No plant is mentioned more often and chunks of Book II are devoted to vinticulture, as am I.
I'm not including references to vinum, Bacchus, etc.
| L | vitis (see below for uva) Flora Eur. 727 |
E | grapevine | S | Vitis vinifera L. |
| G | Weinstock, Rebe, Rebstock, Weinrebe | F | vigne à vin | I | vite da vino, vite coltivata, vite commune |
E. 1.75 2.70 3.11 3.38 5.32 (bis) 7.61 9.42 10.40 |
|
Just in case you have no idea what grapes look like. Frequent in Pompeian art. The P(ompeii) pictures show grapes from the House of the Cententary, House of Fabius Rufus, House of Menander, and House of the Sybil.
Bottles of Sassicaia.jpg or any super Tuscan, or any Italian wine, or any wine, really, any, cheerfully accepted.
Grape is interesting as one of the few words in the Indo-European familiy where the fruit and the plant are distinct lexemes.
| L | E | grape | S | Vitis vinifera L. |
|
| G | Weintraube, Weinbeere | F | raisin, cépage (for the grape variety) | I | uva |
E. 4.29 5.32 9.49 10.36 |
|
Despite the number of grape types, Vitis vinifera is quite uniform and only highly trained amphelographers can tell the difference between many grape varieties. For example, only recently did DNA analysis show that Italian primitivo and American zinfandel were the same. Ancient grape varieties are unrecoverable and probably were more a matter of terroir than varietials. See Hanneke Wirtjes, "Ancient Wine Varieties," in The Oxford Companion to Wine, ed. Jancis Robinson (1999), 34-35, and J. André,"Contribution au vocabulaire de la viticulture. Les noms des cépages." REL 30 (1952) 126-156; A. Tchernia, Le vin de l'Italie romaine (Rome, 1986).
Vergil refers to these types (or sources) of grapes (mostly in G. 2.91-106):
Aminnea (2.97)
argitis (2.99)
bumastus (2.102)
Falernus (2.96)
lageos (2.93)
Mareotis (2.91)
Phanaeus (2.98)
precia (2.95)
psithia (2.93)
purpurea (2.95)
Rhaetica (2.96)
Rhodia (2.102)
Thasia (2. 91)
Tmolius (2.98)
But as Vergil said (2.103-4):
sed neque quam multae species nec nomina quae
sint
est numerus, neque enim numero comprendere refert;
But how many kinds there are or what their names are
There is no
counting, and it's really not important to list them one by one.
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