Page 17 - Pompeii n. 12 - The world of money at Pompeii

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Pompeii was filled with establishments where food and most of all wine
was served, which in the winter was diluted with hot water placed on a stove
always lit to provide an invigorating drink for every hour of the day in the
absence of coffee, tea or spirits.
This room shows the asking prices for a cup, which depended on the
quality of the wine.
In Herculaneum, a wine shop sign reads Ad cucumas, i.e., "By the
pitcher". The prices are listed below the depiction of four jugs that obviously
contained different types of wines, from the wine that cost 4 asses for a
sextary (0.545 liters), to those that cost three, two and two-thirds, and two
asses for a sextary.

Produced in vineyards planted even within the city walls in addition to the fields
outside that climbed up the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, wine was the main resource of
Pompeii's economy, and was also exported by sea, as evidenced by discoveries of
Pompeian amphorae in Narbonne Gaul as early as Rome's Republican era and the large
number of empty wine-carrying amphorae ready to be sealed with pitch found in the so-
called Villa B at Oplontis.
One vine variety took its name from the Holconii family of Pompeii, but the
Surrentinum and Vesuvinum can also be counted among the local wines, although they
were not appreciated by connoisseurs.
In fact Pliny said that Pompeii's wine did not stay good beyond ten years of aging
and an anonymous gourmet left the following inscription on a wall: "Traveller, enjoy the
fragrance of Pompeii's bread, but wait until you get to Nocera to taste some wine".

HERCOLANEUM. Inscription on the wall of a tavern. ©SSBAPES.

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