Mulsum. Mulsum was wine sweetened with honey. Often freely dispensed to the plebs at public events to solicit their political support, the demand for it became so great that it was more profitable to sell wine at home than to export it and, by the first century AD, wine had to be imported from Iberia and Gaul. Varro relates the story of an impoverished host serving mulsum to his guests, even though he economized by not drinking it, himself. But mulsum was not always inexpensive or inferior. Martial writes of the best quality being made of Falernian mixed with Attic honey, a drink suitable to be poured by Ganymede, himself, cupbearer to Zeus (XIII.108). The dregs of the wine press should be given to the livestock, suggests Columella, "for they contain the strength both of food and of wine and make the cattle sleek and of good cheer and plump." When soaked in water and allowed to ferment, the grape-skins and stalks left in the vat also produced lora, a thin, bitter brew allocated to slaves. Soldiers and the urban poor usually drank little better.

Falernian. The best-loved and the finest of all vintages! But it was Falernian that elicits the most praise. Made from the Aminean grape, "a producer of exceedingly good wine," according to Columella, it was brought to Italy by Greek colonists who first settled at Cumae near the Bay of Naples. Pliny says that three types were recognized: Caucinian, which was grown on the higher slopes; and then, midway down, Faustian (grown on the estate of Faustus, the son of the dictator Sulla, and regarded as the best and most carefully produced); and, on the lower slopes, Falernian.

Caecubum. As Strabo wrote, The Caecuban Plain borders on the Gulf of Caietas [in Latium]; and next to the plain comes Fundi, situated on the Appian Way. All these places produce exceedingly good wine; indeed, the Caecuban and the Fundanian and the Setinian belong to the class of wines that are widely famed, as is the case with the Falernian and the Alban and the Statanian.

Alban Wine The joy of the Alban Hills! As Dionysius of Helicarnassus wrote, "Lying below the city [of Rome] are plains marvelous to behold and rich in producing wines and fruits of all sorts in no degree inferior to the rest of Italy, and particularly what they call the Alban wine, which is sweet and excellent and, with the exception of the Falernian, certainly superior to all others." (Roman Antiquities Book 1).

SOURCES: Encyclopaedia Romana
Roman Wine