World’s oldest wine: 2000-year-old vintage discovered with bones inside
A team of archaeologists and chemists from Spain’s University of Cordoba recently discovered what is believed to be the world’s oldest wine. This vintage seems to be around 2000 years old.
If that was not enough, the wine was also found to contain a macabre addition—the skeletal remains of a Roman aristocrat.
Researchers were initially rattled by the fact that a liquid remained inside of the urn for 2,000 years. However, chances of evaporation, leaks, or exposure to the elements seem negligible since the mausoleum remained sealed for many days.
2,000-year-old wine reveals Roman ritual
One of the most popular burial rituals among the Roman elites was interring bones inside an urn with wine. However, this custom was only restricted to men since women consuming alcohol was still considered taboo in those days.
The team of researchers conducted different tests on the liquid’s pH level and chemical composition. They also focused on a set of compounds in wine called polyphenols. In-depth research led them to identify extremely low amounts of seven polyphenols.
Even though there has been some degradation in the wine quality over time, the team of researchers strongly believes that this wine is the oldest one ever found in its original liquid state.
Sunken tomb discovery in Carmona yields 2,000-year-old vintage wine in urns
The Spanish urn was originally recovered in 2019 in a family’s house in Carmona. The researchers had stumbled across a sunken tomb on their property. José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, the lead researcher, shared that the tomb was sunken. It was excavated from the rock, which allowed the tomb to stand still for 2000 years.
The tomb consisted of eight burial niches, six of which held urns made of sandstone, limestone, glass, or even lead. Each urn had the names of the cremated bone remains of one person, and there were two urns with the names Hispane and Senicio.
Polyphenol analysis confirms the vintage wine’s authenticity
While conducting the study, the researchers were primarily looking out for biomarkers – the chemical compounds revealing where a particular substance is. In this case, they searched for polyphenols (as mentioned in the previous paragraph) from wine specifically and completely matched with the wines from Andalucia.
The researchers share that the wine wasn’t toxic in the least, however, it appears to be dark owing to the bone remains. “Analysing the liquid for polyphenols typically present in current wines allowed further insight into the identity of the liquid.
The results confirmed with high certainty that the liquid was wine and, more specifically, white wine, an assumption strengthened by the presence of ethanol at a very low concentration,” said the researchers.
They also shared that the use of wine was pretty common in Roman burial rituals. “Therefore, once the cremated remains were placed in it, the urn must have been filled with wine in a sort of libation ritual in the burial ceremony or as part of the burial rite to help the deceased in their transition to a better world.”
“The results obtained in this work strongly suggest that the reddish liquid in the ash urn was originally wine that decayed with time and that it was about 2000 years old, and hence the oldest wine found to date.”
Source: Interesting Engineering
Proof of Bible story about angels killing 185,000 soldiers in a night is uncovered after 2,700 years
World’s oldest wine: 2000-year-old vintage discovered with bones inside