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Nicholas K. Rauh

Passum was made by drying grapes in the sun, soaking them in wine and pressing them. Pliny the Elder (23‒79 C.E.) especially praised the raisin wine from Rough Cilicia, a rugged region along the Mediterranean coast of southern Anatolia. (A vineyard in Rough Cilicia is shown in this photo.) Indeed, recent archaeological expeditions in Cilicia have discovered the remains of wine presses and of kilns that produced Pinched-handle amphoras.