[HN Gopher] Oldest white wine in the world found in a first-cent...
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Oldest white wine in the world found in a first-century tomb in
Spain
Author : The_suffocated
Score : 203 points
Date : 2024-06-20 06:58 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doi.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (doi.org)
| reedf1 wrote:
| Ah an 83, a wonderful vintage.
| sva_ wrote:
| Mhmm vinegar with human remains
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| After they drained the dark sarcophagus fluid, you've got to
| take what you can get.
| xg15 wrote:
| They don't make em like they used to anymore...
| rbanffy wrote:
| If that was a joke, it didn't age well.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Did anybody else expect this to be in a glass bottle? Maybe I've
| had one too many :D
| Detrytus wrote:
| yeah, the image that immediately popped in my mind was a dusted
| green bottle :)
| cubefox wrote:
| The urn in fact contained a large glass flask, which contained
| the wine.
| zipzap0505 wrote:
| Can we drink it?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| At least once!
| brabel wrote:
| If I understand the paper correctly, they poured wine on the
| ashes of the deceased. So, the taste may be a bit funny.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The level of lead in that wine will be out of the charts
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I thought lead was added just before drinking, not for
| storage?
| escapecharacter wrote:
| I would simply drink it immediately
| nkozyra wrote:
| The 1700-year old Speyer wine bottle is thought to be
| drinkable.
| gbin wrote:
| It is mixed with human remains, I'll let you try it first...
| derivagral wrote:
| You say that, but us humans have quite the history!
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-
| history-...
| PedroBatista wrote:
| If you ever drank old-old wine, the taste is.. not what most
| people expect.
|
| It's mostly a watery mix of water and some alchool with a touch
| of old basement smell.
|
| And that's the best wines that had enough sugar to be fermented
| into alchool and not turn into vinegar.
| mandibeet wrote:
| We can and I actually would love to...
| anthk wrote:
| That's vinegar, not wine.
| yojo wrote:
| The PH was 7.5, so it's actually slightly basic! Presumably
| this is related to the organic compounds decaying.
| sligor wrote:
| Not sure if it is geo-related but from western europe it
| redirects to elsevier.com + login
| ricardo81 wrote:
| From the UK, after the elsevier link it goes to
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X2...
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" In fact, in his Natural Historia, Plinio (2010), Pliny
| distinguishes up to four types of wine based on their colour:
| albus (pale white), fulvus (reddish-yellow), sanguineus (blood
| red), and niger (black). The wine acquires these colours after
| the fermentation process and through its storage."_
|
| Direct link if anyone was curious
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59131/pg59131-images.ht...
|
| - _" THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FRUIT-TREES"_
|
| - _" The nature of the vine. Its mode of fructification | The
| nature of the grape, and the cultivation of the vine | Ninety-one
| varieties of the vine | Remarkable facts connected with the
| culture of the vine | The most ancient wines | The nature of
| wines | Fifty kinds of generous wines | Thirty-eight varieties of
| foreign wine | Seven kinds of salted wines | Eighteen varieties
| of sweet wine. Raisin-wine and hepsema | Three varieties of
| second-rate wine | At what period generous wines were first
| commonly made in Italy | The inspection of wine ordered by King
| Romulus | Wines drunk by the ancient Romans | Some remarkable
| facts connected with wine-lofts. The Opimian wine | At what
| period four kinds of wine were first served at table | The uses
| of the wild vine. What juices are naturally the coldest of all |
| Sixty-six varieties of artificial wine | Hydromeli, or melicraton
| | Oxymeli | Twelve kinds of wine with miraculous properties |
| What wines it is not lawful to use in the sacred rites | How must
| is usually prepared | Pitch and resin | Vinegar--lees of wine |
| Wine-vessels--wine-cellars | Drunkenness | Liquors with the
| strength of wine made from water and corn"_
| wwilim wrote:
| I like that a text by Pliny is dated as 2010
| nkozyra wrote:
| I had no idea revisions were made to this but the title about
| the West and corn was a bit of a tipoff.
|
| Unless Pliny got a little sneak preview of Miller Lite back
| then.
| perihelions wrote:
| The translation into English "corn" doesn't refer to maize.
| It's unidiomatic in modern English but _Gutenberg_ only has
| copyright-free translations, and this one is from the 19th
| century.
|
| edit: The word in the source text is frux (fruge)
|
| https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atex
| t...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frux#Latin
| mrob wrote:
| "Corn" traditionally just meant grain. "Corn" meaning
| maize is an abbreviation of "Indian corn", i.e. the grain
| used by Native Americans.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Corn still means wheat, rye, etc. in British English.
| Maize is sweetcorn.
| jon_richards wrote:
| Sweetcorn is a specific maize meant for human
| consumption, distinct from popcorn or feed corn (which is
| also used for ethanol production, becoming "distillers
| grains" that are also fed to livestock).
| brabel wrote:
| Amazing that the tomb has survived all this time, hidden from
| view, through the Roman Empire collapse, the arrival of the
| Vandals and then the Moors, the Reconquest, Middle Ages, the
| World Wars... and then someone doing house renovations just
| happens to stumble upon it.
| harperlee wrote:
| > the World Wars
|
| Nitpick! The Civil War; Spain was not grounds for any of the
| two World Wars so they are not relevant events to be survived.
|
| (I bet you know this, but hey, a little pedantry a day keeps
| the readers engaged)
| hinoki wrote:
| I would also add the Peninsular War to the list of major
| conflicts in Spain.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsular_War
| Medox wrote:
| And through some earthquakes too, although such large heavy
| vases would probably survive 4/5-ish quakes with little
| movement. Maybe even a 6 (?)
| colesantiago wrote:
| I know a person who owns a vast wine collection who would be
| ecstatic in acquiring this one.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I would expect that after all this time the whole liquid content
| would have evaporated.
| hulitu wrote:
| Any somelier here ?
| joenot443 wrote:
| > Therefore, the 2019 finding in a Roman mausoleum in Carmona,
| southern Spain, of an ash urn roughly 2000 years old, containing
| a reddish liquid, was rather exceptional and unexpected. An
| archaeochemical study of the liquid allowed it to be deemed the
| oldest ancient wine conserved in the liquid state.
|
| This is remarkable to me. What a find! Am I alone in being super,
| super surprised that it remained in liquid form this long? Does
| that suggest a very perfect seal on the urn?
| xandrius wrote:
| Well, it could have been somewhat perfect and
| dust/dirt/debris/shrinkage made it perfect.
|
| Or the temperature dropped enough for it to stop evaporating.
| anthk wrote:
| Most basements had (and still have) a cooler termperature
| than the ground one.
|
| In a small village of Salamanca, when the temperature outside
| was around 30C, inside a cellar/basement it would perfectly
| be at 18 or even 16C depending on the corner.
|
| Also, being underground (or semi-underground under a separate
| room from the house) was an advantage on wars against pillage
| or further bombings.
|
| Under the Spanish right-wing dictatorship, a lot of people
| had banned magazines and books well kept under/inside
| basement trunks, relatively hidden from the usual rooms at
| home, as most people would just think of a basement as a room
| to store old junk, ripped clothes, photos, family related
| letters or broken hardware. And a bunch of food, maybe.
|
| Rural Spain's homes were built on thick walls often made from
| stone bricks, they isolated from both heat and cold, which
| can drop below 0 with ease at Winter on non-coastal zones and
| reach up to 40C temps at Summer.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Just three to four meters below ground level the
| temperature is more or less constant <10degC the year
| around. A root cellar with a well-insulated door and roof
| (sawdust is great!) is basically a fridge that requires
| zero power to keep cool.
| Archelaos wrote:
| There is also the Speyer wine bottle dated to about AD 325 and
| 350. It is presumed to be the world's oldest unopened wine
| bottle. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speyer_wine_bottle
| romanhn wrote:
| Not alone, though the part that really got me was the volume -
| the vessel was still filled to the brim with 5 liters of
| liquid. Amazing job with sealing. I assume the glass
| composition of the urn helped prevent any adsorption.
| mikemitchelldev wrote:
| Interesting to know. I had only associated urns with ashes.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| Was it a cask of amontillado next to some bones?
| mandibeet wrote:
| Unlikely that the wine would taste good by modern standards but
| still I wanna try it
| majdalsado wrote:
| With a 0.14mg/L Lead content I'm not sure that you do... (28x
| acceptable amounts)
| The_suffocated wrote:
| As there is only one bottle of this wine in the world, I
| think what matters is the dose but not concentration of Pb.
|
| In addition, the 0.14 mg/L figure reported in the paper is at
| a similar level to the current safety standard. The
| International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), an
| intergovernmental agency comprised of 45 international member
| states, has a current maximum acceptable limit of 0.15 mg/L
| for Pb in wine starting from the 2007 harvest year.
|
| https://www.oiv.int/public/medias/3741/e-code-annex-
| maximum-...
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(page generated 2024-06-20 23:00 UTC)