Trends in the Late Antique Wine Trade

The Mediterranean world has been and continues to be one with a more than passing interest in the creation and consumption of wine. Wine is intimately bound up with Mediterranean culture, a component from the earliest times.

Recent research has indicated what it is suggested were the leading or most marketed types of wine in the Late Antique world from the fourth to the seventh centuries. 

Two regions emerge, both in the Eastern Mediterranean. For quality wines the vinophile looked to Gaza, for the mass market to Cilicia and Cyprus.

The research is st out in Two Wines Dominated the Market in Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean: Gaza and Cilician

An exceptionally early vintage

The Independent reports on the discovery during an excavation in Spain in 2019 of what is now the earliest known surviving sample of wine.

The article can be seen at 'Surprising' discovery in world’s oldest wine reveals ancient Roman ritual

The cremated human remains and gold ring definitely suggest that this was not the usual Sangria of first century Hispania. One for the road to ….wherever, perhaps?