Wine: The Origins Of One Of The World’s Most Ancient Alcohols (Part I)

Stay in your seats dear readers, because today we will be talking about an alcohol so historical that ancient civilisations such as the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians have painted murals and wrote tales about this fabled alcoholic drink.

Ladies and gentleman, I’m talking about wine (~~which you’ve probably guessed from the title~~)! Historically speaking, wine was always seen as a status symbol of sorts for people of the upper class.

^{Stick with us folks, this is gonna be a long one.}

Poisoned With Delight

While no one knows for sure when the first wine was created, the first recorded account of a ‘wine’ traces all the way back to an ancient Persian fable.

The story involves a princess who lost the favour of her King and felt such great shame, that she decided to commit suicide. To do so, she figured eating some spoiled table grapes would do her in.

_{Visual representation of what happened next. | Source: Business Insider}

Some of you might’ve figured out what happened after she ate those grapes. For better or worse, the princess’ suicide did not put her into an eternal slumber but instead made her feel extremely giddy before passing out.

Overtime, she grew a habit of eating these spoiled grapes as it’d always put her in a pleasant mood. To everyone’s surprise, the king noticed her changes in mood and she regained his favour. Who says drinking (or eating in this case) in excess doesn’t have a happy ending?

A Pharaoh’s Delight

While there were many other cases of accidental wine discoveries (quite a few dating back to the prehistoric age) from different regions of the world, we’re gonna sift through all that and take a closer look at a close relative of the wine we drink today.

Who else but the ancient Egyptians to craft something so magnificent? From The Sphinx to the Great Pyramid of Giza, ancient Egyptians always had a knack for creating. And boy, did they create some banging wine!

Similar to how we use grapes in making wine today, the ancient Egyptians did the same too, only with the addition of several other fruits such as dates, figs, palm and pomegranates to name a few examples.

The Egyptians used trellises to grow and protect their grapes from sunlight, as it was too intense and could potentially ruin the fruit. Once the grapes are ripe for picking, they were immediately taken to a large pressing vat (pictured above on the far left).

Remember how wine used to be made by stepping on grapes? Yeah, the Egyptians did that too and even left the fruits’ seeds and stems in, which added a bitter taste to the resulting ‘wine’.

For added thoroughness, a second pressing of the wine was done in an oblong linen slough which stretched across a solid wooden frame as four men on one side stretched the linen, while a fifth made sure none of the precious wine was spilt.

FUN FACT: Pharaohs were more concerned with the quantity of wine they consumed rather than its quality.

To Europe & Beyond Next

Like I said earlier, the story of wine is extremely long and you’d definitely click away if I continued this article any further than I already have.

But hey, at least now you now you’ve (hopefully) got a basic understanding of where wine originated from (as well as where it’s headed to next).

^{In the meantime, check out some of the wine we have for sale:}