Viniculture and wine trade in the Piran region of the middle ages

     Of the cultures that used to grow in the region of Piran the vine has always had a primacy. This is not surprising at all, as the coast of Istria already knew the vine in the Roman era. After the fall of the Roman empire aborigines and Slavic newcomers kept the tradition of cultivating the wine and producing wine.

     Until 1283 the vinicultural areas in the region of Piran were (including the town of Piran) under the worldly jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Aquilea and later under that of Venice. The ownership rights over the agrarian real estate property where held by different worldly communities (such as the commune of Piran) as well as by church communities (my numerous local and foreign churches, monasteries, religious fraternities, the dioceses of Koper and Trieste and patriarchate of Aquilea, which Piran had retained some property), and by numerous individual owners.

     In its first part the architecture discusses the ownership of the vineyards in the Medieval Piran, the relations between the owners and the cultivators, and finally the methods of cultivating the vineyards. In the second part it presents two of the prevailing ways of treading wine wholesale and selling by retail.