Wine tells the story of Humanity: from when we established the first settled communities to space explorations, wine accompanies our life and is synonymous with socialization and well-being.
ArsWine.it offers you exciting journeys into the world and time of wine, with itineraries sometimes short, sometimes longer and more complex, discovering history, culture, curiosities, connections with the world of art, anecdotes, quotes, social life, myths and religions, recipes and much more... let yourself be inspired!
Prehistoric Origins of Wine
Wild grapevine grows spontaneously in nature, dating back 200-250 million years ago; it was domesticated and made productive only when humanity moved from a nomadic state of hunters and gatherers to forming settled communities, starting agriculture. The cultivation of vitis vinifera, “bearer of wine,” is traced back to about 8000-6000 years before Christ, in the ancient region that extended along the mountain range of the Caucasus and included Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and parts of Turkey.
We are therefore in the full Neolithic, the last phase of the Stone Age (around 8000-3500 BC). Archaeologists arrive at this dating thanks to the discovery of seeds showing morphological traits exclusive to cultivated grapes. Carbon-14 dating gives the date of 7000-5000 BC for the oldest ones found in Georgia; and also in Georgia, in the Tbilisi area, irrefutable proof of wine presence in antiquity was found, thanks to traces of malic, citric, succinic, and tartaric acids.
Archaeological evidence records the presence of vitis vinifera at sites in today's territories of China from around 7000 BC, Iran from 5000 BC, Greece from 4500 BC, Sicily from 4000 BC, Egypt from around 3000 BC. But it is in Armenia where the oldest wine “cellar” in the world is found, dating back to 4100 BC
About two hours from the capital Yerevan, in the lush hills of Areni, cultivated with orchards and vineyards, the renowned Areni wine is produced, obtained from one of the oldest grape varieties in the world, the vitis Areni, source of both light and full-bodied red wines, also mentioned by Xenophon in the 4th century BC: in his work Anabasis, the Athenian philosopher mentions the passage of Greek mercenaries through southern Armenia and their encampment near houses well stocked with food and wine, stored in lime-coated cisterns.
In the ancient cellar, identified by archaeologists in 2007, numerous artifacts were found: tools for wine production, stoppers and ceramic containers, as well as a vat used for grape pressing.
>>> Curiosity: if the oldest wine cellar found so far dates back to 4100 BC, the oldest (still sealed) wine bottle is dated between 325 and 350 AD – it is the famous “bottle of wine from Speyer" (or “Römerwein”), a sealed container, inside which wine is presumed to be, unearthed in 1867 from a Roman tomb found near Speyer, in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany. <<<
From Armenia to Egypt, passing through Mesopotamia
From Armenia, most likely, wine arrived in Greece, in Mesopotamia and from here to Egypt. In Babylon it was called “mountain beer” (šika šadî) as read in the oldest Mesopotamian text concerning wine: an inscription of the Lagash ruler Urukagina dated 2340 BC noting the construction of “a storage house for mountain beer kept in jars”. Other inscriptions found testify that in Mesopotamia wine was always perceived as coming from an unspecified “elsewhere,” from the mountainous areas towards the Armenian land or the Syrian region.
Wine in the “land between the two rivers” was a luxury good, reserved for the deities and nobles, as evidenced by a bas-relief on a rock in front of the İvriz Çayı river in present-day Turkey (10th-8th century BC) depicting the Hittite king Warpalawa offering a grape cluster to the deity Tarhunzas. And from the Code of Hammurabi (18th century BC) we learn that, presumably, wine was kept in the sacred temple, cared for by priestesses who, if found negligent in their care – that is, if they opened the entrance door to the temple’s wine reserves – would be condemned to the punishment of fire.
The Egyptians also revered wine as a divine gift and used it both in daily life and religious rituals, at least from the third millennium BC (Predynastic period, Naqada III). It is to this era that the vine cultivation and wine production in Egypt, by virtue of the dating of vitis vinifera seeds (now kept in the Berlin Botanical Garden Museum) and numerous archaeological finds, such as paintings and bas-reliefs in tombs, both of pharaohs and high officials – remarkable are those of the 5th dynasty at Saqqara.
The ancient Egyptians used advanced cultivation and winemaking techniques for the time: they cultivated on pergolas and were probably the first to use trellises (equipment taller than a man’s height, useful for cutting grape clusters hanging along the pergolas) and grape pressing in vats. Fermentation initially took place in open jars, then in amphorae with a stopper, in which a small hole (later sealed after preparation) allowed carbon dioxide to escape, preventing the jar from exploding.
Irep nefer, the (good) wine of Cleopatra and the Pharaohs
The wine produced was tannic red, rosé, and white, and was often sweetened with honey or spices. The sweet white wine Mareotic was particularly appreciated in the Greco-Roman era, and had an exceptional fan in the queen Cleopatra; and also Pharaoh Tutankhamun was an avid drinker, including pomegranate wine – more than 30 wine amphorae were found in his tomb complex, which were also useful for reconstructing the reign years of this important leader!
The passion of the ancient Egyptians for Irep – wine – is also documented by the incredible care of the labels, which compete with modern ones in terms of the exhaustiveness of information: the wine containers of the time were engraved with hieratic writings (a type of cursive hieroglyphic mainly used for daily practices), indicating the type of product, the vintage year, quality and sweetness, geographic origin, type of ownership and other characteristics and details... as well as the rating:
· 1 glass – to put it in modern terms: nefer (good);
· 2 glasses: nefer nefer (more than good);
· 3 glasses: nefer nefer nefer (very good).
>>> Knowing what you drink is important... since ancient times! We at ArsWine.it we are committed to providing you with all the important information about the wines we offer in the product sheet, including recommended pairings. <<<
If in Egypt wine was a drink mainly appreciated by the upper class, and the common population mostly consumed beer, easier to produce and less expensive, the Greco-Roman culture made it accessible to everyone.
Greece and the Phoenician influences
In Greece, as mentioned, traces of vine cultivation dating back to around 4500 BC have been found; but it is likely that a true "wine culture" developed only later, thanks to the influence of the Phoenicians (around 2000-1500 BC).
The Phoenicians and their Punic descendants of Carthage were skilled viticulturists and winemakers; the agricultural treatises of the Carthaginian writer Mago, not surviving but cited and partially reported by Greek and Roman authors, show how these civilizations were able to plan vineyards based on favorable climate and topography, such as which side of a slope was more ideal for grape cultivation, and to produce a wide variety of different wine styles, ranging from straw-colored wines made from dried grapes to an early example of the modern Greek wine retsina, made with pine resin as an ingredient. They also made a significant contribution to the spread of the use of amphorae (often called “Canaanite jars”) for the transport and preservation of wine.
Starting from around the 12th century BC, Mycenaean Greece, thanks to advanced winemaking and preservation techniques, began to conduct a flourishing wine trade throughout the Mediterranean, which was cultivated in a vast area extending from mainland Greece to the islands of the Aegean Sea, under the auspices and “supervision” of the god Dionysus.
For the preservation, the Greeks used pine resin, added to the wine, to promote fermentation; and terracotta amphorae for aging.
In cultivation they did not adopt pergola training systems, as the Egyptians did or as was later done in Italy: they let the vines run freely on the ground, avoiding direct contact of the fruit with the soil by spreading branches or mats on the ground and then taking care, during the summer season, of leaf thinning, which was done to reduce transpiration and allow more light to pass for the ripening of the fruit and consequently a higher sugar content.
According to Hesiod, who wrote in “Works and Days”, the harvest took place at the beginning of October, when Orion and Sirius rise at midnight and Arcturus appears in the morning. Other evidence indicates that the harvest usually took place in September: the crushing was done in basins made of seasoned acacia wood, and while part of the must was consumed immediately, with light additions of vinegar, most of it was intended for winemaking, through fermentation in large terracotta vessels (3.5 meters high and one meter wide), called pithoi, deeply buried in special cellars and externally coated with resin and pitch. This technique gave the wine a particular aroma, which is still found in Greek resin wine. After six months of storage in pithoi, filtration and transfer of the wine into skins or pointed terracotta amphorae was carried out to allow the decantation of any sediment.
>>> To learn more about vinegar – its history, pairings, starred recipes read the dedicated articles on blog ArsWine.it starting from this <<<
Wine could thus be marketed and end up on the tables of the Greeks even at breakfast! Thanks to the writings of Homer we know in fact that already during the ariston – the first meal of the morning – there was wine on the table: “Eumaeus, serving on the board the roasted meats left over from the evening, hurried to pile the wheat bread in the baskets and to pour into the cup a wine scented with honey.” (Odyssey XVI, 48-50)
Also in Greece the presence of wine on tables was a status symbol, reserved for the wealthier classes due to the complexity and cost of its production. Nonetheless, there were many wine-growing regions; Homer, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, mentions:
· the island of Lemnos, which supplied wine to the warriors engaged in Troy;
· Phrygia, from which came the wine that the Trojans instead consumed;
· Arne, in central Greece, a land “rich in vines.”
Homer also tells in the Odyssey of when Ulysses gets the Cyclops Polyphemus drunk with the wine stolen from the priest Maron, “a red wine sweet as honey”: a wine so strong that it was drunk diluted with twenty parts of water and that, instead, Polyphemus drank without restraint, thus causing his end.
Indeed, the wine produced at that time in the Mediterranean area was often strong and concentrated: due to winemaking and preservation techniques (especially boiling), the wine turned out to be a syrupy substance, very sweet and very alcoholic. It was therefore necessary to dilute it with water and add honey and spices to obtain a more pleasant flavor and make it more enjoyable to drink.
Life Style of the ancient Greeks: wine and symposium.
Wine is the absolute protagonist in one of the main symbols of the “life style” of Ancient Greece: the symposium. If the banquet, the main meal, was focused on eating, the symposium was the heart of “cultural” socialization and it had a more convivial nature, less related to food and more to entertainment, to sharing to which the participants dedicated themselves, accompanied by what we would today call a tasting of good wine and coordinated by a “master of ceremonies”, the symposiarch. He had the task of mixing and diluting the wine, moderating the drinking, ensuring respect for etiquette – how and how much to drink, how to behave and how to entertain the other guests – so that the symposium remained a moment of pleasure and did not degenerate into drunkenness and disorder.
The various entertainments of the symposium could include the recitation of poems, songs, games and discussions on various topics, often philosophical or political in nature, and wine was seen as an element of social aggregation, a means to create bonds and strengthen friendship among the participants.
The word Symposium derives from the Greek symposion, “syn” together and posion “posis” drink, therefore drinking together. And you, with whom do you want to drink?
Let yourself be inspired by the culture of the symposium and choose on ArsWine.it the wine or the bubbles most suitable for your guests. Or a structured red, a bitter or a grappa for your moments of solitary reflection and pleasure.
Until next time! We will discover together the culture of wine in Ancient Rome and its spread throughout Europe...
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Image: Symposium of Plato, author Giovanni Battista Gigola (1796-1841)
Painting on parchment, cm. 69x48, Collection of paintings from the 12th to the 16th century of the Civici Musei d'Arte e Storia di Brescia – Santa Giulia, Museo della città di Brescia (Italy)
The scene of the symposium shows the guests reclining around the table, in the foreground Alcibiades places a crown on Socrates' head, in the background the servants and the colonnade of the hall.
