The Era of Wine

1. Dionysus, God of ecstasy, wine, inebriation.

"Let’s drink, why wait for the lamps?Short is the time. O beloved child, take the large, colourful cups, for the son of Zeus gave men wine to forget sorrows.Pour two pieces of water and one of wine;and fill the cups to the brim: and the one immediately follows the other."

Fragments of Alceus 630 BC.

The Minoan and Mycenaean cultures handed down to the people of Ancient Greece the development of esoteric rituals carried out in the darkness, in the woods, far from the materiality of the city: these rituals converged in the Dionysian cults (then extremized in the goliardic Eleusinian mysteries), practiced to render earthly the deeds of their mythical god of inhibition, the one who was outside of any order and who led individuals, through delirium, to their state of primordial purity. The symbol of ritualistic drunkenness was wine, a gift given to Orestes, son of King Agamemnon, who transmitted to men the art of cultivating the vine and producing its nectar, thanks to the knowledge of the god Dionysus who learned the trade in the Indies. From then on it became the comforting beverage, liberating of the senses and of spiritual elevation.

2. Etruscan amphora

Much of the modern wine culture derives directly from ancient Greek practices; although today’s common vine (vitis vinifera) has much more archaic developments, it was the Greeks who introduced viticulture in Europe, already in the times of Cretan (Minoan) culture, between 2,000 BC and 1,400 BC, probably due to the influence of the Phoenician people, who domesticated vitis vinifera as early as 2,300 BC, in present-day Lebanon. The techniques of harvesting and production of wines were described by the poet Hesiod in the poem The Works and the Days, in which he illustrates the need for work by man and draws up a series of practical advice for agriculture.

The Etruscans greatly perfected the techniques used by the Greeks and carried out the first great export activity of wine after the Phoenician, spreading its aroma beyond the Mediterranean basin. Thanks to numerous written works we have knowledge of a technical advance in Roman times, with the insertion of biological concepts and systems of cultivation still valid today.

However in the West the first traces of vine cultivation have been found in the Caucasian territories (Armenia), while the first written references date back to the Sumerian era in Mesopotamia (Epic of Gilgamesh) and to Ancient Egypt, in North Africa.

3.harvest scenes in a painting in the Tomb of Nakht, Luxor, Egypt (circa 1,500-1,300 B.C.)

It is accepted by scholars that vinification preceded viticulture, that is, the cultivation of vines: the oldest archaeological remains of wild vine seeds are attested to 11,000 years ago, before the first neolithic agricultural practices began. This means that probably the collecting peoples of the time had already had the opportunity to taste a low alcohol content wine formed in the bottom of their collection containers, as the fermentation of grape juice begins a few days later.

In 2007, in the province of Vayots Dzor in Armenia, an archaeological site was discovered inside a cave that revealed the presence of clay pots containing grape seeds. The discovery intrigued the scientific community and in 2010 the National Geographic Society funded a new excavation campaign that brought to light a series of rooms, which constituted the environment of a real cellar, the width of which is 700 m²: they found a grape press, a clay tank for fermentation that can hold up to 54 liters, several amphorae and jars, and ceramic shards. The seeds found are the same as the present vitis vinifera and the site was dated to 4,100 BC, becoming the oldest wine house in the West.From the size and complexity of the site it can be deduced an intensive processing, which probably supplied the product to the surrounding villages; moreover, a vinification already so developed in that period suggests that the domestication of vineyards had to have far more remote origins.

4. Gullin, China.

Between 7,000 and 5,000 BC in the central Chinese plain, near the Yellow River, inhabited a population settled permanently, which practiced handmade terracotta, used polished stone tools, and experimented with pig farming and the cultivation of millet and rice, as a supplement to hunting and fishing: the Peiligang culture.

In 1962, excavations by Chinese archaeologist Zhu Zhi uncovered Jiahu, one of the most important sites related to the Peiligang culture and considered one of its first human settlements. Among the many incredible finds emerged pottery pottery shards (among the oldest in the world). Extensive chemical analysis has shown that the inhabitants of Jiahu used a process of sucrose of alcohol from rice, honey and hawthorn. The scientific director of the Laboratory of Biomolecular Archaeology in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), Patrick Edward Mcgovern, found in Jiahu samples containing traces of a strong fermented beverage made of wild grapes mixed with Chinese hawthorn, rice and honey, making Chinese grapes the first in history to be domesticated with the intent of turning them in wine.