Traces of ancient Canaanite wine analyzed

[Robin Garr]

This is amazing ... they're looking at a Canaanite society that existed maybe 700 years before King David and likely around the same time as or even before the first settlements that grew into what came to be known as ancient Israel.

Tastes like retsina? Who knew!

In Ruins of Palace, a Wine With Hints of Cinnamon and Top Notes of Antiquity
The oldest and largest ancient wine cellar has been unearthed in northern Israel. Archeologists say the site is 3,700 years old.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The New York Times
November 22, 2013

Near the banquet hall where rulers of a Middle Bronze Age city-state and their guests feasted, a team of American and Israeli researchers broke through to a storage room holding the remains of 40 large ceramic jars. The vessels were broken, their liquid contents long since vanished — but not without a trace.

A chemical analysis of residues left in the three-foot-tall jars detected organic traces of acids that are common components of all wine, as well as ingredients popular in ancient winemaking. These included honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins used as a preservative. The recipe was similar to medicinal wines used for 2,000 years in ancient Egypt and probably tasted something like retsina or other resinous Greek wines today.

So the archaeologists who have been exploring the Canaanite site, known as Tel Kabri, announced on Friday that they had found one of civilization’s oldest and largest wine cellars. The storage room held the equivalent of about 3,000 bottles of red and white wines, they said — and they suspected that this was not the palace’s only wine cellar.

Full story in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/scien ... il0=y&_r=0

These included honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins used as a preservative.

Obviously not anti-flavor wine elitists.

The resins were presumably from the pine sap or similar substance used to make the ceramic jars watertight, no? I'd assume that that was SOP until the advent of glazed ceramics or wooden cooperage.

Mark Lipton

So what does this finding say to today's "natural" wine proponents?

Thomas said:

So what does this finding say to today's "natural" wine proponents?

But that stuff was all "natural."

"Chemicals" had not been invented yet.

Ask Tom Hill. He studied this wine from the very start.

[James Roscoe]

I say we tell Lou they found his stash!

I say we tell Lou they found his stash!

One's stash is not found in liquid form. Jeez James, get with 21first century language usage.

[James Roscoe]

I say we tell Lou they found his stash!

One's stash is not found in liquid form. Jeez James, get with 21first century language usage.

Mr. Kessler, with all due respect, I don't think this was a 21st century stash, Besides, I believe that the marijuana plant is indigenous to the Americas and would therefore not have been available to this particular find in the Levant. My apologies if my mixed metaphors confused you. I still want to know if this was your wine?