One of the most prized wines of ancient Rome was made with a very unusual step. An Italian winemaker heard it hadn’t been recreated in millennia: “I’ll do it”
What kind of wine were Roman big-timers—from Pliny the Elder to Julius Caesar himself—knocking back, back in the day? It was strong, it was sweet and it just might have been … salty. A team of researchers recently presented evidence that some of the most praised and prized wines of antiquity were made from grapes submerged in baskets in the Mediterranean before crush, a 2,500-year-old technique for flavoring and washing the grapes. Winemaker Antonio Arrighi got word and decided, if it was good enough for Caesar, it was good enough for him to spare a few bunches for an experiment…