§296. Wine Making.--The making of the wine took place usually in September, the season varying with the soil and the climate. It was anticipated by a festival, the _vīnālia rūstica_, celebrated on the 19th of August. Precisely what the festival meant the Romans themselves did not fully understand, perhaps, but it was probably intended to secure a favorable season for the gathering of the grapes. The general process of making the wine differed little from that familiar to us in Bible stories and still practiced in modern times. After the grapes were gathered they were first trodden with the bare feet (Fig. 117) and then pressed in the _prēlum_ or _lorcular_. The juice as it came from the press was called _mustum_, "new," and was often drunk unfermented, as "sweet" cider is now. It could be kept sweet from vintage to vintage by being sealed in a jar smeared within and without with pitch and immersed for several weeks in cold water or buried in moist sand. It was also preserved by evaporation over a fire; when it was reduced one-half in this way it became a grape-jelly (_dēfrutum_) and was used as a basis for various beverages and for other purposes (§290). [Illustration: FIGURE 118. WINE CELLAR] §297. Fermented wine (_vīnum_) was made by collecting the _mustum_ in huge vat-like jars (_dōlia_, shown in Fig. 116), large enough to hide a man and containing a hundred gallons or more. These were covered with pitch within and without and partially buried in the ground in cellars or vaults (_vīnāriae cellae_), in which they remained permanently. After they were nearly filled with the _mustum_, they were left uncovered during the process of fermentation, which lasted under ordinary circumstances about nine days. They were then tightly sealed and opened only when the wine required attention[3] or was to be removed. The cheaper wines were used directly from the _dōlia_, but the choicer kinds were drawn off after a year into smaller jars (_amphorae_), clarified and sometimes "doctored" in various ways, and finally stored in depositories often entirely distinct from the cellars (Fig. 118). A favorite place was a room in the upper story of the house, where the wine was artificially aged by the heat rising from the furnace or even by the smoke escaping from the fire. The _amphorae_ were sometimes marked with the name of the wine, and the names of the consuls for the year in which they were filled. [Footnote 3: Spoiled wine was used as vinegar (_acētum_), and vinegar that became insipid and tasteless was called _vappa_. This last word was used also as a term of reproach for shiftless and worthless men.]