io6 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



CHAPTER LIV 



OF WINE-MAKING 



1 In the vineyards, when the grapes are ripe, you 

 must proceed to the vintage, making up your mind 

 first on the kind of grape and the part of the vine- 

 yard with which you intend to begin. For the quick- 

 ripening and the common kind, called black, ripen 

 a good deal earlier than the others and should 

 therefore be gathered before them, and the sunnier 

 part of the plantation and vineyard ought to come 



2 down before other parts. During the vintage a good 

 farmer not only gathers his bunches, he also selects 

 them. He gathers for drinking, he selects for eat- 

 ing. Accordingly, those gathered are taken off to 

 the wine-yard^ to go thence into the empty cask; 

 those selected are put into a separate basket to be 

 transferred into small jars and then thrust into 

 casks full of grape refuse; others to go down in a 

 pitch-coated amphora into a tank, others to go up to 

 a shelf in the larder. The stalks and skins of the 

 grapes that have been trodden must be put under 

 the press, that whatever ''must" remains in them 



3 may be squeezed out into the same vat. Some 

 people, when the juice ceases to flow under the 

 press, cut round the edge of the mass and press 

 again, and what is squeezed out in the second 

 operation is called circumcistcium. It is kept apart, 



^ Forum vinarium. Cf. Cato, xviii, 3. 



