T.’s new book is presented on the publisher's website as ‘the first general handbook on winemaking in Rome in over 100 years’. This is both a clear reference to R. Billiard's La vigne dans l'antiquité (1913) – to which T.’s work is at times much indebted (e.g. pp. 151–2, 202) – and a firm statement on the intentions of the author: to provide an updated manual on viniculture in Roman Italy and the Western Mediterranean, although the focus is on the former area. There certainly is need for such a handbook. While still relevant, Billiard's study is now somewhat outdated, as archaeology in particular has added much to the picture since then. Recent studies have started filling this data void, but no scholar has attempted a synthesis of this kind since the turn of the twentieth century.Footnote ¹ In addition, most existing literature is either in French or Italian; that is, languages that students – deplorably – tend to shun in favour of English textbooks. T.’s effort is thus likely to be widely read. Unfortunately, while the book has much to recommend, the result as a whole is uneven.

T.’s guidebook comprises five chapters, a bibliography, an index and a list of illustrations. The first two chapters set the stage. Chapter 1, ‘Prehistory and Protohistory’, deals with the biology of the grapevine and its domestication, the discovery of winemaking and the origins of viticulture outside Italy. With Chapter 2, ‘Viniculture in Italy’, T. moves to the core region of his study. He sketches the spread of viticultural practices and grape cultivars in Italy, first by the Mycenaeans and the Minoans (fourteenth–thirteenth centuries bc), and later by Phoenician and western Greek traders (ninth–seventh centuries bc). He hereby argues how local, casual forms of winegrowing were gradually systematised through the constant interplay between immigrant and native populations (pp. 22–33), a process that eventually gave way to the birth of commercial viniculture in two of the major wine areas of pre-Roman Italy: Etruria and Magna Graecia (seventh–fifth centuries bc). These traditions were then inherited and sophisticated by the Romans, who in turn introduced them into their conquered territories over the following centuries (pp. 33–49). Fascinating as these introductory chapters are, this grand narrative of the early days of viticulture feels rushed and disconnected. T. touches upon many interesting issues, such as the role of hemaphrodism and clonal propagation in the development of proper viticulture (pp. 11–13), or the archaeology of the palmenti (simple rock-cut installations for grape processing, pp. 23–8), but too much ground needs to be covered in a mere 50 pages, and this causes incoherence and confusion. There is obviously much to say about how Rome's wine culture came to be, but T.’s preamble leaves the reader unsatisfied.

Chapters 3, ‘Viticulture’, and 4, ‘Vinification’, form the main body of the book. These are also the most rewarding reads. T. conducts a close reading of the relevant ancient texts – mostly those by Cato, Varro, Columella and Pliny – and intelligently uses archaeology and modern science to clarify and inform them. He starts with an excellent analysis of the importance of soil and landscape in vineyard site selection, making this one of the most stimulating pieces of the book (pp. 51–61). T. offers a decent – if by no means exhaustive – overview of some of the best evidence for rural buildings with presses in Italy (pp. 61–76), but his reliance on M. Rostovtzeff's (the name is spelled inconsistently throughout the volume) tripartite classification of villas from 1926 is archaic and unhelpful for further debate (pp. 64–5). Also, T.’s brief inclusion of the survey results from the South Etruria project shows that he does not fully grasp the complexity of archaeological interpretation (p. 68). But T. excels at his thorough examination of vine-growing practices in Roman Italy, reviewing: vine training (his piece on the arbustum, vines trained to rows of trees, fills an important void [pp. 100–3]), planting and transplanting, grafting, irrigation, cultivation, thinning and pruning. Particularly insightful are the sections on grape diseases and injuries (pp. 121–7), and the Romans’ use of fertilisers (pp. 118–21).

Chapter 4 is an elaboration of the third chapter from T.’s earlier A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome (2006). This makes some repetition in text and illustration inevitable, but in places the déjà vu becomes too explicit (e.g. pp. 137, 151–2, 156, 160–3, 179–80). This is, however, a minor criticism on a chapter that has otherwise much to offer. By carefully blending literary and archaeological data, T. presents a detailed description of the ancient winery and its equipment, as well as the three basic steps in Roman winemaking (treading, pressing, fermentation). The sections on how the Romans clarified their wines (pp. 191–4), or how they treated sugar deficiencies in the must (pp. 178–83) – contrary to T.’s statement, this process is still called ‘chaptalization’ in modern wine science – are full of interest. T. also elucidates some long-standing debates, such as the common practice of the late harvest (p. 137), the production of white and red wines (pp. 153–5) or the Romans’ understanding of wine diseases (pp. 198–201). Here, T. improves upon Billiard's work.

The most valuable part of the fifth and final chapter, ‘Distribution and Consumption’, is undoubtedly T.’s survey of the quality wines consumed in Pliny's time, as this so eloquently shows how much the ancients were aware of the link between specific cultivars or wines and certain territories, and thus how much they approached our modern notions of ‘appellation’ and ‘terroir’ (pp. 219–31). His treatment of the amphora evidence, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Amphora types are never properly explained, their chronology is kept vague, and comments on their production and distribution remain anecdotal. As such, it never becomes clear why exactly ‘amphorae studies are among our most productive archaeological tools for unraveling the commerce in wine’ (p. 211). The chapter concludes with an entertaining piece on the Roman convivium, after which the book abruptly ends.

T. has produced a welcome if unbalanced addition to the growing field of Roman oenology. He succeeds in greatly enhancing our understanding of Roman winemaking, but he is less successful when connecting his discourse to wider historical arguments. Too often statements that are heavily debated in today's scholarship are presented as facts, without regard for their interpretative problems (e.g. the demise of the Italian wine trade, pp. 36, 40, 215; the use of slave labour in villa agriculture, pp. 38, 62; or the allegedly disregarding attitude of the Roman elite on commerce, p. 50). There is no introduction, nor a conclusion, and these feel structurally lacking. Typographical errors are minimal, but at times the text could have benefited from more thorough editing (e.g. pp. 6–7, 11–13, 15). The volume is nicely, but too sparsely, illustrated, and a few more maps and figures would have been useful. The bibliography is helpful, but not comprehensive. Written in accessible prose, T.’s manual is a fine starting point for students and scholars interested in Roman viticulture, but it is no Billiard for the twenty-first century.