If you’re in Florence and are going to visit the Boboli gardens or Pitti Palace anyway, I recommend the exhibit called Vinum Nostrum to all of you interested in the history of wine and the conviviality enhanced by the ingestion of it.
The exhibit covers the entire history of wine and cultivation of grapes, from its probable Georgian origins to a pretty interesting section on the grapes of ancient Pompeii. Fire, or intense heat, is actually good for preserving organic remains like seeds, and from Pompeii we can tell how and what grapes were grown, allowing them to be planted once again in ancient Pompeii as in the picture below.
The exhibit runs through April 30 of 2011, so there’s time to see it. Good info in English and all that. Here’s a short blurb from the web site:
From Mesopotamia to our tables, from the rite of communion to avoidable drunkenness, from distasteful habit to gate of spirituality, wine and the grapevine are the protagonists of the exhibition. Original showpieces, sculptures, frescoes and mosaics, accompanied by multimedia and video installations will recount the millenarian history of the grapevine and of wine, and the important influence they exerted on the culture of the ancients.
And the picture over there to the right is of a wine, um, well, you know, something you might drink wine from if you were three sheets to the wind—or a Roman. They evidently had a great tolerance for fun that we lack these dour days.
There’s a nice overview of the exhibit if you can’t go.