Wine residue found in Neolithic earthware from Georgia shows that viticulture has existed for more then 8.000 years. That is about one thousand years more than previously believed.
Until now, it was thought that wine appeared between 5400 and 5000 BC. The earliest evidence of grape-fermented-based alcoholic beverages had been found in the Zagros mountains in Iran. However, an archaeological report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proved we were off by about 10 centuries: viticulture was actually born eight thousand years ago, in fertile valleys of the south Caucasus Mountains.
The discovery was made on two archaeological excavation sites where many Neolithic 8.100 to 6.600 years old pieces of pottery were unearthed. Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora are both located some 50 km (31 miles) away from Georgian capital city, Tbilissi. Excavations were jointly led by the Toronto university (Canada) and the National Georgian Museum. The pieces of pottery they found were then sent to the university of Pnsylvania, to be studied by a team of chemists.
“Talk about aging of wine. Here we have an 8,000-year-old vintage that we’ve identified,” said Patrick McGovern, a molecular archaeologist from the University of Pennsylvania. 8 jugs were found to contain tartaric acid residue – that indicates the presence of wine. Succinic, malic and citric acid residue was also found in the jugs. They also are related to viticulture.
“This indicates that Georgia is quite surely at the very heart of the birthplace of vine domestication and viticulture”, says Patrice This, research director at the French National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA).
“We believe that this site could be the oldest vestige of human domestication of vines in Eurasia dedicated to wine production”, adds Stephen Batiuk, of the archaeology department of the university of Toronto. We already knew that the country was home to more than 500 different wine cépages, which indicates that a variety of vines has been domesticated and cross-bred in the area for a very long time.
There are more than 10 000 types of domesticated grapes used to produce table wine in the world today. Most of the usual cépages existing today can be traced back to this region of the world: cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, Syrah, merlot, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Riesling…
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