To the Romans, the noblest wine grape of all — or rather a whole group of them. Pliny and Columella rank the Aminean vines at the top of their catalogues and count five sub-types, and it was Aminean that gave the body and the long ageing of Falernian, antiquity's greatest wine. The name may come from a people or a place; the ancients themselves were vague.
Because "Aminean" covered several distinct vines, any attempt to equate it with a single modern variety — Greco, Fiano and Falanghina have all been proposed — collapses on its own logic, and no DNA links it to any living grape. It is a documented and once-supreme name whose bearer can no longer be identified: the aristocrat of Roman viticulture, and a ghost.