A seminar was held on Wednesday in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the archaeological excavation of ancient liquor-making sites in Xinghua Village.
The sites are famous in China’s history for its liquor production facilities.
The celebration was organized by the Fenjiu Wine Group, a liquor company headquartered in Xinghua Village, the Archaeological Society of China, and the Shanxi provincial bureau of cultural heritage.
Led by famous archaeologist Zhang Zhongpei, an archaeology team started excavating historical ruins in central Shanxi province 30 years ago.
Among some other major discoveries, some pre-historical vases with small mouths and pointed bases discovered in an excavation site in the Xinghua Village in 1982 are believed to be among the earliest water and wine vessels in human history. Read more.
ELAZIG, Turkey — There are easier places to make wine than the spectacular, desolate landscapes of southeast Turkey, but DNA analysis suggests it is here that Stone Age farmers first domesticated the wine grape.
Today Turkey is home to archaeological sites as well as vineyards of ancient grape varieties like Bogazkere and Okuzgozu, which drew the curiosity of the Swiss botanist and grape DNA sleuth Jose Vouillamoz, for the clues they may offer to the origin of European wine.
Together with the biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern, Vouillamoz has spent nearly a decade studying the world’s cultivated and wild vines.
“We wanted to collect samples from wild and cultivated grape vines from the Near East — that means southeastern Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia — to see in which place the wild grape was, genetically speaking, linked the closest to the cultivated variety.” Read more.
Beijing, July 6 (IANS) Liquid found inside an ancient wine vessel unearthed in China’s Shaanxi province is believed to be the earliest wine in the country’s history, dating back to the time of the West Zhou Dynasty (1046 B.C.-771 B.C.), archaeologists said.
The wine vessel made of bronze was found in a tomb of a noble man of the dynasty in Shigushan Mountain in Baoji city, Xinhua reported.
The liquid is likely the oldest wine discovered in China, said Liu Jun, director of the Baoji Archaeology Institute.
The vessel, one of the six discovered inside the tomb, could be heard to contain a liquid when it was shaken, Liu said.
However, the cover of the vessel was “pretty solid” and there was no appropriate tools to open it at the excavation site. So the liquid remains a mystery, he said. Read more.
A Bannockburn winemaking company has pleaded guilty to damaging an archaeological site in Gibbston while building a tasting facility.
Remarkable Wines Ltd, owned by winemaker Richard Guthrey, pleaded guilty to contravening or failing to comply with a condition of an archaeological authority in Queenstown District Court today.
The court heard that Remarkable Wines, which had resource consent to build a wine tasting facility on land next to the historic Gibbston Hotel site, did not adhere to three conditions when it was undertaking earthworks in May last year.
The old Gibbston Hotel site on Coal Pit Road is a recorded archaeological site under the New Zealand Archaelogical Association. The remains of the hotel, built in the 1860s and burnt down in 1912, are next door to the land worked on by Remarkable Wines. Read more.
Wine flowed freely from ancient Greece during its golden age, but new work suggests nuts and various herbs were also in demand.
With the help of DNA analysis, scientists are getting a present-day look at centuries-old trade in the Mediterranean. Such studies may help debunk some long-held assumptions, namely that the bulk of Greek commerce revolved around wine.
During the fifth through third centuries B.C., the Mediterranean and Black seas were major thoroughfares for ships loaded with thousands of curvaceous jars known as amphorae, thought from their shape to contain a drink made from fermented grape juice.
But only recently have researchers peered through the lens of 21st century genetics to identify the actual remnants of the jars’ long-disappeared cargo. Analyses of DNA fragments from the interior of nine jars from Mediterranean shipwrecks now reveal various combinations of olive, ginger, walnut and herbs in the rosemary family, along with the expected grapes. Read more.
A Western Han dynasty ancient tomb group was accidentally found at a construction site in Puyang city, China’s Henan province, on April 10.
After a period of protective excavation of the tomb group, archaeologists found more than 230 ancient tombs in all, and a total of more than 600 cultural relics have been unearthed so far.
During the excavation, archaeologists discovered an airtight copper pot covered in rust. They found the pot had a liquid weighing about half a kilogram in it.
On May 10, the Beijing Mass Spectrum Center, which is a joint accrediting body based on the Chinese Academy of Science, identified the liquid in the ancient pot as wine. Therefore, the pot of wine unearthed from Puyang has been certified as the oldest wine found in China.
Our image of ancient Roman drinking—bloated patricians, slurry sophists and jezebels washing down coarse wine from jars—is only part of the story. Ample evidence exists that ancient Rome had a fine wine culture much like today’s, with prestige regions, cult wines and a love of bold, rich styles meant to be aged for decades. Within this rarefied wine community, one wine stood above the rest, the toast of poets and senators alike.
The origins of Falernian wine are the stuff of legend. The story goes that an old Roman farmer (that would be Falernus) eked a humble existence from the soil of Mt. Massico, about 30 miles north of Naples, when one day he was visited by Bacchus in disguise. Falernus prepared him a simple meal, and in gratitude for the hospitality, the god of wine caused the cups at the table to fill. When a hungover Falernus awoke the next day, Bacchus was gone, and the whole mountain was blanketed with healthy vines. Read more.
