Muscat of Hamburg

Abstract

The history of wine is rooted in agriculture, cuisine, civilisation, and humanity itself and spans thousands of years. According to archaeological data, wine was produced as early as 8000 to 5000 BC at locations in Armenia, Georgia, and Iran. The domestication of grapevines at Early Bronze Age sites in the Near East, Summer, and Egypt begins about the third millennium BC, according to increasingly convincing archaeological evidence. At archaeological sites in Macedonia, wine production evidence dating back 6,500 years has been discovered. The world's oldest traces of crushed grapes can also be found at these same locations. Wine played a significant role in ancient Egyptian ceremonial life and entered written history there. In China, traces of wild wine from the first and second millennia BC have also been discovered. Many of the major wine-producing regions of Western Europe today were founded with Phoenician and later Roman plantings. Wine, associated in myth with Dionysus/Bacchus, was popular in ancient Greece and Rome. During the Roman Empire, winemaking technology, such as the wine press, advanced significantly. Many grape types and cultivation methods were recognized, and barrels were created for storing and transporting wine.