Who Invented Wine?

Who Invented Wine?

Did wine begin in Iran?

How Wine Created Civilization

Without wine (and beer) there would be no human civilization.

You knew it all along didn’t you?

Why did people decide to clump together into villages and towns and plant rutabagas?

The story taught in schools for the last couple of hundred years is that hunter-gatherers of the human persuasion get tired of running around all over the savanna throwing rocks at rabbits. At best, hunting was hit and miss. Starvation was always hunting alongside you.

The women decided that since they were doing all the gathering, gathering everything in one place was a hell of a lot more efficient and not nearly as tiring as getting lost in the forest looking for a couple of wild carrots.

So, they got together and planted grain. The invention of agriculture is a big moment in human evolution (invented by women I would note). Everything else followed—alcohol (eg. wine), religion, weapons—all the things that make life meaningful.

The trouble is, that’s wrong.

Excavations begun in 1995 at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey have already turned everything on its head and 95% of the place still remains hidden underground. Gobekli Tepe has pushed the beginnings of human civilization back to roughly 12,000 years ago.

“…hunter-gatherers were congregating here in more organized groups than anthropologists ever would have expected at this point in human history… This presents a challenge to the notion that agriculture came first, and religion and organized societies came second.” —from an article by B. Louise in “Simply Anthropology”

Is this the oldest city in the world?

Tartaric acid deposits found during excavations mark specific areas for beer and wine production.

https://turkishculturaltrips.com/package/gobekli-tepe-and-the-beginnings-of-spirituality

The First City and the earliest evidence of alcohol production

The thing is, Gobekli Tepe looks to be more like a big concert hall than a city—a place for neolithic hunters to get together for spiritual rituals, rather than for coffee. It required an enormous amount of coordination and cooperation, more than anyone thought these guys were capable of at the time.

And, what dear friends, is the heart of ritual? Drugs, of course. Alcohol, wild roots and the occasional fungus—that sort of thing. Ancient mankind was looking for the same thing modern mankind is looking for. Connection to the unknown. To the sacred.

They needed beer and wine for the ceremonies, and to have beer and wine, you needed grain and grapes. Hence, the cooperation of tribal groups that might otherwise have been trying to eat each other.

“Chemical analysis on stone basins found at Gobekli Tepe has indicated the possibility of ancient beer production at the site. According to an article published by Cambridge University Press, “the discovery of fermentation and the use of beer in social and religious life could thus have led to the domestication of cereals.’

That’s right friends and neighbors, a bunch of drunks got together and decided to invent agriculture, the second great leap in human evolution. (Fire was the first).

So, religion and ritual drove the cooperation that invented agriculture which then led to all of human civilization, including Facebook.

Wine was created long before countries existed.

But, I’m going to give you the normal answers anyway.

Iran (Persia)

I’ll bet your first guess wasn’t Iran—Persia in the old days.

If I ask you, “Where was wine first made?” most people will usually say France, or maybe Italy. But, the oldest archeological evidence of winemaking and grape growing prior to Gobekli Tepe is from Iran around 6000 B.C. (that would be 8000 years ago).

According to Persian legend, wine was discovered when a young girl, despondent at having been rejected by the King, decided to kill herself by drinking the residue of rotting grapes left on the table. Instead of poisoning her, she awoke the next morning rested and with the realization that life is worth living.

That works for me.

But, if you’re more scientifically oriented:

“Now, chemical analysis on stone basins found at Gobekli Tepe has indicated the possibility of ancient beer production at the site. According to an article published by Cambridge University Press, “the discovery of fermentation and the use of beer in social and religious life could thus have led to the domestication of cereals”…Simply Anthropology

This presents a novel theory that alcohol production fueled the agricultural revolution, while cultic religions made the societal organization for it possible.

—Simply Anthropology,”Gobekli Tepe changed our understanding of the Agricultural Revolution’.

See? I told you so.

Excavations at Gobekli Tepe, one of the five greatest mysteries in the world.

https://knowledgenuts.com/2017/07/09/5-greatest-unsolvable-mysteries-of-the-world/

China

If you’re not up for Iran or Turkey being the birthplace of wine, I would note that the Chinese say they invented wine at about the same time.

The Chinese wine regulations allow one partner of mine to sell Spanish wine, bottled in China with the Statue of Liberty on the label, and call that Chinese wine.

This would suggest caution. I’m not sure how reliable their ancient wine history is given the generally ambiguous nature of their modern wine history.

Crete

Was wine first discovered in Crete, birthplace of Dionysios?

(https://www.winetourism.com/files/2019/11/Crete-min-scaled.jpg)

The Minoans— 3000-1500 B.C. more or less—developed the first formal religious structure built around wine. In their case, Dionysios, the God of Wine, who was also the god of having a really good time with naked women. Or, naked men for that matter.

Some even said that Dionysios was born there.

Crete still has some of the oldest vineyards in the world.

Greece

One of the earliest references to a named wine was by the lyrical poet, Alkman, in the 7th century B.C. Mr. Alkman is very high on a wine from the western foothills of Mount Taygetus in Messenia, which he says is “anthosmias” ---which means it smells like flowers.

Mount Taygetus overlooks Sparta, the famed warrior city of ancient Greece. So, the greatest military force in the world, a culture that killed its own children if they were sick or deformed at birth, a culture that killed baby girls because they were girls, that great military culture, was driven by a nice little wine that smelled like flowers.

Who knew?

Italy: The oldest grape varietal in the world still being cultivated today

Wine wasn’t actually discovered in Italy first, but their Lemnian Wines were the original '“First Growth”—the Romans were the first to name individual vineyards.

Pliny the Elder (23 AD-79 AD) wrote about “First Growth” Roman wine (the most expensive ones) and he designates them by vineyard name, a practice that wouldn’t be common again until just after World War II when Alexis Lichine decided it was a great way to charge more for the same wine.

Pliny mentions Falernian, Alban and Caecuban—not to mention, and who would?, Rhaeticum and Hadrianum along the Po river. I am reliably informed that at that time Rome was putting away over 47 million gallons of wine. A year. That’s some drinking all right.

The Lemnio’ varietal is the oldest grape varietal in the world that is still being cultivated today. It is said to have fragrances of oregano and thyme.

(https://www.vivino.com/US/en/petros-chatzigeorgiou-lemnia-ge-limnia-gi-dry-red/w/2225903)

Of course, as I’m sure you already know, Aristotle also mentions Lemnian wine, which is the same as the modern-day Lemnió varietal. On the off chance you haven’t had a big bottle of Lemnio recently, it is a red wine with fragrances of oregano and thyme. And sometimes flowers.

More importantly, given Aristotle’s personal testimony to downing a few cups of Lemnio, that makes it the oldest varietal still in cultivation.

See, what did I tell you? I don’t know why I don’t have a TV show.

Even Aristotle agrees with me.

Texas

I, on the other hand, personally know that wine was invented in Texas.

That’s because I was born in Texas and I know everything was invented in Texas. Oh sure, today Texas wines are the butt of a lot of dark comedy.

But, there’s exactly the same amount of evidence that wine was invented in Texas as there is that wine was invented anywhere else.

Somebody, somewhere, a really long time ago noticed that if you leave grape juice lying around it will ferment and make your head hurt in the morning. God bless that person, misguided as he or she may have been.

Wine is ultimately a mystery and the invention of wine is a mystery too. Don’t let that slow you down though.

Wine was probably invented in your town too.

Why not? It was a long time ago. What else did they have to do?