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Amphorae stamped with the emblems of Pompeian merchants have been found across the Roman empire including the modern day regions of Bordeaux, Narbonne, Toulouse and Spain. There is evidence to suggest that the popularity and notoriety of Pompeian wine may have given rise to early wine fraud with fraudulent stamps being used to mark amphorae of non-Pompeian wine.[4]
The 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius had a devastating effect on the Roman wine industry. Vineyards across the region were destroyed, as well as warehouses storing the recent 78 AD vintage, causing a dramatic shortage of wine.

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In ancient times, the reputation of a wine was dependent on the region the wine came from rather than an individual producer or vineyard. In the 4th century BC, the most expensive wine sold in Athens was wine from Chios which sold for between a quarter of a drachma and 2 drachma for a chous worth – about the equivalent of 4 standard 750 ml wine bottles today. Like early wine critics, Greek poets would extol the praises of certain wines and negatively review those that were not up to their tastes. The wines that were most frequently cited as being of good quality were the wines of Chalkidike, Ismaros, Khios, Kos, Lesbos, Mende, Niaxos, Peparethos (today known as Skopelos) and Thasos.

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Known to the emperors of Rome, poets, (most notably Pliny and Ausonius), and popes, Bordeaux has enjoyed the envy of the wine producing world longer than any other wine region on earth. From Pliny to the most contemporary wine critics, including Robert Parker Jr., Bordeaux wines have never gone out of favor. Besides, what other wine region can claim three millennia of continuous production and millions of satisfied customers?

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The history of wine production seems to have begun sometime after 48 AD, during the Roman occupation of St. Émilion, when the Romans established vineyards to cultivate wine for the soldiers.[1] However, it is only in 71 AD that Pliny recorded the first real evidence of vineyards in Bordeaux.[2] France's first extensive vineyards were established by Rome in around 122 BC in today's Languedoc, the better part of two hundred years earlier.[3]
Although domestically popular, French wine was seldom exported, as the areas covered by vineyards and the volume of wine produced was low. In the 12th century however, the popularity of Bordeaux wines increased dramatically following the marriage of Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor d’Aquitaine[4]. The marriage made the province of Aquitaine English territory, and thenceforth the majority of Bordeaux was then exported[4]. This accounts for the ubiquity of claret in England.

WINE
The 8,000 Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade
by Thomas Pellechia