History of Wine: From Neolithic Jars to Today

The history of wine goes back at least 8,000 years, to Neolithic villages in the South Caucasus. The oldest chemical evidence of grape wine comes from pottery found in Georgia and dated to about 6000 BC, followed closely by finds in Iran and a whole cave winery in Armenia. From there, wine spread to Egypt, Greece and Rome, was kept alive and refined by medieval monks, nearly died out in Europe in the 1800s, and finally went global. This guide follows that story through the archaeology, and ends with how ancient winemakers made their wine.

A timeline of wine

Date (approx.)	Milestone	Source
c. 6000–5800 BC	Wine residues in Neolithic jars, Georgia	PNAS, 2017
c. 5400–5000 BC	Resinated wine in kitchen jars, Hajji Firuz Tepe, Iran	Penn Museum
c. 4100–4000 BC	Oldest known winery, Areni-1 cave, Armenia	National Geographic
c. 3150 BC	Hundreds of imported wine jars in a royal tomb at Abydos, Egypt	Penn Museum
By c. 2700 BC	Royal wine industry in the Nile Delta	Penn Museum
Late 6th century BC	Established set of wine vessels for the Greek symposium	The Met
Roman era	Wine fermented in buried clay jars (dolia) across the empire	The Conversation
High Middle Ages	Monks help tie Burgundy wines to their vineyard plots	UNESCO (Burgundy Climats)
Mid-1800s	Phylloxera reaches Europe	Britannica
1976	California wins the “Judgment of Paris” tasting	Smithsonian Magazine

The first wine: Georgia, around 6000 BC

In November 2017, a team led by Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum published “Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus” in the journal PNAS. The researchers analyzed pottery fragments from two early farming villages, Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, in the Kvemo Kartli region south of Tbilisi. Residues of tartaric acid, the chemical fingerprint of grapes, showed the jars had held wine. The study calls this the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine in the Near East, at about 6000 to 5800 BC.

The jars were very large and among the earliest pottery made in the region. The authors think they probably served for fermenting, aging and serving all at once. Unlike some later finds, the Georgian residues showed no sign of tree resin or other additives.

The paper also sets the scene for everything that followed. It describes how the domesticated Eurasian grape (Vitis vinifera) became the basis of a “wine culture” across the Near East and Egypt, which later spread to east Asia, across the Mediterranean to Europe and eventually to the New World. Today, the authors note, there are some 8,000 to 10,000 cultivated varieties of wine, raisin and table grapes.

Hajji Firuz Tepe, Iran: wine with resin

The next-oldest chemical evidence comes from Hajji Firuz Tepe, a Neolithic village in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran; the PNAS paper says the Georgian jars precede it by about half a millennium. The Penn Museum’s Expedition Magazine describes the find: in 1968, archaeologist Mary M. Voigt excavated a mud-brick house dated to about 5400 to 5000 BC. In its “kitchen,” six jars, the main one holding about 9 liters (roughly 2.4 US gallons), were set into the earthen floor along one wall. Clay stoppers that fit the jar mouths were found nearby.

Analysis found calcium tartrate and tartaric acid, pointing to grape wine, plus terebinth tree resin in the main jar. In other words, this was a resinated wine. The PNAS paper explains why: pine and terebinth saps were commonly added to wine throughout antiquity as antioxidants, to keep it from turning to vinegar or to cover off-flavors. It adds that the tradition survives today only in Greece as retsina (see our guide to Greek wine). Hajji Firuz lies about 500 km (about 311 miles) from the Georgian sites, and the PNAS authors say it is impossible for now to say which region first discovered wine.

Areni-1, Armenia: the oldest known winery

Making wine in a jar is one thing; a dedicated workspace is another. In January 2011, National Geographic reported on a UCLA-led study of the Areni-1 cave near the village of Areni in Armenia, excavated from 2007 by Gregory Areshian of UCLA and Armenian archaeologist Boris Gasparyan, with Hans Barnard of UCLA leading the study. Pottery there was radiocarbon-dated to about 4100 to 4000 BC.

The team found:

• a shallow clay press, about 1 meter (3.3 feet) long with raised edges;
• a fermentation vat about 60 centimeters (about 2 feet) deep, buried beside it;
• storage jars, drinking cups and withered vines, grape skins and seeds.

The researchers believe grapes were trodden by foot, with the juice draining into the vat to ferment before being stored in jars in the cool, dry cave. Tests found malvidin, a pigment largely responsible for red wine’s color. National Geographic also quoted McGovern, who was not involved, cautioning that the malvidin might have come from other local fruits, such as pomegranates.

Egypt: royal wine and the first labels

Egypt’s earliest royal wine was imported. The Penn Museum’s Expedition Magazine article on Egypt describes Tomb U-j at Abydos, radiocarbon-dated to about 3150 BC, where excavators found 360 jars, and the rooms may once have held as many as 700. Clay analysis showed most of the tested jars came from the southern Levant (greater Palestine), and the residues contained tartaric acid, with tree resin in some jars and sliced figs in others.

The PNAS paper adds that Canaanites introduced viticulture, winemaking and the amphora to Egypt, and that Egyptian wall paintings are the earliest pictures of winemaking anywhere. According to the Penn Museum article, a royal wine industry was established in the Nile Delta by at least the Third Dynasty, about 2700 BC, when winemaking scenes appear on tomb walls. Even earlier, in the first two dynasties, clay seals on jar stoppers marked with signs for “vineyard,” possible place names and the king’s name have been read as a primitive kind of wine label. In our view, that makes the habit of naming a wine after its place and producer almost as old as wine trade itself.

Greece: wine and the symposium

In ancient Greece, wine was at the center of the symposium, a male aristocratic drinking party. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes how, by the late 6th century BC, there was an established set of vessels for it: wine coolers, jugs, drinking cups and mixing bowls, many painted with scenes of drinking parties or of the wine god Dionysos.

The Greeks usually drank their wine diluted. According to the Met, it was mixed with water in a large bowl called a krater, to a strength set by the master of ceremonies, usually three or four parts water to one part wine. In our view, the symposium is the clearest early example of wine as a social ritual rather than just a drink. Greece’s long wine tradition lives on: our guide to Greek wine covers the native grapes and today’s regions.

Rome: wine for an empire

Wine was made all over the Roman world. Writing in The Conversation in April 2024, Dimitri Van Limbergen of Ghent University explained research he co-published in the journal Antiquity: Romans fermented wine in large clay jars called dolia, and cellars with hundreds of them have been found across the Roman world.

The dolia were buried in the ground, which helped control temperature, and their insides were coated with pine-resin pitch to make them watertight. White wines were left for a long time on their skins, seeds and other solids, which produced colors ranging from dark yellow to amber, similar to today’s orange wines. Van Limbergen’s team based its conclusions partly on comparison with Georgian qvevri, which share key features with dolia.

The monasteries and the idea of terroir

Medieval monks left a lasting mark on European wine, and Burgundy shows it best. UNESCO, which added the Climats, terroirs of Burgundy to its World Heritage List in 2015, says that since the High Middle Ages, under the impetus of the Benedictine and Cistercian monastic orders and the Valois Dukes of Burgundy, the identification of a wine with the place it was made has been pushed “to the highest degree” there. The result is a mosaic of small, precisely delimited vineyard plots, 1,247 climats in all, according to UNESCO, which names the Clos de Vougeot château among the traces of the powers that shaped them.

That idea, that place shapes taste, is what wine people call terroir; our terroir guide explains it, and our guide to French wine covers Burgundy’s classification today.

Phylloxera: the crisis of the 1800s

The worst disaster in wine’s history was an insect. Grape phylloxera is a small insect that sucks sap from grapevines, forming galls on the leaves and nodules on the roots that eventually rot the plant. According to Britannica, it was introduced into Europe from the eastern United States in the mid-19th century and within 25 years had almost destroyed the grape and wine industries of France, Italy and Germany. The vineyards were saved by grafting European vines onto rootstocks of vines native to the eastern United States, which resist the pest. In our view, it is one of the great ironies of wine that the cure came from the same place as the problem.

Britannica adds that hybrids and fumigants have also been used against the pest. The replanting reshaped many regions, as our guides to individual grapes and regions note where it matters.

The New World

As the PNAS authors put it, wine culture spread across the Mediterranean to Europe and then to the New World. In South Africa, for example, Wines of South Africa says Constantia is acknowledged as “the cradle of winemaking in South Africa,” on an estate dating back to 1685 whose first owner, Simon van der Stel, made the original Constantia wine in the late 1600s. Our guide to wine regions of the world covers the main New World countries today.

A turning point for New World wine came on May 24, 1976. Smithsonian Magazine recounts how British wine seller and educator Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting in Paris in which nine French experts compared California and French wines. The winners in both categories came from Napa Valley: the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. Bottles of both are now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Magazine says the tasting shifted attention to California and encouraged winemakers there.

Wine today

Wine is now made and drunk worldwide. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), in its overview of 2025 released on May 12, 2026, puts the world vineyard at 7.0 million hectares (about 17.3 million acres), world wine production at an estimated 227 million hectoliters and consumption at about 208 million hectoliters. It also says the share of the world’s wine that is traded internationally remains high, at 46%. In our view, that is the clearest sign of how far wine has traveled from those Neolithic jars.

Ancient winemaking techniques

In our view, the basic steps of winemaking have barely changed in 8,000 years: crush the grapes, let the juice ferment, keep air away. What changed were the tools. Here is what the sources above show about how ancient winemakers worked.

Treading by foot. At Areni-1, the researchers believe grapes were pressed by foot in a shallow clay basin, with the juice running into a vat.

Fermenting in big clay jars. From the Georgian Neolithic to Rome, the main vessel was a large earthenware jar. The PNAS authors think the Georgian jars served for fermentation, aging and serving. At Hajji Firuz the jars were set into the floor, and at Areni the vat was buried.

Qvevri. Georgia’s buried clay jars are still in use. UNESCO describes the qvevri as an egg-shaped earthenware vessel for making, aging and storing wine: pressed grapes go in with their juice, skins, stalks and pips, the jar is sealed and buried, and the wine ferments for five to six months. UNESCO inscribed the method as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013. The PNAS paper notes that the earliest archaeological evidence for qvevri winemaking itself dates to the Iron Age, the 8th to 7th centuries BC.

Amphorae. For storage and trade, smaller jars took over. The PNAS paper says Egyptian paintings show fermentation in medium-sized jars (amphoras) above ground from about 3000 BC, and that the Canaanites brought the amphora to Egypt. The Penn Museum notes the bottle-shaped Abydos jars were well suited to long-distance trade.

Resin as a preservative. The Hajji Firuz wine contained terebinth resin, Roman dolia were sealed with pine pitch, and the PNAS paper explains that resins acted as antioxidants against spoilage.

Mixing and flavoring. Greeks mixed wine with water in a krater; some Egyptian jars held sliced figs, probably for sweetness or flavor, according to the Penn Museum; and Van Limbergen says Romans often added fenugreek.