Researchers have identified the world’s oldest wine, a drop of white, discovered in an ancient Roman burial site in southern Spain, which was found to be some 2,000 years old.
The wine was discovered in 2019 in a Roman mausoleum near Carmona, a town near Seville, believed to have been a family tomb dating back to the ancient Roman city of Carmo.
According to the research team from the University of Cordóba and the town’s archaeological department, the burial site contained six urns holding human remains as well as several objects.
In what they described as a rather exceptional and unexpected discovery, the scientists found the remains of a male individual submerged in a reddish liquid inside a sealed glass funerary urn.
Analysis of the liquid’s mineral profile and the detection of certain characteristic polyphenols, biomarkers found in every wine, allowed it to be identified as white wine.
This is according to the findings published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The liquid’s red colour was acquired over time, possibly due to solid residues contained in the urn, they said in the paper.
The researchers said that identifying the wine’s origins proved most difficult as there’s nothing left to compare it to.
However, they found similarities in the mineral profile of modern-day white wines produced in Montilla-Moriles, a wine-growing region east of Carmona, and sherry wines from Jerez.
While the Romans extensively used wine for burial rituals due to its religious significance, the remnants of ancient wines reported so far have all been dried up, often absorbed on vessel walls.
The researchers said their findings constitute the oldest ancient wine conserved in the liquid state.
Previously, the oldest wine ever recorded was a bottle from Speyer, Germany, discovered in 1867 and believed to have been preserved since the fourth century, according to a University of Cordóba statement.
The fact that it was the remains of a male individual that were covered in wine is no coincidence.
The researchers point out that women were long forbidden from tasting wine during Roman times.
