Intoxicating discovery: 3,600-year-old wine cellar found in Galilee
At Middle Bronze Age site, archaeologists find evidence of merrymaking on a grand scale • The largest wine cellar of the ancient east contained the equivalent of 3,000 bottles of wine • Residents of a palace wined and dined over 500 guests at a time.
Archaeologists from the University of Haifa and two American universities have uncovered an ancient wine cellar at Tel Kabri in the Western Galilee.
"This is a very important discovery," said Professor Eric Cline of George Washington University. "As far as we know, this is the largest and most ancient wine cellar in the ancient east."
Forty jugs were found with a total volume of 2,000 liters. This would be the equivalent of a contemporary wine cellar with 3,000 bottles.
The present season of excavations at Tel Kabri, led by Dr. Assaf Yasur-Landau, senior researcher at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa, together with Professor Eric Cline of George Washington University and Dr. Andrew Koh from Brandeis University, has focused on the palace of the city's rulers, which was built about 3,850 years ago, in the Middle Bronze Age. The palace stood for at least 300 years and at one point covered an area of 6,000 square meters (1.5 acres) and was at least two stories high.
In previous seasons, said Dr. Yasur-Landau, the excavators discovered a massive banquet hall with residue from feasts of meat for over 500 people. Each guest enjoyed cuts of meat that weighed more than 500 grams (1.1 pounds). Now, it appears, he and his colleagues have found the massive wine collection that allowed banqueters to wash down all that meat.
Archaeologists found a storage room about of 15 square meters (160 square feet) next to the banquet hall. At first, they uncovered a single jug that was about a meter high. The more they dug, they more jugs they found until they discovered that the room had contained no less than 40 jugs with a total volume of 2,000 liters (530 gallons).
At first, it was not at all clear that the jugs had contained wine. Dr. Koh, an expert in archaeological chemistry and classical studies, analyzed the organic materials covering the front of the jugs. He found traces of tartaric acid and syringic acid -- the basic components of wine. He also found traces of compounds inside the jugs that were popular wine ingredients at the time: resin from the terebinth tree, honey, mint and juniper berries. The ingredients are very similar to those used in an Egyptian medicinal wine for 2,000 years.
"This was not wine made at home by amateurs," said Dr. Koh. "Every single jug contained wine made precisely according to the same recipe in the exact same proportions."
The archaeologists say their next step is to try to reconstruct the recipe and replicate the 3,600-year-old wine.
see:
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13547
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