Soon, we’ll be sharing details with you around our upcoming collection, which traces the Roman diaspora of wines and grapes in western and northern Europe.
In preparation, we ask “how old, exactly, is wine?”
More on that in a moment. But first, how much do you really know about the most famous of all wine grapes... Cabernet Sauvignon?
This week, Julien looks at the most important facts wine connoisseurs should know about Cabernet Sauvignon... from its fascinating origin story... to the top cab-producing countries... and where to look for the best cabernets in the world.
How Old, Exactly, Is Wine? (Continued)
The Birthplace of Wine
Long before man learned to write or plant crops, he scrambled up trees to pick grapes and berries. At some point he noticed not only that something funny happened to the juices left behind in his containers after a few days, but also that drinking it was a really good time.
And so happy hour was born.
Yet, it wasn’t until the agricultural revolution in 10,000 BC that wine production became a controlled process. Wild vitis vinifera grapes grew in the Fertile Crescent, extending north as far as Georgia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea.
The birthplace of wine
The earliest archeological evidence for winemaking likely comes from Georgia and dates to 6,000 BC (back when Florida was still underwater). There, wines were fermented in giant clay vessels, called kvevri, that were then buried in the ground. (Kvevri, still in use today, are handmade using techniques passed down through artisan families over many generations.)
Kvevri
Discovering the World's Oldest Winery
Challenging the Georgian claim are the Chinese, who cite evidence of rice and fruit wine dating back to 7,000 BC. You can split the difference by giving Georgia credit for the earliest vitis vinifera winemaking, whereas China’s early winemakers used wild mountain grapes of a different species. Either way, the Eastern Europeans (or, more accurately, Trans-Caucasians) can still lay claim to the oldest winery, discovered in a cave in Armenia and dated to 4100 BC, complete with a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups (As well as the world’s oldest shoe - a women’s size 7 in leather.)
The world’s oldest shoe found at the world’s oldest winery
Given the relative sophistication of the site’s equipment, it is likely that winemaking had been going on there for some time. That would make sense, as winemaking crossed the Bosporus over to Greece at least four hundred years earlier in 4500 BC.
The Greeks borrowed the Persian practice of adding the natural preservative retsina – a turpentine resin made from Aleppo pine trees – to their wine. Even after Roman barrels made the practice obsolete, the Greeks, having acquired a taste for it, continued making pine resin wine, and still do today. (We have yet to find a retsina that meets our standards for quality, but adventurous readers can sample an inexpensive one via Wine Searcher here.)
It was Greek colonists who likely brought winemaking to Italy, where Romans later created the template for modern wine consumption such as we enjoy it today. By standardizing the use of barrels, glass bottles, and adding sulfur, Romans created a wine that got better with age. So prized became aged vintages that the enterprising Roman winemakers would smoke their wines to mimic the effects of aging.
Can You Drink The Oldest Bottle of Wine?
The merits of the Roman wine bottle have proven out with the discovery, in Germany, of the oldest bottle still containing wine. Known as the Speyer bottle, it dates from 325 AD and belonged to a Roman nobleman.
The oldest bottle of wine
Not that we’d recommend drinking it, of course.
Prosit! (Thought to have been the Roman “cheers” – Germans use it today and its etymological offshoots are found throughout the European world.)
The Wine Explorer