2,000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in Roman Tomb

Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

In 2017, we featured the world’s oldest unopened bottle of wine here at Open Culture. Found in Speyer, Germany, in 1867, it dates back to 350 AD, making it a truly respectable vintage, but it was recently surpassed by a bottle first discovered five years ago in Carmona, near Seville, Spain. “At the bottom of a shaft found during construction,” the excavation team “discovered a sealed burial chamber from the early first century AD—untouched for 2,000 years,” writes Lars Fischer of Scientific American. Inside was “a glass urn, enclosed in a lead casing, brimming with a reddish liquid” that was only recently determined to be wine—and therefore some three centuries older than the bottle from Speyer.

You can read about the relevant research in a new article published in the journal Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports by chemist José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola and his team. “The wine from Carmona was no longer drinkable and had never been intended for that purpose,” writes Fischer.

“Experts found bone remains and a gold ring at the bottom of the glass vessel. The burial chamber was the final resting place of the dead, who were cremated according to Roman custom.” It was only through chemical analysis that scientists were finally able to determine that the liquid was in fact wine, and thus gather evidence that the arrangement was an elaborate farewell for a Roman oenophile.

Although the funeral ritual “involved two men and two women,” CBS News reports, the remains in the wine were from only one of the men. That makes sense, since “women in ancient Rome were forbidden from drinking wine, according to research.” What a difference two millennia make: Today, the cultural image is a bit more feminine, especially when it comes to white wine, which, despite having “taken on a reddish hue,” has been chemically identified as the liquid dug up in Carmona. With summer in full swing, this story may inspire us to beat the heat by popping a bottle of our favorite Chardonnay, Riesling, or Pinot Grigio in the fridge—a convenience unimaginable even for the wealthiest, wine-loving citizens of the Roman Empire.

via Scientific American

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The oldest unopened wine bottle in the world (around 350 AD)

Based in Seoul, Colin MANDrshall writes and broadcaststs about cities, language and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books about cities and the book The Stateless City: A Walking Tour of 21st Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @colinmANDrshall or on Facebook.