AQUILEIA

AquileiaWine has been produced, sold and consumed in Aquileia since the Roman Times, as ancient writers have told us and as shown by the large numbers of amphorae and glasses found. However, it was in the Augustan Age that Aquileia became a source of primary importance for the suply of wine to people living in the Alpine area and around the Danube, who came to stock up with the precious liquid (Strabone; V,1,8). Wine from Aquileia even reached the dining tables of the Imperial Roman court, where it founds illustrious devotees:as Pliny the Elder reported (Nat. Mist., XIV, 80), Livia, the second wife of Augustus, drank this exclusively, to a point that she considered a true and genuine medicine, particulary suitable for her venerable 86 years. Grape growing also continued for centuries afterwards. Herodian (VIII,4,5) wrote in the 3rd century A.D. that the countryside was adorned by rows of vines, interpersed with fruit trees forming elegant green festoons, which produced a wine kept, then as now, in wooden barrels (Herodian VIII,4,4) and sold in local taverns (S.I., 181).