A further incitement to drink which is connected to our mortality is the galling thought (as Odes II.14 explains) of who will drink our carefully-cellared wine after we are gone, and also perhaps how it will be drunk—that poem ends by imagining a worthier ("dignior") heir who breaks open the cellar of the dead Postumus and floods the pavement with wine more glorious than that drunk at the feasts of the pontiffs ("pontificum potiore cenis"). The only way to guard against that miserable prospect is, of course, to leave no wine behind.

Is Horace then simply a cheery old soak? That there is more to his appreciation of wine than mere hedonism is suggested by poems in which a certain simple directness towards wine is associated with the quality of Roman-ness.

For instance, Odes I.20 begins by inviting Horace's patron Maecenas to join him in drinking cheap Sabine wine served in common tankards ("Vile potabis modicis Sabinum / cantharis"), but which is at least wine of his own making, sealed on a day of giddy triumph for Maecenas when he was acclaimed in the theatre. This short, enigmatic poem ends by contrasting the choice contents of Maecenas's cellar—Caecuban from Southern Latium and wine from the famous presses of Cales ("prelo . . . Caleno"), a town in Campania.