Metagenomics sequencing data of the Herodium winery dolia

The fortress of the Herodium built in 15 BCE by the Herod "the great", king of Judea, was a testimony of the expansion of the Roman culture in the Middle-East. Among the different roman influences identified, a winery was unearthed, containing clay fermentation vessels, known as dolia. The metagenomics shotgun sequencing of these dolia revealed a preservation of the fermentation microbes, from which genomes were reconstructed and phylogenetically and functionally described. The functional characterization of these bacterial genomes sheds a new light on the roman practice of wine fermentation.