Domaine de Dionysos
Dionysus' vineyard and a 1700 years old bottle of wine.
The history of wine making stretches back thousands of years. The origins of wine predate written records, and modern archaeology is still uncertain about the details of the first cultivation of wild grapevines. The oldest-known winery was discovered in the "Areni-1" cave in Vayots Dzor in Armenia. Dated to c.4100 BC, the site contained a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups.
Archaeologists also found Vitis vinifera seeds and vines. The fact that winemaking was already so well developed in 4000 BC suggests that the technology probably goes back much earlier.
The earliest archaeological evidence of wine fermentation found has been at sites in Georgia (c.6000 BC), Hajj Firuz in Iran (c.5000 BC), Greece (c.4500 BC), and Sicily (c.4000 BC).
But alas, fragile casing, closures, wars, looters, and may be above all the desire to drink has meant very few liquid antique artefacts have survived.
But one did.
It’s a bottle of Roman wine dating back to 300 AD. Here, in our vineyards it’s in the hands of Dionysus, an ancient Greece God of (a.o) wine-making and pleasure. (His Roman version is Bacchus, perhaps the more popularly known name).
Whilst wine often improves with age it looks likely not to be the case here.
Greek mythology tells us that Dionysus gained the knowledge of vine-growing and wine-making at Mount Olympus. When Hera found out, she cursed him with madness, and he left the mountain to wander the world. He spread his knowledge of wine all over as a result.
In the Roman Empire wine was an integral part of the diet and winemaking became a precise business. Virtually all of the major wine-producing regions of Western Europe today were established during the Roman Imperial era. During the Roman Empire, social norms began to shift as the production of alcohol increased. Further evidence suggests that widespread drunkenness and true alcoholism among the Romans began in the first century BC and reached its height in the first century AD. Viniculture expanded so much that by AD c.92 the emperor Domitian was forced to pass the first wine laws on record, banning the planting of any new vineyards and uprooting half of the vineyards in the provinces in order to increase the production of the necessary but less profitable grain. (The measure was widely ignored)
The ancient bottle here in the hands of Dionysus, is also on display at the Weinmuseum in Speyer (Germany) which cherishes the bottle as part of a captivating narration of the rich 2,000 year history of viniculture in the area surrounding the river Rhine.
