Following their decisive conquest of territories throughout the Mediterranean region during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, the Greeks introduced viticulture to their new colonies Sicily, southern Italy and south of France saw the development of new European vines. Southern Italy rose to the status of OINOTRIA or “wine land” for the Greeks, a designation that became Enotria under the Romans who planted vines throughout Italy as early as the 3rd century BC. The Romans not only turned viticulture into a fully developed branch of trade managed according to economic criteria, but also brought it to central Europe.