Wine is an ancient beverage. So old that it existed before modern man walked the earth. All that is required to make wine comes from the vineyard. Basically grapes and the native yeast on it’s skin that turns the sugar in the berries to wine. It seems like magic or the hand of the Creator at work.
But man has improved wine through his intervention and the oldest known winery was recently discovered in a cave in Armenia. Amazingly, the same family of wine grapes we use today were at work here, Vitis vinifera, although no specific variety is mentioned. The source link has a cool sidebar graphic showing the prehistory of wine dating back some 9,000 years. Wine and the birth of modern civilization seem to be closely linked as we continue to unravel the story through archaeology. All we need now is a wine loving Indiana Jones.
This is fascinating. I guess I was meant to be in the wine business, not just because my father was in it, but because my ancestors were in it. I wonder what the yield was on those vines.
I bet the yield was pretty high as I don’t think they were doing cluster thinning or trellising back in those days. Thanks for stopping by…