From Vineyard to Wine Press to the Boccale
Although now nearly extinct in the wild, grapes (vitis vinifera) grew throughout the Mediterranean world and in Italy, grapes were cultivated both in northern and central Italy by the Etruscans and in the south (Magna Grecia) by the Greeks. The grapevines often intertwined in trellises as in this Roman mosaic of Cherchell, Algeria (3rd- 4th-c. A.D.): In…