How it all began: the first wine drinkers and ancient civilizations

Uncorked, published in The East Hampton Star

Really Really Old Vintages

I’ve read some interesting theories about how and where wine was first drunk, some more believable than others. We’ve all heard about the caveman who accidentally drops an animal part into his fire, later retrieves it, brushes off the ashes and, in effect, discovers cooking, or at least grilling. At about the same time, his caveman cousin damages a container of grapes, which then naturally ferment, and, voila, we have wine. It’s a cute story, but did cavemen really have jars lining the shelves of their caves?

What seems logical to me is that the sweetness of wild grapes would have appealed to early man, and as anyone can observe even here in East Hampton, wild grapes can be quite prolific. But what is most remarkable in the development of wine is not what man did, but what nature did. Only the grape is an almost perfect do-it-yourself package for making wine, a kit so to speak containing all the necessary ingredients in correct quantities. Other fruits have the potential but not the perfect balance of components. Wine from grapes was inevitable.

Fermentation, the one essential process to achieve wine, is simply a chemical reaction between the microorganisms we call yeast, and sugar. Grapes are loaded with natural sugars in the form of fructose and glucose, and, more than other fruits, encourage the accumulation of yeast on their skins. Once the skins are breached or broken, accidentally by excessive ripening or by deliberate crushing, the yeasts and the sugars go at it, doing what they do best, with the yeast feeding on the sugars until the sugar is exhausted and the yeast spores die. What we have at that point is a primitive version of wine, unrefined, most likely containing skins, stalks, pips and maybe a few other things—but it is by every definition, wine.

Ancient peoples considered it magical, and no wonder. This living substance, bubbling and frothing during its fermentation, delicious and enthralling afterward, was viewed as a gift from the gods, and the intoxication that followed was thought of as transcendent, a revelation of the mystical and sacred.

The Egyptians were not first civilization to make wine—it probably goes back to Mesopotamia in 6000 BC—but they were the earliest to document the production and consumption of wine. The possibility of busybody wine critics notwithstanding, nothing has come down to us about how the wines tasted. But harvest records survive on stone tablets, and pharaohs were buried with bottles of wine.

If the Egyptian upper classes can be said to enjoy their wines, the Greeks were by comparison absolutely zealous and rhapsodic about theirs. Poets and playwrights praised them, artists pictured them on urns and mosaics and murals, and in pagan mythology Dionysus was the god of wine and fertility and, by implication, of having good rowdy time. Wine was consumed at victory feasts, at dinner parties and in the symposiums of Plato. Greek wines were probably sweet, strong and concentrated by our standards, and they were often mixed with seawater, spices and other ingredients to dilute them.

It is perhaps typical of the Romans, who gave their people circuses and extravaganzas, that wine became available to and popular with the masses of people. Pompeii had bars on almost every street. As the empire expanded, so did grape growing and wine production—to Spain, France, Italy and Britain. And the Roman god, Bacchus, succeeded Dionysus. Romans preferred flavor to purity and added fermented fish sauce, garlic, rose petals and mint, among other things, to their wines.

Wine is frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, but the references are secular—to the trade in wine and to the pleasure of drinking wine. It was later with Christianity that a religious link was established and wine became an essential part of the Sacrament, bringing us nearly full circle to the mysticism of the first ancients.