Ancient Rome and wine Gaul. The Romans established lucrative trading relations with local tribes of Gaul, despite their potential to produce wine of their own. The Gallic tribes paid high prices for Roman wine, with a single amphora worth the value of a slave. From the Mediterranean coast, the Romans pushed further up the Rhone Valley, to areas where olives and figs were unable to grow but where oak trees were still found. As a result of their experience in what is now northeastern Italy, the Romans knew that regions where "Quercus ilex" were found had climates sufficiently warm enough to allow the full
Ancient Rome and wine also given impetus by the changing Roman diet. In the 2nd century BC, Romans began to shift from meals consisting of moist porridge and gruel to those more bread-based; wine aided in eating the drier food. Wine played a major role in ancient Roman religion and Roman funerary practices, and was the preferred libation for most deities. The invention of wine was usually credited to Liber and his Greek equivalents, Bacchus (later Romanised) and Dionysus, who promoted the fertility of human and animal semen, and the "soft seed" of the vine. Ordinary, everyday, mixed wines were under the protection of