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A 2,000-year-old Roman funerary urn unearthed in southern Spain has been shown to contain the oldest wine ever found in liquid form.
Discovered during home renovations at a property in Carmona in 2019, the contents of the urn were analyzed by a team of scientists from the University of Cordoba in a study published on Monday.
Lead author of the study José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, a professor of organic chemistry at the university, told CNN that the urn contained cremated remains, burnt ivory thought to have come from a funeral pyre and about 4.5 liters (1.2 gallons) of reddish liquid.
“When the archaeologists opened the urn, we almost froze,” he said. “It was very surprising.”
The team then performed a chemical analysis of the liquid and discovered it was wine.
This was a big surprise because wine normally evaporates quickly and is chemically unstable, Ruiz Arrebola said.
“This means it is almost impossible to find what we found,” he said, explaining that the wine was preserved by a hermetic seal that prevented the wine from evaporating, but it is not clear how the seal was formed.
Further chemical analysis allowed the team to identify the liquid as a white wine because it did not contain syringic acid, a substance only present in red wines, Ruiz Arrebola said.
It also has a similar mineral salt composition to the fino wines produced in the region today, he added.
“It’s something unique,” Ruiz Arrebola said. “We were lucky enough to find it and analyze it; it is something you only see once in your life.”
The researchers believe their discovery dethrones the current holder of the record for oldest wine in a liquid state, the Speyer wine bottle, found in Germany, which is believed to be about 1,700 years old. However, the age of the Speyer bottle has not been confirmed by chemical analysis.
The vessel was one of six urns containing remains found in the mausoleum.
The discovery of a gold ring and other valuable artifacts suggests it was built by a family with significant wealth, Ruiz Arrebola said.
However, little else is known about their lives because cremation would have destroyed all DNA, he explained, adding that this means it is impossible to say whether the six people were related.
Ruiz Arrebola now plans to find out which modern local wine he most resembled, although there are hundreds he has to work through.
The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
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