Related Links The wine time-line On the migration of wine The Greek Vitis Database		On the Origins of Wine It is widely believed that winemaking began in the Neolithic Period (8500-4000 BC). The first evidence of pottery, an important precondition to the vinification and storage of wine, is dated around 6000 BC. The wild grape, or Vitis vinifera, is native to coastal areas of Asia minor, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and much of the Mediterranean, including Greece. The earliest evidence of the existence of wine is located at an archaeological site east of Mesopotamia. In the mid-1990s, Mary Voigt, an anthropologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, analyzed residue from clay jars in a dwelling from the Hajji Firuz site in the Zagros mountains of what is now northern Iran. In this residue she found traces of salts from tartaric acid and resin from the Terebinth tree. Tartaric acid in significant quantities exists in natural form mainly in grapes. Tree resin is long known to have been used as a preservative and/or sealant for wine vessels. Charcoal on the site had previously been carbon-dated to 5000-5400 BC. Although this is not definitive proof as to the location of proto-viniculture, the concentration of archaeological evidence, including written references, inclines many scholars to favor the idea that winemaking started in Caucasia, then spread to Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece and, from Greece, westward. A wine jar from the Hajji Firuz site believed to have contained wine. Photo courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology web site, "The Origins and Ancient History of Wine". There will never be sufficient information to establish with surety the origins of winemaking. With a dearth of absolute empirical data to settle the issue, the subject has become a trap for writers of various nationalities seeking to promote their commercial interests or express their national pride. Some—though not many—Greeks have fallen victim to this temptation at the expense, it should be said, of the promotion of aspects of Greece's contribution to world viniculture that are 1) far more significant and 2) part of a legacy of resources that will be advantageous in Greece's attempt to forge a new reputation in the increasingly competitive international market. Any discussion of Greece's historical role in winemaking should focus on these other aspects. In attempting to document the history of wine in Greece, the historian. like the archaeologist, must try to piece together fragments. While cultural and aesthetic references from ancient to modern times abound, there are large gaps in our knowledge. Between unaccounted epochs and a lack of continuity in the technical and botanical nomenclature, much remains a mystery. Because the Greek concept through the ages encompasses so many politically distinct peoples in so many different regions at so many different times, there is also the problem of maintaining a coherent time line in the face of shifting political geography. In concluding each chapter of his 1990 survey of the Greek wine industry The Wines of Greece with a section entitled 'Classical Reflections', author Miles Lambert-Gocs dealt elegantly with this problem. Since each wine region is the subject of its own chapter, historical references are tied to textual references, be they geographical, ambelographical, aesthetic, cultural or political. Historical references also appear throughout the text, providing insight, context and bases for comparison between past and present themes and speculation surrounding the origins of current traditions. The ongoing genetic analysis of her many cultivars will likely contribute greatly to the understanding of Greece's historical role in the evolution of Western viticulture. The ability to identify ties, including parentage, between Greek and other cultivars will enable historians to fill in some gaps in the record concerning the flow of trade between Greek and other cultures. These threads, both continuous and detached, which have woven their way in and out again through the country's winemaking history, create a legitimate and exciting fabric in which to clothe the corpus of Greece's wine industry today. The gaps between the islands of knowledge provided by the written record can be filled in with oceans of speculation, or they can be connected, like dots, with imperfect–but accurate–assumptions based on the migratory trails that surviving cultivar lines reveal in their genetic structure. In sophisticated markets with inquisitive buyers in which the Cultivar is king, this story, which is only now unfolding, is more fascinating, germane and immediate than discussions concerning unsustained past achievements of dubious public relations value to Greece's new wine industry. The work of those, in Greece and abroad, who are painstakingly applying the pieces of this genetic puzzle are performing a service of great benefit to Greece, for they will, at times, bring attention to the extraordinary wealth of resources still present in Greece's collective vineyard. That attention can only contribute to curiosity about the expression of that wealth in a modern vinicultural context.