"Vita vinum est" -- "Wine is life" -- according to Petronius, a Roman writer.

And the ancient Romans took him at his word. Wine was a staple on the Roman table, from the old, sweet, white wines on the tables of the wealthy and powerful to the slave's lorca, made from the third pressing of watered-down pomace.

We know a whole lot about Roman wine because the Romans left volumes of written records, and because the Italian peninsula, primarily the ocean bottom just off the coast, is littered with amphorae (the jugs in which wine was stored and transported). The distribution of and the writings scratched into these jugs tell much of the wine trade.

Rome was a huge market for wine. A whole lot of people with no room for their own vineyards each drank an estimated two liters per day. Almost every port on the Mediterranean exported wine to Rome.

Pliny in his "Natural History" and Columella in his "de Re Rustica" recorded a lot of information about ancient wines and grapes. In the Roman empire, grapevines were positioned to grow up trees. And the grapes were picked after they were overripe -- late harvest -- so the wines would have been sweet. It was also mostly white, not red.

The best of it was barely acceptable by modern standards -- much of it was horrible. To sample the modern equivalents, get a glass of what may be the nearest thing to ancient Roman wine, either a retsina (Achaia Clauss at $8 a liter) or a madeira (try a Justino -- Rainwater at $12 a bottle), or blend the two if you must have the full effect.

To make wine, the grapes were crushed and fermentation took place in a dolia, a large crock buried to its lip to keep the fermentation temperature down. (Wooden vessels were introduced during the Dark Ages by the barbarians, who neither shaved nor made properly fired pottery.) The wine was then racked off into an amphora. The amphora's walls were permeable so, to keep the wine from escaping, the jars were lined with pitch. Retsina is an artifact -- wine with resin -- that has survived the amphorae themselves.

Cato advised that there should be a large air space left in the amphora. This air in the jar and the description of the wine as being dark brown in color led to the conclusion that the wine was maderized (oxidized).

As in modern times, the age of the wine was considered an asset. There was new wine and old wine. Any wine more than about 9 months of age was old wine. The great Roman wines were aged in lofts over the hearths at least 10 years for Falernian and 25 years for Surrentine. They would have been oxidized and baked and, at best, taste like modern madeira.

Even though many ancient grapes are named in the surviving writings, the correspondence with modern names is problematic because the vine characteristics, leaf shape and bud configuration were not carefully recorded, and because things got very confused during the Dark Ages. Several of the white grape names are now used for red grapes, and vice versa. However, you can taste some modern wines that are likely made from grapes named by Pliny and his contemporaries.

For instance, the grape of the bees, muscato, is used in Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante at $12. Muscato grapes still attract bees. You can taste a fizzy, sweet, red wine the Romans called Lambrusco, one being Riunite at $6 a bottle. A white grape, Trebbiano, is still used to make a white wine in Italy. Try Citra at $9 for a 1.5 liter bottle.

Wine may even have been an important factor in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Sapa, grape juice reduced to a thick syrup by boiling it in lead pots, was added to wine by the vintner to color, sweeten and help preserve it. Studies of the recorded behavior of the Romans indicate that many of them, including Caligula and Nero, may have been affected by lead poisoning.

Analysis of the consumption of wine and sweetened food shows that a Roman probably consumed 250 micrograms of lead every day. The maximum safe dose, according to the World Health Organization, is 45 micrograms per day. The entire population of Rome -- soldiers, slaves and senators -- may have been mad as hatters.