This site yielded not just pottery shards but also cups, fermentation vats, storage jars, and a wine press. 6Įvidence of the most ancient winery known, believed to be in use as early as 4000 BCE, was found in the Areni-1 cave complex in central Armenia. Though they could not have understood the underlying processes, the winemakers in this region likely were using this natural product to kill unwanted microorganisms, a practice that anticipates the research of Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming that revolutionized medicine almost 7,000 years later. 5 A major challenge for winemakers has always been to keep bacteria from converting the alcohol to vinegar. Terebinth resin was valued for its preservative properties and was used by the Egyptians in the mummification process. Plants from the genus Pistacia appear repeatedly in the Bible. Interestingly, the wine residues found at this Iranian site contained a plant resin from the terebinth tree ( Pistacia terebinthus, Anacardiaceae). It is also becoming increasingly clear … that the world’s first wine culture - one in which viniculture, comprising both viticulture and winemaking, came to dominate the economy, religion, and society as a whole - emerged in this upland area by at least 7000 BCE. In Uncorking the Past (University of California Press, 2009), McGovern writes: Other jars used for wine storage were found at the Hajji Firuz Tepe archaeological site in northwestern Iran and dated to approximately 5000 BCE. McGovern and his colleagues date the production of this wine to around 8000 BCE.
4 The oldest known extant proof of wine production is pottery shards of vats that once held wine and were excavated in the Republic of Georgia by Patrick McGovern, PhD, of the Penn Museum and a leading authority on the production of wine in the ancient world. But archaeological evidence clearly points to Transcaucasia - a region roughly comprising the present-day countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and parts of both Iran and Turkey - as the place where humans began to purposefully and systemically plant grapes and process them into wine. Ancient humans may have been consuming naturally fermented grape juice throughout this range for many thousands of years.
While the fermentation of sugars from many sources can yield an alcoholic drink, this article focuses on wine derived from the common wine grape, Vitis vinifera, whose original range covered much of Eurasia. 2,3 Undoubtedly, a complete list of animals that experience altered states induced by alcohol from fermented fruit would be much longer. Alcohol consumption presumably predates the emergence of Homo sapiens by millions of years, since fermented fruits are known to be consumed by insects like bees, butterflies, and fruit flies, birds like cedar waxwings and robins, and mammals as diverse as bats, chimpanzees, elephants, howler monkeys, and tree shrews. “Catching a buzz” from alcohol from fermented fruits did not originate with the Greco-Roman world of 2,000 years ago and did not even begin with our own species.
However, this is incorrect, both biologically and historically. Many people associate the beginnings of wine culture with the Greeks and Romans of the ancient Mediterranean world. In fact, this author proposes that wine, and the wine grape ( Vitis spp., Vitaceae) from which it is prepared, has played a greater role in the evolution of human society than any plant other than cereal grains. Wine is, for some, the ultimate creative juice. 1 It is not merely a beverage but has served as an analgesic, antiseptic, menstruum (solvent), soporific (sedative), valuable economic commodity, water purifier, social lubricant, and even an inspiration. Wine is not only one of humankind’s most ancient drinks, it also may be the first recorded medicine. “Wine one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest, of all medicines.” S.P.