Archaeologists have made a surprising discovery in a pristine Roman mausoleum near the Spanish city of Seville. In the urn of a rich man they found the oldest wine ever discovered in liquid form.
The urn was already recovered in 2019 by a family in Carmona, who came across a sunken mausoleum on the property during work on their home. It was one of six urns made of limestone, sandstone, lead or glass found in burial niches.
One of the urns was filled with a reddish-brown liquid. As researchers from the University of Córdoba have now discovered, the wine was probably poured as a grave offering over the burnt bone remains contained in a glass urn surrounded by a lead mantle 2,000 years ago.
Despite the red color, it was white wine
Chemical analyzes show that the wine is a white wine despite its reddish color. According to the scientists, the mineral salts in the sherry-like wine would indicate production in Montills-Moriles – a wine-producing province in Andalusia.
The lack of syringic acid, which occurs when red wine’s main pigment breaks down, clearly indicates that the wine is white, the researchers said. The fact that the wine found in the urn had a red-brown color is due to the fact that oxidation processes were taking place – also in the bone remains. It is thanks to the very special conditions in the mausoleum that the wine has survived to this day.
Until now, the “Roman wine” in the Historical Museum of the German Palatinate in Speyer was considered the oldest liquid grape wine in the world. The “Speyer wine bottle” dates from the year 325 AD, is 1,700 years old and therefore 300 years younger than the wine now found in Spain.
Source: Krone
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