Northants cuvée

In Her article on the wine legacy of ancient rome (August 2018), nina Caplan says she can find no evidence of the romans making wine in england. In the 1990s, northamptonshire archaeology’s senior project officer Ian meadows and Tony Brown of exeter university unearthed evidence of seven romano-British vineyards – four in northamptonshire and one each in Cambridgeshire, lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire. They concluded that the main area of activity was in the nene Valley in northants, near Wollaston, where they found evidence of a vineyard in excess of 12ha – commercially sized by any standards. While there may be scant evidence of viticultural tools, wine presses and amphorae, what else could the romans do with a huge harvest of (no doubt) barely ripe grapes, but vinify, sweeten and drink it? sadly, the vineyard is now submerged beneath a gravel pit. John Butterwick, by email