Researchers have identified the oldest wine in the world, a drop of white discovered in an ancient Roman burial site in southern Spain that is about 2,000 years old.
The wine was discovered in 2019 in a Roman mausoleum near Carmona, a town near Seville, which is believed to have been a family tomb dating back to the ancient Roman city of Carmo.
The burial contained six urns with human remains, as well as several objects, according to the research team from the University of Córdoba and the city’s archaeological department.
In what they described as a “quite exceptional and unexpected” discovery, scientists found the remains of a male individual submerged in a “reddish” liquid inside a sealed glass funerary urn.
The analysis of the mineral profile of the liquid and the detection of certain characteristic polyphenols, biomarkers present in all the wines, allowed it to be identified as white wine, according to the results published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The red color of the liquid acquired over time, possibly due to “solid residues contained in the urn,” they note in the article. Identifying the origin of the wine proved very difficult, as there is nothing left to compare it with, according to the researchers.
However, they found similarities in the mineral profile of current white wines produced in Montilla-Moriles, a wine-growing region east of Carmona, and sherry wines.
Although wine was widely used by the Romans in funerary rituals due to its religious significance, the remains of ancient wines known to date were all desiccated, often “absorbed into the walls of the vessels,” according to the researchers, who pointed out that their discovery constitutes “the oldest ancient wine preserved in a liquid state”.
Previously, the oldest known wine was a bottle from Speyer (Germany), discovered in 1867 and believed to have been preserved since the 4th century AD, according to a press release from the University of Córdoba.
The fact that it was the remains of a male individual that were covered in wine is not a coincidence, according to the researchers, who point out that women were long prohibited from tasting wine in Roman times.
