Thread by @emlynkd

The #Pompeii Foro Boario vineyard opposite the amphitheatre is beautiful, but less known is the #Roman winemaking facility from 79 CE hidden in a small building at the back corner!

Almost always closed to the public, here’s a glimpse… 🧵 1/8

The vineyard entrance leads immediately into the small ‘cella vinaria’, with 10 ceramic dolia buried in the ground to keep a stable, cool fermentation and storage environment.
Even the specific ‘strawberry’ shape of dolia helps must circulate & aids fermentation. 2/8

Some amazing details have been preserved: plastered channels leading from the press room into the cella vinaria, and smaller lead pipes leading through walls and into each jar. 3/8

There are signs of repair and reuse via lead clamps on dolia, and stamps indicating the workshops and makers of the jars. Dolia were expensive so had long and often complex use lifecycles, sometimes reused for 300+ years. 4/8

In the room immediately next door is the press - destroyed in the eruption, but beautifully and accurately reconstructed as a lever and winch type (nb. it could also have functioned with a screw and weightstone). 5/8

Grapes were first trod on the waterproofed plaster floor, then pressed under the lever, with must flowing into two collection vats on the left.

When ready, the collected must was channeled next door into the dolia for longer fermentation and storage. 6/8

Production on this relatively small scale AND within an urban environment is fascinating, presenting a very diff case to the more stereotypical villa rustica style (cf. image of industrial production at Villa Pisanella. 📷 1903 excavations, M. Cardone and PompeiiInPictures). 7/8

Triclinia in the vineyard itself, a shopfront and a location next to the amphitheatre suggest that this owner had a thriving business selling wine on a local scale to patrons of gladiatorial games and passers by. 8/8
(📷 Mastroberardino)