Roma Caput Vini, the novel published by Mondadori and written in four hands by Giovanni Negri and his wife Elisabetta Petrini, will be presented on 2 December at Castello Banfi, Montalcino.

The novel, highlighting how intense the link between Rome and wine was, makes a precise historical reconstruction, to discover that wine is to Rome as Coca Cola is to the United States, and to establish without a shadow of a doubt that many of today's most famous wines, both Italian and French, were born at the hands of the ancient Romans.

Roma Caput Vini, the novel published by Mondadori

Giovanni Negri tells us the astonishing history of wine in Rome, which in the second century B.C. experiences its main moment, when wine from being a luxury drink for patricians becomes vinum, food and mass pleasure.

'No tree before the sacred vine shalt thou plant, O Varus'. Following Horace's admonition to the letter, Rome required its soldiers to plant vines, stipulating that the centurion, a key figure in the army, would hold in his right hand a staff of command called vitis, a vine branch.

From the taverns of Rome to the feasts at Pompeii, from Pliny the Younger's wine guide to the wine-food-sex combination, from the spread throughout the regions of the Empire to the prohibition era, an amazing tour of wine in ancient Rome.

At the centre of the book is the incredible discovery made recently by Professor Attilio Scienza, holder of the Chair of Viticulture at the University of Milan and a scholar of vine genetics who, since the early 1980s, has been collaborating with Castello Banfi on zoning and clonal research projects on Sangiovese. Thanks to his group's studies and the most advanced DNA analysis techniques, Prof. Scienza has identified 78 European grape varieties that are all genetic descendants of the heunisch (Hun), the vine propagated by the Roman legions so that it could be planted in every land of the empire.

European wines therefore have a putative mother in Rome, a great military but also agricultural power, which placed the vine on the continent, and in the majestic Roman legions, transformed in peacetime into the most formidable instrument for spreading and cultivating the vine.

On 2 December 2011, at 5 p.m., Castello Banfi will host the presentation of this extraordinary narrative work published by Mondadori, Roma Caput Vini.