An extraordinary discovery: an urn containing the oldest wine in the world was found inside a 2000 year old tomb
Not exactly a drink you could toast with, but certainly a great discovery: a team of archaeologists has officially found the oldest wine in the world, inside a tomb carved into the rock, in Spain. The way in which this Guinness wine was found is truly peculiar, because even the tomb where it was hidden was unknown: it was not even suspected that it was there.
Returning to wine, its discovery has officially undermined the record of that found in 1867 in Speyer (Germany) and not only that: it has also made it less reliable, because while that of Speyer is found inside a bottle that is not never been opened and therefore it is only presumed that it is wine, the Spanish mixture was found inside an urn and all the checks were immediately carried out analyzes that led to the confirmation.
The discovery of Carmona
Of course, the analyzes were not immediate. The urn, in fact, was found in 2019. At the time a family of Carmona, an Andalusian municipality in the province of Seville, decided to do structural work on the house where he had lived for a very long time. The works went very in depth, until arriving at a sort of mysterious submerged room.
Noticing the structure, clearly modified and shaped by man, the homeowners immediately realized they had made an archaeological discovery and contacted the superintendence. From there, a series of excavation works began entrusted to archaeologists, historians and experts from theUniversity of Córdoba. The scholars immediately confirmed that it was a very ancient tomb and after a very short time they found a series of objects and furnishings, including the urn.
The opening of the urn
As a study published in Science Direct explains in detail, once the finds were brought to the laboratory the team of archaeologists (made up of Daniel Cosano, Dolores Esquivel, Fernando Lafont, José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola and led by Professor Juan Manuel Roman) worked to open the urn, believing he would find human ashes. Instead, the surprise: the container contained a reddish-brown liquid apparently dense and full-bodied.
The smell suggested that it was alcoholic, but further investigations were needed to find out more: «We looked for biomarkers – said the organic chemist José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola – which are chemical compounds that unambiguously say what a particular substance is and we have found seven wine polyphenols. We compared these polyphenols with those of the wines from this part of Andalusia: they corresponded.”
But that’s not all, because by investigating the scientists they also discovered that, originally, that brown liquid was none other than a white wine: this was demonstrated by the lack of syringic acid, which is formed when the main pigment of red wines decomposes.
Why can’t you taste it?
It might seem like a silly question, yet many have asked why wine is not “tastable”. The answer is less obvious than it seems, as the scientists involved in the study revealed at The Guardian: «If you think it’s because he’s too old or because he’s toxic, no. It is not toxic: we have carried out the microbiological analyzes – said the chief archaeologist Juan Manuel Román – but I would have some qualms about it».
How come? «Because this wine has spent 2,000 years contact with the cremated body of a dead Roman. The liquid is a little cloudy due to the bone remains. I guess you could filter it and taste it but… I’d rather someone else do it.”
