The History of Wine: From Ancient Cellars to Three for Two Malbec

If you think the history of viticulture began when your local supermarket started putting three for two stickers on Malbec, you are, I am afraid, several thousand years late.

Wine has been getting humanity into trouble, bringing people together, funding empires, accompanying religious ceremonies, inspiring philosophers and occasionally providing rulers with something to drink while making decisions of questionable quality for considerably longer than any of us have had loyalty cards.

The history of wine is also considerably stranger than the average bottle label would have you believe.

Long before Burgundy had a classification system, before Bordeaux had châteaux, before Champagne became synonymous with celebrations and before someone decided that a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc needed to be described as “crisp and vibrant”, people were fermenting grapes in the Caucasus, storing wine in enormous clay vessels and apparently taking the stuff seriously enough to put it in tombs.

So pour yourself something appropriate, resist the urge to check the restaurant markup just for five minutes, and let us take a slightly boozy trip through the history of wine.

The Ancient Innovators: Where Wine History Really Begins

Trying to identify the precise moment humanity first made wine is rather like trying to identify the first person who decided that cheese and crackers would be better together. Archaeology can get us remarkably close, but there is always a prehistoric person somewhere who may have beaten the official record by a few centuries and neglected to leave the paperwork.

What we do know is that wine production is astonishingly ancient.

Georgia: The Ancient Wine Superpower

Georgia has one of the strongest claims to being the birthplace of wine.

Archaeological and chemical evidence from the South Caucasus indicates that grape wine was being made in what is now Georgia roughly 8,000 years ago. Earlier estimates commonly placed the beginnings of Georgian winemaking around 6000 BC, but archaeological discoveries have pushed the evidence further back.

That makes Georgia an extraordinarily important part of wine history, rather than simply the country you vaguely remember seeing on a wine list and wondering whether you have been pronouncing it correctly.

The traditional Georgian method of making wine in large underground or partially buried clay vessels known as qvevri has survived for thousands of years. The technique remains an important part of Georgian wine culture today.

So, if anyone tells you wine is a modern lifestyle product invented by Instagram, you can politely inform them that Georgians were already fermenting grapes thousands of years before the first influencer discovered beige linen.

China and the Earliest Fermented Drinks

China also has an extraordinary place in the history of fermented drinks.

At the Neolithic site of Jiahu in Henan, archaeological evidence indicates that people were making a fermented beverage around the seventh millennium BC using a mixture that included rice, honey, fruit and other ingredients.

It is important to distinguish this from modern grape wine. The Jiahu beverage was not simply an ancient bottle of Chardonnay waiting patiently for someone to discover it. It was a complex fermented drink made from several ingredients.

But the discovery demonstrates something equally fascinating: humans were experimenting with fermentation remarkably early in settled agricultural societies.

In other words, once people discovered they could turn useful crops into something alcoholic, they apparently decided this was an excellent idea and carried on.

The World's Ancient Wine Cellars Were Serious Business

One of the most extraordinary archaeological wine discoveries came from Tel Kabri in northern Israel.

Archaeologists uncovered a 3,700 year old Canaanite wine cellar containing the remains of around 40 large storage jars. Researchers estimated that the cellar could have held as much as 2,000 litres of wine, making it one of the oldest and largest wine cellars of its kind discovered in the ancient Near East.

And this was not simply grape juice left in a cupboard.

Residue analysis suggested that the ancient wine had been flavoured with ingredients including honey, mint, cinnamon, juniper and resin.

So, thousands of years ago, people were already experimenting with wine recipes.

Frankly, some things never change.

Tutankhamun Had Wine for the Afterlife

The ancient Egyptians took their wine seriously enough to include it in royal burials.

When Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered, archaeologists found wine jars associated with his burial. The Metropolitan Museum of Art records that around two dozen wine jars were placed in the young king's tomb, with the containers labelled with information including vintage and place of origin.

That is quite the cellar policy.

Imagine dying and discovering that your funeral arrangements include an extensive wine list.

Unfortunately for Tutankhamun, the wine itself did not survive. The liquid had disappeared over the centuries, leaving the vessels and their inscriptions behind.

Still, the principle was sound.

If you are going to the afterlife, you might as well have provisions.

The Romans, the Greeks and the Great Expansion of Wine

Wine moved around the ancient world because people moved around the ancient world.

Trade, migration, conquest and colonisation carried vines, winemaking knowledge and wine itself across the Mediterranean and further into Europe.

The Phoenicians played a major role in Mediterranean trade, helping spread viticulture and wine culture throughout their trading networks. The Greeks had an enormous cultural relationship with wine, while the Romans later expanded grape cultivation across much of their empire.

And the Romans did not merely drink wine.

They industrialised it.

Large scale vineyards, wine production, storage and trade became important parts of the Roman economy. Wine was produced in considerable quantities and transported across the empire, helping establish viticulture in areas that would later become some of Europe's most famous wine regions.

Plato Had Thoughts About Drinking

The ancient Greeks also gave us one of the earliest examples of people taking the social consequences of alcohol rather seriously.

Plato discussed the role of wine and age in The Laws, arguing that young people should be restricted from drinking while older people could benefit from wine's supposed ability to encourage cheerfulness and ease social interaction.

So the basic argument was essentially:

Young people probably should not be trusted with wine. Older people, meanwhile, have earned it.

Hard to argue with that logic.

Rome Takes Viticulture Across Europe

Roman influence helped spread viticulture across much of Western Europe.

Modern wine regions from France to Germany and beyond have histories that reach back to the Roman period, although the exact dates and routes of early vineyard expansion vary from region to region.

In Champagne, for example, evidence indicates that domestic vines existed in the region as early as the first century AD. The region's official history records the presence of vines during the Gallo Roman period, long before Champagne became the sparkling wine powerhouse we know today.

So, no, the Romans did not invent modern Champagne.

But they were certainly involved in getting vines into the neighbourhood.

Wine Storage: From Clay Jars to Bottles

One of the great challenges in wine history has always been the same problem we still have today:

Where do you put the stuff?

Ancient winemakers used large ceramic vessels, amphorae and other containers. Different civilisations developed different approaches to fermentation, storage and transport.

The Gauls are often associated with the development and wider use of wooden barrels, which eventually became fundamental to the storage and transportation of wine in Europe.

Barrels had several advantages over large ceramic vessels. They were lighter, easier to transport and much more practical for moving wine around over long distances.

Eventually, the humble barrel became one of the defining pieces of equipment in European wine production.

And then, much later, someone decided that wine should also be stored in glass bottles.

This turned out to be both brilliant and extremely expensive, because suddenly your cellar could contain hundreds of breakable glass objects that everyone had to carry around very carefully.

The Speyer Wine Bottle

One of the strangest surviving examples of ancient wine storage is the famous Speyer wine bottle, discovered in Germany in 1867.

The bottle dates to around AD 325 and is commonly described as one of the world's oldest surviving wine bottles.

It is currently preserved as an archaeological curiosity rather than a tempting addition to your dinner table.

And this is important.

Although it contains a mysterious liquid, nobody sensible is recommending that you open it.

For one thing, the contents are almost certainly not going to taste like a mature Riesling.

For another, if you are the person who opens the 1,700 year old archaeological wine bottle because you “just wanted to see what it was like”, you have probably forfeited your right to be invited anywhere ever again.

Chianti Was Once White

Here is a piece of wine history that tends to make modern drinkers do a double take.

Chianti was once a white wine.

Historical records indicate that Chianti was being produced as a white wine by the late fourteenth century. The official Chianti historical record notes a document from 1398 referring to Chianti as a white wine, quite unlike the red wine associated with the name today.

The evolution of Chianti is a useful reminder that wine styles are not permanent laws of nature.

Grape varieties change. Winemaking changes. Consumer tastes change. Regulations change. Climate changes.

And occasionally an entire wine region apparently decides that it would rather be red.

The Modern Age: Wine Goes Global

As European exploration, trade and colonisation expanded, grapevines travelled with people.

Wine production eventually took root in places far beyond the traditional European centres, including South Africa, Australia, the Americas and New Zealand.

South Africa's wine history dates back to the seventeenth century. In 1659, Jan van Riebeeck recorded the first wine made at the Cape settlement, establishing the foundations for what would become one of the world's most important wine industries.

Today, South Africa produces everything from Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc to Pinotage and serious traditional method sparkling wine.

The point is that modern wine is genuinely global.

The old European wine powers still matter enormously, but the idea that great wine can only come from a handful of traditional regions has long since been demolished.

Ginger Wine: Britain Joins the Party

Britain may not be the first country that springs to mind when you think of ancient wine production, which is understandable given that our climate occasionally struggles to ripen a tomato.

But Britain developed its own wine traditions and wine based drinks over time.

Ginger wine became particularly associated with Britain, with commercial production emerging in the eighteenth century.

And while ginger wine is not technically a grape wine in the traditional sense, it deserves a mention because it represents another important part of Britain's long relationship with fortified and flavoured alcoholic drinks.

It also gives us the pleasure of saying “ginger wine” in a way that makes you sound like someone who owns a country house, even if you are actually drinking it in your kitchen while waiting for the washing machine to finish.

The Judgment of Paris: When California Ruined Everyone's Afternoon

Fast forward to 24 May 1976.

A young British wine merchant named Steven Spurrier organised a blind tasting in Paris featuring leading wines from California alongside some of France's most prestigious examples.

The results were astonishing.

Californian Chardonnay took the top spot among the whites, while a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon came out ahead of the Bordeaux wines in the red tasting.

The tasting became known as the Judgment of Paris and is widely regarded as one of the defining moments in modern wine history. Decanter describes it as a watershed event that helped put California wine firmly on the international map.

It was a particularly awkward day for the assumption that the best wine had to come from France.

The lesson was rather important.

Blind tasting does not care about reputation.

It does not care how expensive the label is.

It does not care whether the bottle comes from an estate whose name has been spoken reverently by generations of wine writers.

It just sits there in the glass.

And sometimes it wins.

King Charles III and the Wine Powered Aston Martin

Now for a distinctly British chapter.

King Charles III has long been associated with environmental causes, and his Aston Martin DB6 Volante was converted to run on biofuel derived partly from waste products of the wine and cheese industries.

Aston Martin itself notes that the future King acquired the DB6 Volante in 1967 and that the car was later converted to run on by-products of the wine and cheese industries.

Which is a sentence that feels almost too British to be true.

Most people put wine in a glass.

Charles put some of it in an Aston Martin.

We cannot say the man lacks imagination.

Wine Law Was Apparently Quite Serious

Long before modern wine regulation, governments were already attempting to control the production and sale of alcoholic drinks.

The Code of Hammurabi, one of the best known ancient legal codes, contains provisions concerning tavern keepers and the sale of alcoholic drinks.

One particularly memorable provision states that a tavern keeper who cheated customers through dishonest measurement could face being thrown into the water.

So, technically, the idea of holding wine sellers accountable for what they charge and how they serve it is not new.

The enforcement mechanism was simply somewhat more enthusiastic.

We are not suggesting modern restaurants should adopt Hammurabi's approach to pricing.

We are merely suggesting that if your glass of house wine suddenly appears to have been measured by someone with a surprisingly optimistic interpretation of 175ml, perhaps asking a polite question is preferable to throwing anyone into the Thames.

What the History of Wine Actually Teaches Us

The fascinating thing about the history of wine is how little it has ever stood still.

Wine has changed because people changed.

Different civilisations developed different fermentation techniques. Traders moved grapes and wine across continents. Empires expanded viticulture. Religious institutions preserved winemaking knowledge. Producers experimented with new varieties. Consumers changed their tastes.

And every generation seems to discover that there is a slightly different way of making, storing, transporting and drinking wine.

Even the idea of what constitutes a “great” wine has changed dramatically.

For centuries, European wine regions dominated the world's prestige conversation. Then the New World began producing serious wines. California stunned France in 1976. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and Argentina developed global reputations. England has now become a serious producer of sparkling wine.

The wine map keeps getting bigger.

The SavvySipper Golden Rule

If there is one thing thousands of years of wine history should teach us, it is this:

Never assume the obvious choice is the only choice.

The people who made wine in Georgia 8,000 years ago were not following a trend.

The Canaanites were not checking Instagram reviews before filling their cellar.

The Romans did not have a Decanter subscription.

Plato certainly did not have a wine app.

And nobody at the Judgment of Paris in 1976 expected California to upset the French establishment in quite the way it did.

Wine has always rewarded curiosity.

That is still true today.

So when you are standing in front of a wine list, do not simply choose the bottle you recognise. Look at the grape. Look at the region. Look at the producer. Look at the vintage. And, yes, look at the price.

There is no shame in checking what a bottle costs elsewhere. In fact, understanding the market is one of the simplest ways to become a more confident wine buyer.

For deeper historical reading, Jancis Robinson's history of wine is an excellent place to continue exploring the subject, while Decanter remains a useful resource for modern wine history, regions and producers.

The Savvy Verdict

Wine is not merely a drink.

It is agriculture, trade, technology, culture, economics, politics, religion and occasionally an excuse for someone to put an enormous number on a restaurant wine list.

It has survived empires, wars, changing fashions, prohibition, phylloxera and countless attempts by people to tell us that one particular grape is suddenly “the next big thing”.

It has travelled from ancient Georgian clay vessels to Roman amphorae, from European monasteries to New World vineyards, from Bordeaux cellars to Californian tasting rooms and, eventually, into the fuel tank of a British royal Aston Martin.

Not bad for fermented grape juice.

So the next time you open a bottle, spare a thought for the thousands of years of experimentation, trade and questionable decision making that made it possible.

And if you are ordering that bottle in a restaurant, let SavvySipper help you do the modern bit.

Check the wine. Check the price. Know what you are drinking.

Humanity has had 8,000 years to perfect wine.

We might as well spend thirty seconds making sure we are not overpaying for it.

Cheers to that.