(HuffPost) - Co-authored by Michael Fontaine, Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University.

Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast - these are just a few of the publications that guide consumers in their bottle selections. But while the wines reviewed are of a more modern vintage, the ideas discussed have been around almost as long as wine has.

Several writers, including Pliny the Elder, wrote about wine in the early days of the Roman Empire, more than 2,000 years ago. Pliny is most famous for his encyclopedic work Natural History, which in a mere 37 books covers a wide range of material including the modern-day hot topics of terroir, vintages, and wine rankings.

Terroir is the sense of place expressed in a wine. Think soil, climate, and other factors that would affect how a vine would grow. Pliny didn’t introduce the concept of terroir - that credit is usually given to the agricultural writer Columella - but he did write intensively on the topic.

After climate, the next task is to discuss the influence of the earth (terra), a subject no easier to deal with... Even the black soil found in Campania is not the best for vines everywhere, nor is the red soil that so many writers praise. People prefer the chalky soil in the territory of Alba Pompeia...

Terra — Pliny’s word for earth or soil — corresponds closely to the sense of terroir found in many traditional winegrowing countries. To illustrate the idea, Pliny gives two examples of Italian wines:

The wines of Pucinum get cooked on top of rock, while the vines of Caecubum grow in the waters of the Pomptine marshes; this shows the great variety and diversity that experience has discovered in the various soils.