In the small southern Spanish town of Carmona, a team from the University of Córdoba has come across a sensation. As NBC News reports, the scientists have discovered what is probably the world’s oldest wine in an ancient mausoleum. They found it in a glass urn that had been there for almost 2,000 years.
Until now, it was assumed that the oldest wine preserved in liquid form was found in a Speyer wine bottle from a Roman grave near the German city of Speyer. It is dated to the years 325 to 350 AD. “However, this assumption has never been confirmed by chemical analyses,” the researchers wrote.
According to analyses published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the Spanish urn was sealed around the first century. The object was only recovered in 2019 after a family discovered a sunken grave during construction work on their house. Last year, the discovery of a 2,000-year-old patchouli fragrance oil in one of the urns made headlines.
“To our great surprise, the liquid was preserved in one of the funerary urns,” said Juan Manuel Román in a university press release about the discovery. The exceptional conservation conditions, “completely intact and well sealed,” allowed the wine to preserve “its natural state” for centuries, the team reports.
Despite its reddish color, the university’s chemical analysis confirmed that the wine must have originally been white. The scientists have not yet been able to determine the origin of the wine, but “the mineral composition of the reddish liquid is comparable to that of today’s sherry wines from Jerez,” the university statement said.
The ancient tomb, which probably belonged to a wealthy family, contained not only the wine but also a gold ring and the ashes of the deceased, according to reports from NBC News.
In the Roman world, wine had great religious significance and was closely linked to burial rituals. “It is no coincidence that the man’s remains were immersed in wine,” the press release states. The consumption of wine in Rome was reserved for men.
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