|
|
|
Last Page Update
11/05/2006 |
Boscoreale: a country house in Villa Regina area
Wine production
In the Roman period the main agricultural activity of the Vesuvian area was the production of wine. The slopes of Vesuvius were mainly planted with vineyards, as testified by a Pompeian fresco and demonstrated by numerous sites dating to Roman times where wine presses have been found. The grapes grown in the Vesuvius area were the ones recalled by Pliny and by Columella: Aminea gemina minor, characterized by double bunches; Murgentina grapes from Sicily, so widespread in Pompeii that it was named Pompeiana; Holconia from the name of a Pompeian family, the Holconii; Vennuncula, yielding a very robust wine. The grapes were picked and transported on carriages to the farms where they were pressed and where the wine obtaihed was stored before being sold and consumed.
The country house (tilla rustica) found in the Villa Regina area, suburb of Boscoreale, is a good example. It is the only one fitted with premises for pressing grapes and for storing wine which is currently open to visitors. The vineyard surrounding the house today has been replanted by following the traces of ancient vines of which plaster casts have been obtained by filling the vacuum in the ground left by the decomposition of roots after the eruption. Plaster casts of the roots are matched to those of poles supporting the rows of the vine. In the vineyard other kinds of trees were present such as walnut, fig, almond, olive and fruit trees.
At the time of the grape-harvest, between late September and the first half of October, grapes were picked and carried to the torcularium, a room with a watertight floor and walls, where they were pressed. In many cases villae rusticae of Vesuvius area were titted with a window in the torcularium communicating with the outside, in order to case carriage of grapes without having to enter and stain other rooms of the construction.
Pressing was carried out in two phases: firstly, bunches were trodden till grapes juice came out as must; the juice obtained trickled down the sloping floor to a hole where a channel took it to a large clay jar (dolium), as in the case of Villa Regina, orto a basin, open (lacus) or covered (tank) as in other cases. The first must to be extracted was offered to the god of wine and wine-making, namely Bacchus, who frequently appears in sacred depictions of torcularia. In Villa Regina Bacchus was the deity painted as standing in the centre of an open door above a small altar near the dolium containing the must while Silenus was represented with a marble bust in the lararium of the portico. Secondly marcs and stalks - whai remained of the crushed bunches - were pressed with a special machine (torcular). The press was made of wood, usually of oak, as demonstrated by the Neapolitan dialect word of "cercola" (= oak) which defined the main component of the press that is the big cross-beam (prelum) which by its weight crushed the marc.
In the first century AD two different types of wine press were known in Italy: the traditional lever press (named the "Cato press" after the agronomist Cato the Elder who studied its operation) and the new lever and screw press, which was added with a screw ensuring better pressing, even in smaller presses. The most widespread press used in Vesuvian farms was the lever one, requiring a number of fixed structures (pits, trapdoors and tunnels) in which the mobile wooden equipment was set. Strong pressure required blocking of the press components: the two upright front elements (stipites) to which a winch (sucula) was linked for winding the rope lowering the end of the prelurn and the upright rear element (arbor) to which the other end of the prelum was connected. The weight of the prelum and the operation of the sucula caused it to be gradually lowered onto the heap of marcs gathered in a wooden crate below. A trapdoor close to the arbor and the one close to the stipites allowed access to the underground and anchoring the wooden parts to the ground. The must obtained was then poured into clay jars (dolia defossa) buried in the wine cellar where fermentation would take place. Wine obtained was stocked in the same dolia, closed by a double cover and sealed with mortar till it was opened in spring and subsequently
marketed.
Source
Soprintendenza
Archeologica di Pompei |
|
|
|
|
|
|
