World’s oldest wine present in 2000-year-old Roman tomb

A reddish liquid present in a 2000-year-old Roman mausoleum in Spain is the oldest identified liquid wine in existence, a chemical evaluation has revealed.

“I was surprised and full of disbelief,” says José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola on the College of Cordoba in Spain. “It seemed impossible that a liquid could have remained in this state for 2000 years.”

Till now, a sealed vessel discovered close to Speyer, Germany, and believed to be about 1700 years outdated, was thought to include the oldest identified wine, however it has by no means been opened.

The Spanish tomb, by accident found in 2019 in Carmona, close to Seville, dates from the first century AD and belonged to a rich household. Eight burial niches, carved in its partitions, held six urns comprised of limestone, sandstone or glass. Half of them contained the cremated stays of girls and the opposite half these of males. Two urns bore the names of the deceased: Hispanae and Senicio.

One of many glass urns, encased in a lead shell, contained bone remnants of a 45-year-old man, a gold ring bearing the picture of the two-faced Roman god Janus, and roughly 5 litres of liquid.

Ruiz Arrebola and his workforce studied the composition of the reddish liquid by varied strategies, together with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. They discovered that it had a pH of seven.5 – far more alkaline than regular for wine, indicating sturdy decay.

Its mineral profile was just like that of recent sherry and fino wines from Spain. It additionally contained seven polyphenols, pure antioxidant compounds, solely present in wine.

The absence of syringic acid, a compound produced when the principle pigment in purple wines decomposes, confirmed its identification as a white wine. The wine was in all probability meant for the deceased to drink on their voyage into the afterlife.

“The discovery of a 2000-year-old liquid presumed to be wine in a Roman urn is rare and significant, providing unique insights into Roman burial practices,” says Davide Tanasi on the College of South Florida. “It demonstrates the continuity between ancient and contemporary wine production.”

Ruiz Arrebola plans to hold out additional checks to determine any stays of microbes equivalent to micro organism or yeasts that could be current within the wine.