«Aseptic» technology in the Roman era

The word Aseptic originates from the Greek term Septic meaning putrid or producing
putrefaction. Aseptic thereby denotes preventing putrefaction or not subject to infection. It is customary to associate the denomination Aseptic to modern times but in a certain sense, this is not really true. As a matter of fact, one could almost debate on the fact that we could be considered pioneers of Aseptic techniques and moreover that Aseptic is a recent innovation of our times, since the first notions of beverage preservation date back even to the Roman era.
The most primitive Roman stratagems, in terms of food and beverage preservation, principally entailed boiling, salting, drying and acidification. Milk, for instance, for preservation purposes, was acidified with vinegar and onion.
Our Roman ancestors had to find a way of preserving their grapes. What better way to preserve grapes than to produce wine! The texture of the wine produced in that period did not resemble the one we are used to drinking nowadays since the Roman methods of conservation such as boiling, produced a very syrupy kind of beverage.
It was rather widespread in Roman times, to flavour wine with resin, spices and sea water. These so-called additives had the dual purpose of acting not only as preservatives but also of covering the taste of the wine that very gradually inevitably turned into vinegar.
Once the wine was produced, the Romans too had to find a way of bottling, capping and storing it.

The Roman «filling, capping and storage» process

Our Roman ncestors, poured their wine into air-tight terracotta Amphoraes (ceramic type containers with narrow necks); these amphoraes were then sealed by simply applying clay or resins over the neck of the amphoraes.
As in our day and age the market continuously focuses on developing new bottle shapes, the Romans too developed, through time, diverse types of amphorae of different weights and forms.
To effectively seal the amphoraes, the Romans made ample use of vegetable resins. The books moreover record findings of calcic soaps on the interior walls of the amphorae which subsequently leads to the belief that oil and lime were used in creating said effective sealing concoctions.
The Romans soon discovered that cooling stopped the growth of bacteria, therefore in order to conserve their foodstuffs and wine they housed their goods in cool places such as caves, used as cellars.
During the winter months the Romans managed to maintain their cellars cool by filling them up
with snow which was fetched daily from the nearby mountains.
Historical data illustrate that the snow was pressed, placed on top of layers of straw and then covered with layers of dry leaves.

The Ancient Roman «Filling capping and storage» modus operandi described above, although very primeval, plainly witnesses that the Romans were in  a sense, forerunners of our contemporary and rather more sophisticated, Aseptic Filling process.