Roman sherry and Italian claret

Whatever country our wine comes from, we’re largely drinking French wine… with a few exceptions.

What would Roman wine have tasted like? It’s one of the great mysteries of the wine world. Scientists from the University of Cordoba have just published a paper in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports which while not exactly clearing things once and for all, shines a light on links between ancient and modern wines. 

It’s an analysis of a 2,000 year old wine found in 2019 when they excavated an untouched burial chamber at Carmona near Seville. The team of scientists analysed the mineral and plant-based content of the liquid. They concluded that it was a white wine and in terms of mineral and polyphenol content it came closest to Montilla, a sherry-style wine from Andalucia.  It all seems a bit speculative - but does suggest a tantalising unbroken link between sherry and ancient wines.

Plenty of body

Where it  differs strongly from is modern equivalent  is that it contains ashes from a cremated Roman in it. Brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘full-bodied’. Amazingly the scientists involved resisted taking a little sip of this 2,000 year old liquid. 

While there may be an link between modern sherry and classical wines, most great wines have much shallower roots. We tend to think that old world countries with long vine growing histories are continuing ancient traditions but in most cases there’s very little continuity between the wines that are made now and wines that were made in say the 17th century. Of course, there up exceptions here. The great wine growing regions of Germany clearly have an venerable lineage but with a few notable exceptions pretty much every wine growing country’s industry is modelled on France and more specifically Bordeaux.