insist that it isn’t.
Locally sourced grapes, gosh, why didn’t they have grapes flown in from California?
I’ll drink to that!
Can I get a copy of the recipe?
‘Face
;o]
It would be interesting to make some and see how it tastes.
FIFY
I don’t buy into that BCE etc crap, either.
A friend of mine who is part Greek told me this kind of pine-flavored wine tastes terrible. Wikipedia:
Retsina (Greek: Ρετσίνα) is a Greek white (or rosé) resinated wine, which has been made for at least 2,000 years. Its unique flavor is said to have originated from the practice of sealing wine vessels, particularly amphorae, with Aleppo Pine resin in ancient times. Before the invention of impermeable glass bottles, oxygen caused many wines to spoil within the year. Pine resin helped keep air out, while infusing the wine with resin aroma. The Romans began to use barrels in the 3rd century AD, removing any oenological necessity for resin, but the flavor itself was so popular that the style is still widespread today.
I was listening to a podcast where the topic of Roman wine came up. The host claimed Roman wine would have tasted horrid to a modern person with all the added impurities from the production and storage. The common practice was to dilute and heat up Roman wine.
Although people all over Eurasia loved Roman wine as it was a major export item.
Hmm, can’t find it. I got this prison recipe for spud juice...
Logical, not surprising but the techniques used to show it are interesting.
Maybe but it probably goes both ways. If modern man would say that Roman wine would taste awful with the impurities ancient Romans would probably say modern wine was flavorless swill lacking the character of a true Roman vintage.
Different points of reference and perspective.
Don’t accept anything less than the best Falernian!
The Roman influence along the Rhine and Mosel Rivers is strong. I lived in Traben-Trarbach, about a 30 minute drive south to Trier. On a nice weekend day (very few fwiw), I liked to drive to Trier and spend an hour or two drinking wine in an open air cafe close to the Porta Nigra. Many spots along the Mosel offer breathtaking views.
What's special (to me) about the Mosel is that over 2/3 of the grapes are grown on slopes greater than 60%. Everything is done by hand, due to the severity of the slope.
I still buy wine from my favorite winemaker in Germany: Weingut Eduard Kroth of Briedel. It's been a family business since 1503. Their spatlese is to die for.
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