King Tut’s Wine Cellar

Why do you buy some labels and not others?

“One day I found myself bouncing along in a smoke filled dining car on a squealing train straining down a narrow gauge track along the Nile River in Egypt. It came to pass on that day, that I had a chance to taste a couple of local Egyptian wines.

They were from the Nile Delta area where Cleopatra used to sip raucous little red wines made with grapes I can’t pronounce and flirt with Marc Anthony on her palace balcony while chuckling about all those Calabrese Montenuovo roots Julius Caesar hauled along in burlap bags while he was conquering all three parts of Gaul. Everyone knew that in a couple of thousand years the whole place would be overrun with Pinot Noir.

I don’t know what Cleopatra called her wines, but the ones I had on the train had names like Nefertiti White and Ramses Red and they pretty much tasted like ditch water. Nonetheless they proved fascinating because in all my many years in the wine business, this was the only time I tasted wine that had actually killed people.”

from The Secret Life of Wine and other mostly true stories from the vineyards (by Larry Leigon)

The earliest known wine labels are from King Tutankhamen’s personal really dark tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Who knew?

The boy King only lived from 1332 B.C.-1323 B.C. until his family whacked him at age 19, but I will say, they gave him a lot of cool stuff to take to the afterlife. Inside there was all manner of gold, jewels, jackals—also a very fancy mummy—no end to the wonders.

I spent most of my time in there trying not to break something. I did not personally find any gold or jewels. Or, jackals. It was however exceedingly dusty, what with it being in the desert and all. I did find lots of sand.

But clearly the most important thing found in the tombs was none of that. It was the twenty-six two-handled clay jars (amphorae) still containing the residue of wine, each jar clearly marked with the year, the area grown, the winemaker and a rating—in short, the very first wine labels.

“To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history." - Clifton Fadiman, N. Y. Times, 8 March 1987

Sadly, I must also report, that these same magnificent jars are the first known evidence of wine critics. They say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession but I know it’s wine critics.

What they carved into the clay pots were the same thing we write on our labels today—except for the bar code:

“Year 4 Wine of the Estate-of Aton, may he be prosperous and healthy, of the Western River, Chief vintner, Men.”

“Year 4 Wine of very good quality of the Estate of Aton of the Western River, Chief Vintner Khay.

“Year 5. Wine of the Estate-of-Tutankhamun-Ruler- of-the-Southern-On “in the Western River. Chief vintner Khaa’’ with a stamp on handle that read: ‘Ruler’s Estate’’.

Aton was killing it back then. King Tut put his own private label on it.

Chief Vintners Men, Khay and Khaa didn’t know what to write on the labels since as far as is known, wine didn’t have labels back then. Apparently, they knew all the way back then that labels sell wine.

But, all the wines today have that same basic information on their labels. What makes a label different? What makes a label cause you to pick up the bottle and buy it?

If you know the answer to that you should be in the wine business. You can get rich. Wines are like movies, you can do everything right and still fail. Great wines sometimes go untasted. Terrible wines sometimes sell millions of cases. Even the most successful wineries in the world release wines with labels that don’t sell.

Fortunately, I shall tell you the secret.

Read The Secret of Wine Labels

“I wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell." -Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

Check out this video on Wine in Ancient Egypt by ancientartpodcast.org or continue reading below!