The first wine the ancient world agreed to call great. Grown on the slopes of the Ager Falernus in northern Campania from a white grape the Romans called Aminean, Falernian came in three styles — dry, sweet and light — and was prized above all others by Pliny, Horace, Martial and Petronius. It aged for decades, ambering and strengthening in the jar; the legendary Opimian vintage of 121 BC was still being poured, as a boast, a century and a half later.
What survives is the reputation, not the wine. We know its region, its grape name, its fame and its price, but not its taste, and no modern Campanian bottle descends from it in any traceable line — the vines and the making were lost with Rome. Falernian is best read as antiquity's benchmark of prestige, the yardstick against which every later "first among wines" was measured.