OLDEST WINE FOUND IN LIQUID FORM DISCOVERED IN SPANISH TOMB

In 2019, a family in the southwest of Spain began remodelling their home. They soon came upon a tomb that was a part of the vast cemetery known as the necropolis of the ancient Roman city of Carmo. Because this tomb had been hidden for millennia, thieves had not disturbed it. The early first century CE artefacts that once lay beneath what is now Carmona include a number of incredible discoveries. Researchers have just released data on an urn that held nearly five litres of a reddish-brown liquid. It is, according to laboratory testing, a wine that has been preserved for two millennia. As of right now, this is the oldest liquid wine ever discovered.

But the wine was not by itself. The man's cremated bones and a gold ring bearing the image of Janus, the Roman god of transitions with his two faces turned in opposite directions, were found at the bottom of the urn. Both the wine and the ring were placed inside the funerary urn, probably to make the deceased's transition to the afterlife easier. It is not surprising to discover vessels that may have once held wine among burial furnishings given the religious significance of wine in the ancient Roman world, where it was highly symbolic and closely related to burial rituals, as the scholars wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The wine was originally white wine, according to study authors and University of Cordoba chemists Daniel Cosano and Jose Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, even though it looks reddish now. Scientists used high-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine the wine's mineral salt and polyphenol content. Syringic acid, which would have been present if the liquid had been red wine, was absent.

Decomposition is most likely the cause of the current colour. Furthermore, according to the study's authors, the polyphenols suggest that it would have had a striking resemblance to contemporary Fino wines—a kind of white sherry—made in the area. Despite the wine's two millennia in contact with cremains, Cosano bravely took a sip of the age-old spirit. Regarding Cosano's observations, his colleague Ruiz Arrebola told All That's Interesting, "The flavour is salty, which is not surprising given its chemical composition, specifically its high concentration of potassium and sodium." Ruiz Arrebola declined to partake in the conversation. 

Together with five other funerary urns, each having its own loculi or niche, in the tomb, the glass urn containing the wine was discovered. With three urns containing the remains of women and three containing those of men, this was probably a family tomb. Two different urns bore the names Hispanae and Senicio, but little else is known about the family. More jewellery, ivory sheets that looked like they came from a box burned on a funeral pyre and plates that probably contained food offerings were found near the urns. The equally amazing discovery of a crystal bottle containing patchouli perfume, which brought us closer to comprehending the sensory experience of ancient Roman life, made headlines about the excavation last year.

The oldest known liquid wine, before the Carmona urn, is believed to have been discovered in a bottle that was unearthed in Speyer, Germany, in 1867. In 325 CE, or roughly the vintage of the wine, this area was also a part of the Roman Empire. The Historical Museum of the Palatinate, the bottle's owner, is afraid of what will happen to it if it is exposed to air, so they haven't tested or unsealed it to avoid breaking it.

In contemporary Georgia, wine residue has also been discovered within ceramics dating back 8,000 years. Romans relied on additives like salt to prolong the life of their wine, as it was still a mystery to them. This could be a unique opportunity to study a 2,000-year-old wine still in its original form since the tomb eluded looters and archaeologists are confident the urns remained isolated from flooding or leakage.