The Story of Wine: 8,000 Years in a Glass

The story starts where most great stories do: with someone noticing something remarkable. Around 6,000 BCE, in the fertile valleys of what is now the Republic of Georgia, Neolithic farmers were doing something no one had done before in quite this way. They were making wine. We know this because in 2017, an international team of archaeologists published a landmark study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reporting the discovery of tartaric acid residues (a chemical fingerprint of grapes) inside pottery fragments from two village sites, Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, about 50 kilometers south of modern Tbilisi. The pottery was radiocarbon-dated to approximately 5,800 BCE. These large-capacity jars, decorated on the outside with grape motifs and surrounded by ample grape pollen in the soil, almost certainly served as combination fermentation, aging, and storage vessels. Georgia today still counts more than 500 indigenous grape varieties, a sign that people have been selecting and cultivating vines there for a very long time. The winemaking tradition that began in these round mud-brick houses never stopped. The same egg-shaped clay vessels, called qvevri, are still buried in the earth and used by Georgian winemakers today, a direct thread running from the Neolithic to the present.

• Chemical analysis identified tartaric acid, the key molecular fingerprint of grape wine, in pottery shards dated to 5,800 BCE at sites near Tbilisi.
• The qvevri, a large egg-shaped clay vessel used for fermentation and aging, is both the world's oldest winemaking technology and a living Georgian tradition.
• Georgia has over 500 indigenous grape varieties, suggesting millennia of continuous cultivation and selection.
• Prior to the Georgia discovery, the oldest confirmed wine evidence came from Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran, dated to about 5,400–5,000 BCE.

Wine did not stay in the Caucasus for long. Over millennia, viticulture spread westward and southward, carried by trade, conquest, and the simple human desire to share something extraordinary. In ancient Egypt, wine became a commodity of enormous prestige. Wealthy Egyptians stocked their tombs with amphoras of wine for the afterlife, and the records they kept are so precise that some scholars describe Egyptian wine jars as the world's first labeled bottles, noting the vintage year, the estate, and sometimes even the winemaker's name. Wine in Egypt was largely the province of royalty and priests; ordinary Egyptians drank beer. It was the Phoenicians and then the Greeks who truly democratized the vine across the Mediterranean. From around 1,000 BCE, Phoenician traders carried vines and wine knowledge along sea routes, and by 600 BCE, Greek colonists were planting vineyards from the Black Sea to southern France. The Greeks worshipped Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, and made wine central to their symposia, the philosophical drinking gatherings that produced some of Western civilization's most consequential ideas. Wine was almost always diluted with water in ancient Greece; drinking it undiluted was considered the mark of a barbarian. The Romans inherited the Greek vine, then industrialized it.

• Ancient Egyptian wine jars were often inscribed with details about the vintage, origin, and winemaker, functioning as early wine labels.
• Phoenician traders and Greek colonists spread viticulture along Mediterranean sea routes from roughly 1,000 to 600 BCE.
• The Greeks worshipped Dionysus as the god of wine; their symposia, ritualized drinking parties, were central to intellectual and political life.
• Greek wine was routinely diluted with water before drinking; consuming wine undiluted was considered uncivilized.

The Roman Empire did for wine what the industrial revolution would later do for cotton: it scaled it up massively, systematized it, and shipped it everywhere. Roman viticulture was both a science and a business. Writers like Pliny the Elder, Virgil, and Columella wrote extensively about vine cultivation, soil types, pruning techniques, and aging. Roman soldiers planted vineyards wherever they marched, and virtually all of the major wine-producing regions of Western Europe today were established during the Roman Imperial era. The Mosel, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rioja, the Rhone Valley: all were producing wine under Roman direction. The Romans were also excellent technologists. They discovered that burning sulfur candles inside empty wine vessels kept them fresh and free from a vinegar smell, an early use of sulfur dioxide that remains the most common wine preservative in the world today. They experimented with aging wine in both sealed amphoras and in oak barrels, borrowed from Celtic peoples in Gaul. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE did not destroy the vine; it transferred its stewardship to a new institution that would prove just as durable and far more meticulous.

• Roman agricultural writers including Pliny the Elder and Columella documented viticulture in detail, covering soil selection, pruning, and wine aging.
• The Romans established wine regions across Western Europe that still exist today, including Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Mosel.
• Romans discovered that burning sulfur inside empty wine vessels preserved them, an early use of sulfur dioxide still fundamental to modern winemaking.
• Oak barrels for wine storage were adopted by the Romans from Celtic peoples in Gaul, replacing earlier clay amphoras for bulk transport.

When Rome fell, the Church stepped in. For nearly a thousand years, European monasteries were the primary custodians of viticultural knowledge, the keepers of the vine during the long centuries between Roman civilization and the Renaissance. The reason was practical: wine was essential to the Catholic Mass, and monasteries needed a reliable supply. But the monks brought something beyond necessity: they brought patience, literacy, and obsessive record-keeping. The Benedictines and, especially, the Cistercians, who founded their order in 1098 at Cîteaux in Burgundy, became extraordinary winemakers. The Cistercians believed in the rule of ora et labora, pray and work, and they applied scientific rigor to their vineyards. They famously tasted the soils of Burgundy to map which plots produced the finest grapes, a proto-terroir investigation that laid the conceptual foundation for Burgundy's entire appellation system. Their masterwork was the Clos de Vougeot, a walled vineyard assembled from donations and purchases between the 12th and early 14th centuries, completed in its final form by 1336. At 50 hectares, it remains the largest single Grand Cru vineyard in the Côte de Nuits. When the French Revolution swept monastic estates into state hands in the 1790s, Burgundy's vineyard maps were already drawn. The monks had done their work.

• Cistercian monks, founded at Cîteaux in Burgundy in 1098, assembled the Clos de Vougeot vineyard between the 12th and early 14th centuries, completing the surrounding wall by 1336.
• Monastic winemakers are credited with early terroir investigations in Burgundy, tasting soils to identify which plots produced the finest wines.
• The requirement of wine for Catholic Mass gave monasteries a permanent institutional motivation to master viticulture across Europe.
• The French Revolution confiscated Church vineyards in the 1790s and sold them to private buyers, fragmenting estates like Clos de Vougeot that the monks had carefully unified.

Two inventions in the 17th century transformed wine from a commodity into a collectible: the strong glass bottle and the cork stopper. For most of its history, wine was shipped and stored in clay amphoras or wooden barrels. You bought it young and drank it fast, because there was no reliable way to seal it. Cork had been used as a stopper in Roman times but disappeared with the empire; it re-emerged in the 17th century just as glassmakers in England were learning to make bottles strong enough to hold pressure. The French Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon, cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers in Champagne from 1668, became famous for his innovations in winemaking, including the use of cork closures fastened with hemp string, though historians note that cork closures were already in use before him. What is certain is that by the late 17th century, the combination of strong glass and cork changed everything: wine could now age in a sealed bottle for years or decades, developing complexity that barrel-stored wine never could. This discovery coincided with the Age of Exploration, and wine traveled with European ships to the Americas, South Africa, Australia, and beyond. Portuguese ships carried fortified wines to preserve them on long voyages, and the resulting styles, Port, Madeira, and Sherry, became enormously influential. New World viticulture was born, though it would take centuries to fully mature.

• Dom Pierre Perignon, Benedictine monk and cellar master at Hautvillers Abbey from 1668, pioneered the use of cork closures and advanced blending techniques in Champagne.
• Cork disappeared from widespread use with the fall of Rome and re-emerged in the 17th century alongside improvements in glass bottle manufacturing.
• The sealed glass bottle allowed wine to age for years or decades, enabling the development of complexity not possible in barrels or amphoras.
• European explorers carried wine and vines to the Americas, South Africa, and Australia, planting the seeds of what would become today's New World wine industry.

By the 19th century, Bordeaux had become the undisputed center of the fine wine world, and in 1855 it produced what remains the most famous wine classification in history. The occasion was Napoleon III's Exposition Universelle de Paris, a grand world's fair at which the Emperor wanted France's finest wines on display. The Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce delegated the task to wine brokers, the commercial gatekeepers of the trade, who ranked estates not by tasting but by their historical trading prices and long-established reputations. They completed the list in just two weeks. The result was 58 chateaux divided into five tiers, from Premier Cru (First Growth) down to Cinquieme Cru (Fifth Growth), with four estates at the very top: Lafite, Latour, Margaux, and Haut-Brion. All the red wines except Haut-Brion came from the Médoc peninsula. The classification was both audacious and remarkably durable. In nearly 170 years, it has been officially amended only twice: Chateau Cantemerle was added as a Fifth Growth in 1856 (having apparently been left off by accident), and in 1973, after decades of relentless lobbying by Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothschild was elevated from Second Growth to First Growth, the only such reclassification in the system's history. The 1855 classification did something profound: it turned wine into a luxury hierarchy with permanent, almost feudal rankings. That model of prestige, where a wine's address matters as much as its content, defined fine wine for the next 120 years.

• The 1855 Bordeaux Classification was created in approximately two weeks by wine brokers using historical trading prices rather than blind tastings.
• The original list ranked 58 chateaux into five tiers, with all red wines except Chateau Haut-Brion coming from the Médoc peninsula.
• The classification has been formally amended only twice since 1855: with the addition of Cantemerle in 1856 and the elevation of Mouton Rothschild to First Growth in 1973.
• The 1855 system established a model of fixed hierarchical prestige that shaped global fine wine perception for more than a century.

The great catastrophe came from America, and it was almost invisible. In the 1860s, French vineyard owners began noticing something troubling: perfectly healthy vines were mysteriously dying. The leaves wilted, production collapsed, and the disease seemed to spread in all directions with no apparent cause. By the time scientists identified the culprit in 1868, a microscopic root-feeding louse called phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae), native to eastern North America, it had already spread through major wine regions. The insect had hitchhiked to Europe on American vine samples brought over by Victorian botanists. European Vitis vinifera vines, which had evolved with no exposure to this pest, had no defense against it. By the late 19th century, estimates suggest between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards had been destroyed. France alone lost nearly 2.5 million hectares of vines. The French government, desperate for a solution, offered a substantial cash prize to anyone who could stop the devastation. The eventual answer was elegant and ironic: graft European vines onto the American rootstocks that were naturally resistant to the louse. The result is that nearly every bottle of wine made today in Europe comes from a vine whose roots are American. Regions like Chile, parts of Australia, and some areas of Santorini in Greece escaped the epidemic, and their ungrafted vines remain among the most historically interesting in the world.

• Phylloxera, a microscopic North American root louse, arrived in France in the 1860s and ultimately destroyed an estimated two-thirds to nine-tenths of all European vineyards.
• The pest was inadvertently introduced to Europe on American vine specimens brought over by Victorian-era botanists and collectors.
• The solution, grafting European Vitis vinifera vines onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstocks, means nearly all wine produced in Europe today grows on American roots.
• Some regions, including Chile, parts of Australia, and Santorini in Greece, escaped phylloxera and still grow ungrafted vines on their own roots.

For most of the 20th century, the wine world operated on a simple assumption: the finest wine came from France, and everything else was secondary. On May 24, 1976, that assumption died in a hotel ballroom in Paris. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant running a shop and wine school in Paris, organized a blind tasting to celebrate the American Bicentennial. He pitted California Cabernet Sauvignons against top Bordeaux reds, and California Chardonnays against premier and grand cru white Burgundies. The nine judges were all French, and all supremely qualified. When the scores were tallied, a 1973 Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena topped the white flight, and a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley placed first among the reds, beating Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion. The only reporter present was George Taber of Time magazine, and his story sent shockwaves around the world. The Judgment of Paris, as it became known, did not just put California on the map; it proved that great wine could be made anywhere with the right climate, soil, and ambition. In the decades that followed, quality wine production expanded globally, to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and Chile. Today, wine is made on every inhabited continent. The story that started in a Neolithic village in Georgia is, by any measure, still being written.

• On May 24, 1976, at the Judgment of Paris, California wines placed first in both the red and white categories in a blind tasting judged by an all-French panel.
• Stag's Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon topped the red flight, beating Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Haut-Brion.
• The only reporter present was George Taber of Time magazine; the French press largely ignored the story, but it spread worldwide through Time's coverage.
• Bottles of Chateau Montelena and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars like those that won the tasting are now part of the collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.