Ancient Wine No date can be suggested as the day wine was born, for its discovery was probably accidental. Grape seeds have been discovered in ancient caves and archaeological sites across Persia and Asia Minor. Perhaps the grapes had been fermented before they were enjoyed…? Early civilisations believed that wine was a gift from their Gods. The Egyptians considered Osiris responsible, the Greeks Dionysos, and the Armenians even believed Noah the appropriate benevolent deity. The books of Genesis state the first thing Noah did after finding firm ground was to plant a vineyard and make wine. His next task was to drink it and to experience the consequences of excessive indulgence. However he must have had divine help, for the whole affair only took a day or so. Not even modern technology can work that quickly! The early sources of wine were the Mesopotamian and Caucasian slopes of Asia Minor and there is considerable archaeological evidence of wine around 6000 BC. By 3000 BC funereal wine was being made around the delta of the Nile, where the river’s annual flooding represented a fortuitous natural irrigation system. The earliest recorded mentions of wine are found on the sealing inscriptions of the stoppers on amphorae of pre-Dynastic Egyptian tombs. There is a Persian legend of a neglected beauty in a king’s harem, who distraught by a lack of attention from her lord, wished to kill herself and so took a mouthful of a jar the king had labelled ‘poison’. Unbeknown to her, the king had a particular fondness for grapes, which he resented having to share. He kept them in his ‘poison’ jar knowing no-one would open it. However, the grapes had fermented by this stage, into some sort of wine – the first wine ever. Excited by her discovery, the queen presented the wine to the king, who enjoyed it so much he immediately returned her to favour. The king then ordained that all grapes in future be allowed to ferment! It is also true that the Persians discussed serious matters of state twice – once while sober and once not. Their decisions, we presume, were made as a balance between sensibility and insensibility! Scandals were not unknown in the early days of wine history. The Code of Hamurabi (Babylon) around 2,000 BC stipulated the conditions under which wine could be bought and sold. A seller who gave short measure was thrown head-first into the water. The Greeks and Romans The Greeks took viticulture to southern Italy and Sicily, where the Romans first experienced wine. The Greeks liked old, sweet and watered-down wine, which may have resembled modern Madeira. Whereas the ancient Greeks stored wine in amphorae, the Romans introduced hand-made bottles. As the Roman Empire spread over Europe, they took wine with them through the major river valleys, where it was taken up in local agriculture. Nearly all of the present European wine regions were founded by the Romans in this way, developed by the fifth century AD. They Romans made red, white and amber wines, some of which were quickly matured in a ‘fumarium’ or smoky room, which heated and ‘smoked’ it. The Romans were first responsible for the lore and romance of wine. They, if you like, introduced ‘Winespeak’. They took it seriously, with a scientific approach. Virgil was first to record that “vines love an open hill”. The Middle Ages and The Church Throughout the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ and early middle ages, the Church was the major producer of wine, for firstly sacramental, and then commercial purposes. The Church owned much of Europe’s great vineyards for several centuries. They were responsible for maintaining viticulture through this less organised period of history. Charlemagne himself had vines at Corton in Burgundy, hence the present vineyard name of Corton-Charlemagne. In around 1100 the Cistercians made wine at Clos de Vougeot and in Chablis as well. The English Market The English became the great market for wine. It was they who bought most of the quality product, and organised the system of buying, shipping and blending wine that is still very evident today. English merchants would travel to Bordeaux, bargaining for the new wine with the Bordelais. Wine would then be bought in Europe and distributed throughout England in bulk. Charles II brought back a taste from France for the new Champagne, a vin gris (grey wine), with a slight effervescence. It was not until Dom Perignon discovered how best to use this bottle fermentation in the last years of the seventeenth century that Champagne came to be more or less what we know it as today. When the English and French were at war, the English buyers had to look further afield to buy their wine. They bought from the Mediterranean, Africa and the coasts of Spain and Portugal. Brandy was added to wine to help it survive the long trip to England from around 1715 onwards, introducing the concept of fortified wine. In 1703 William of Orange gave preference to Portuguese wine by putting crippling duties on French wine so that many English refused to drink it. By end of the century port was the most popular wine in England. Phylloxera European wine was nearly wiped out by the vine root-aphid, phylloxera vastatrix, which was taken from North America to Europe in the early 1860s. The vineyards of Bordeaux and Portugal had been attacked by 1868. A disease which evolved together with the very different – and resistant – North American vine species, phylloxera caused the replanting of all of Europe’s vineyards onto resistant American rootstocks. The exercise is believed to have cost France more money than the French Revolution.
