Roman Bubbles: Bollulae, Cleopatra and Ancient Sparkling Wine

Long before a French monk named Dom Pérignon became a byword for Champagne, were the Romans already drinking sparkling wine? The claim turns up all over the internet — and the truth is a fascinating tangle of genuine ancient fizz and romantic myth². (See also: lead and the fall of Rome.)

Sorting the two apart tells us a good deal about how wine actually worked in the ancient world.

Did the Romans make Champagne?

The short answer is: not the way we mean it. True sparkling wine — a deliberate, controlled second fermentation that traps carbon dioxide under pressure — depends on strong, sealable bottles and an understanding of yeast that the ancient world simply did not possess. That combination arrived only in seventeenth-century France and England, which is why Dom Pérignon and his contemporaries are remembered as its pioneers⁸.

Roman wine was stored and shipped in clay amphorae — porous vessels wholly unsuited to holding pressure. A Champagne-strength fizz would simply have burst them³.

The genuine fizz: aigleucos

And yet the ancients did meet effervescence. Pliny the Elder describes a wine the Greeks called aigleucos — “sweet must” — kept perpetually sweet by preventing it from fully fermenting¹. The trick was cold: growers sealed the must in amphorae and sank them in cold water for weeks, so fermentation stalled and the wine stayed sweet and, very likely, gently prickly with dissolved gas³. It was not Champagne. But it was a wine that fizzed — a real, if accidental, ancient brush with bubbles¹.

Bullulae, Caesar and Cleopatra

A more romantic story circulates online: that the Romans called sparkling wine bullulae, “little bubbles,” that it was served in quantity at a lavish banquet Caesar threw for Cleopatra in Campania, and that the poet Lucan recorded the scene⁵. It is a wonderful image — but it rests on thin and much-embroidered evidence, and mainstream classical scholarship does not treat bullulae as a documented Roman word for sparkling wine. It is best enjoyed as a colourful legend rather than established fact².

Cleopatra’s dissolving pearl

The most famous Cleopatra-and-wine story comes from Pliny himself. To win a wager with Mark Antony over who could stage the costliest banquet, the queen is said to have dropped one of a pair of priceless pearls into a cup of sharp wine or vinegar, let it dissolve, and drunk it — swallowing a fortune in a single toast¹. The tale enchanted painters for centuries; Giambattista Tiepolo made it the subject of a celebrated 1740s canvas⁷.

Chemistry, though, is skeptical. A pearl will not simply melt in a cup of table vinegar in the span of a banquet, so scholars generally treat the episode as legend or exaggeration — perhaps the pearl was crushed first, or the story simply grew in the retelling⁶. Either way, it belongs with the myths, not the recipes⁴.

Why the myths endure

The Romans adored wine. They chased sweetness, strength, age and novelty, flavoured their cups with resin, honey and even seawater, and in aigleucos they brushed right against the edge of sparkling wine³. But sparkling wine as a deliberate, repeatable style had to wait some sixteen centuries — for stronger glass and a real grasp of secondary fermentation⁸. The myths endure for a simple reason: we like to imagine the ancients shared our pleasures. Sometimes — as with a cool jar of faintly fizzing aigleucos — they very nearly did.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Távora-Varosa: Portugal’s first sparkling region
• The sublime language of wine and poetry
• The origins of wine and viticulture

References

1. Pliny the Elder, Natural History (on aigleucos and Cleopatra’s pearl) — via the Bill Thayer text archive. penelope.uchicago.edu ↩
2. Wine Spectator — Romans Beat French to Bubbly, Says Historian. www.winespectator.com ↩
3. Guado al Melo — The taste of wine in ancient Roman times. www.guadoalmelo.it ↩
4. The World of Fine Wine — Cleopatra: Wines fit for a Queen of Egypt. worldoffinewine.com ↩
5. Rome and Art — Caesar and Cleopatra drank sparkling wine (origin of the claim). www.romeandart.eu ↩
6. B. L. Ullman, “Cleopatra’s Pearls,” The Classical Journal 52 (1957). penelope.uchicago.edu ↩
7. National Trust Collections — Cleopatra dissolving the Pearl in Wine. www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk ↩
8. Encyclopædia Britannica — Dom Pérignon and the origins of Champagne. www.britannica.com ↩

Recommended reading

A History of the World in 6 Glasses
Tom Standage
A lively history that includes wine’s central place in Greece and Rome — the world of the symposium and the Roman feast.

Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture
Patrick E. McGovern
The definitive account of ancient wine, grounded in archaeology rather than legend — the perfect antidote to the myths.

As an Amazon Associate, This Day in Wine History earns from qualifying purchases. Book recommendations are chosen independently.