Posted on 02/27/2016 12:39:22 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Made from ancient grape varieties grown in Pompeii, 'Villa dei Misteri' has to be one of the world's most exclusive wines.
The grapes are planted in exactly the same position, grown using identical techniques and grow from the same soil the city's wine-makers exploited until Vesuvius buried the city and its inhabitants in AD 79.
In the late 1800s, archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli first excavated some of the city's vineyards from beneath three metres of solid ash.
The digs turned up an almost perfect snapshot of ancient wine-growing - and thirteen petrified corpses, huddled against a wall.
Casts were made of the bodies, as well as the vines and the surviving segments of trellises on which they were growing.
But archaeologists didn't think to restore the vineyards of ancient Pompeii until the late 1980s.
When they did, they realized they didn't have a clue about wine-making, so they called in local winemaker Piero Mastrobeardino.
Together they set out to discover how the ancient Romans made wine, and which grapes and farming methods they used.
"The team looked at casts of vine roots made two centuries ago and consulted the surviving fragments of ancient farming texts," Mastrobeardino told The Local. "We even looked at ancient frescoes to try to identify which grapes grew from Pompeii's soil."
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.it ...
Great info! Of course, there *may* be a downside to getting rid of the louse via this method...
Some kind of connection between soil fertility and the volcano was understood in Roman times. This pre-eruption wall painting shows Dionysus and Vesuvius. The caption I used for the ALT tag on this image came from the British Museum page, these images come from Wikipedia:
http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/soil.htm
“Why do people live on dangerous volcanoes? The main reason is the rich volcanic soil. People are willing to take high-risk gambles for the most basic things of life — especially food. ...
One example of the effect of volcanoes on agricultural lands is in Italy. Except for the volcanic region around Naples, farming in southern Italy is exceedingly difficult because limestone forms the basement rock and the soil is generally quite poor. But the region around Naples, which includes Mount Vesuvius, is very rich mainly because of two large eruptions 35,000 and 12000 years ago that left the region blanketed with very thick deposits of tephra which has since weathered to rich soils. Part of this area includes Mount Vesuvius. The region has been intensively cultivated since before the birth of Christ. The land is planted with vines, vegetables, or flowers. Every square foot of this rich soil is used. For example, even a small vineyard will have, in addition to grapes and spring beans on the trellises, fava beans, cauliflower and onions between the trellis rows, and the vineyard margin rimmed with orange and lemon trees, herbs, and flowers. It also is a huge tomato growing region.”
If you garden, there are places online you can obtain bags of volcanic ash for gardening.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
