FIVE-THOUSAND-Year-Old Wine in Egyptian Tomb

Why would you want to drink boggy old sarcophagus juice when there are more palatable tomb beverages to hand?

In the tomb of the First Dynasty Egyptian queen Meret-Neith, archaeologists have uncovered a wealth of grave goods that includes hundreds of large wine jars – some of which still sealed. These funereal riches, they say, bolster the case that she was a person of great significance, maybe even Egypt's first female pharaoh.

Meret-Neith lived some 5,000 years ago, serving as queen of Egypt some time around 2950 BCE. She was, at the very least, queen-consort and regent. She may have been a ruler in her own right – a pharaoh – but archaeologists have been unable to determine her position with certainty. The first queen known to assume the full royal titulary was Sobekneferu, a millennium later.

There is certainly evidence of Meret-Neith's importance in her tomb, at the royal necropolis of Abydos. She was buried amid the final resting places of male pharaohs, and her own tomb was of comparable size and richness. She was likely the most powerful woman of her time.  READ MORE...

Oldest Bottle of Wine in the World

A rare piece of history that would be priced at astronomical price points but with an unappetizing scent is stored in a German historical museum that states that this is the world’s oldest unopened bottle of wine. The bottle is estimated to be from the year 325 and produced by the Romans, which would explain why it was found in Germany.

It is absolutely astonishing how many wars this wine has survived, and what is even more interesting is the bottle that it comes in, which sort of justifies its age as well as origin. But the better question is, how did it manage to go so many years without being opened?

Can it still be consumed?
As it can clearly be seen, the wine has transformed into a more solid form, scientists presume that this is a possible manifestation of ethanol within the wine or maybe a strange ingredient used by the Romans to give flavor to the wine which is now having a bad reaction. 

Besides its terrible appearance, scientists assume that the wine is drinkable ( in other words it won’t kill you) but don’t expect a fruitful taste.

I said an assumption, as the museum won’t allow researchers to open the bottle to analyze the content inside. 

In many cases, most of the wine would have evaporated many years ago, but due to the hermetic seal created by the wax cap as well as the olive oil on top, the wine has managed to “survive” or at least take a very different form.  READ MORE...

Climate Change Alters Wine

Soon after the devastating Glass Fire sparked in California’s Napa Valley in September 2020, wine chemist Anita Oberholster’s inbox was brimming with hundreds of emails from panicked viticulturists. They wanted to know if they could harvest their grapes without a dreaded effect on their wine: the odious ashtray flavor known as smoke taint.

Oberholster, of UC Davis, could only tell them, “Maybe.”

Industry laboratories were slammed with grape samples to test, with wait times of up to six weeks. Growers didn’t know whether it was worth harvesting their crops. About 8 percent of California wine grapes in 2020 were left to rot.

Winemakers are no strangers to the vicissitudes wrought by climate change. Warmer temperatures have been a boon to some in traditionally cooler regions who are rejoicing over riper berries—but devastating to others. Scorching heat waves, wildfires, and other climate-driven calamities have ruined harvests in Europe, North America, Australia, and elsewhere.

And as 2020 showed, climate change can take its toll on grapes without directly destroying them. Wildfires and warmer temperatures can transform the flavor of wine, whose quality and very identity depends on the delicate chemistry of grapes and the conditions they’re grown in. Many growers and winemakers are increasingly concerned that climate change is robbing wines of their defining flavors, even spoiling vintages entirely.

“That’s the big worry,” says Karen MacNeil, a wine expert living in Napa Valley and author of The Wine Bible. “That’s the heartbeat of wine—it’s connected to its place.”

The greatest challenge that climate change brings to winemaking is unpredictability, MacNeil says. Producers used to know which varieties to grow, how to grow them, when to harvest the berries, and how to ferment them to produce a consistent, quality wine—but today, every step is up in the air. This growing recognition is spurring researchers and winemakers to find ways to preserve beloved grape varieties and their unique qualities under the shifting and capricious conditions of today’s warming world.  READ MORE...