The king of our territory:
THE VESUVIUS

At the dawn of the ninth century BCE, a diverticulum veering toward the sea, unraveling from the N/S directrix that converges from the area of Nola to the area of present-day Nocera, led a population of Italic origin, the Opici, albeit in non-settling form, to occupy the coastal promontory that was to become the site of the temple of Venus. Thus was born the history of ancient Pompeii. As early as, from the 8th century B.C., the arrival of the Greeks in Pithecusa leads to the occupation by them, of the entire area of the gulf, and also to the control - though not military - of the area of the port of Pompeii, in the area of the suburb of Porta Marina. The practice of viticulture had been part of the Greek universe since fifteen centuries before Christ, it was introduced into the Balkan environment by people of Semitic origin. Cultivation techniques often involved overripe grapes, while wines-rarely drunk in their pure state-were diluted and served during symposia. The Greeks sensed the importance of salting wines for better preservation-practice, by the way, also used in France for many centuries-and popularized the use of amphorae and dolia for the processes of winemaking, aging and transportation of liquids. The more or less peaceful relationship with the Italic peoples also led to cultural solutions such as the vine maritata and the sapling. In 89 B.C. the city became first a Roman municipium and later, in 80 B.C., a colony. The Roman epic which reached its apogee between the late 1st century BC and the first half of the 1st century AD saw wines from Campania become the most important and renowned in the ancient world. Wines from Vesuvius were exported to virtually all the major centers of the ancient Mediterranean. The Pompeian chora was dotted with wineries ante litteram, villae rusticae for the production of wine and oil, villas including Villa Regina in Boscoreale, whose production reached the considerable figure of 30,000 liters of wine a year. A building that also housed a wine cellar with 18 dolia, bordered by a portico in which, during excavation, a plaustrum, i.e., a transport cart, was found. Surrounding the courtyard were several rooms: a torcularium that housed the wine press of which a cast remains today, a vat for pressing grapes and a container in which to collect the must. Around the villa, as shown by the root casts, a vineyard unraveled from which the raw material for the wines came. The history of Pompeii, and with it the ancient viticulture of the area, ends, in some ways crystallizes, with the eruption of 79 AD.