Scientists Find 6,100-Year-Old Winemaking Operation
Archaeologists found a 6,100-year-old "winemaking operation" in the same Armenian cave where they found a 5,500-year-old shoe. You know what that means? Humans have been making wine for 600 years longer than they have been wearing shoes!
Well, okay, it doesn't actually mean that, at all. But would you be so surprised? Human beings love wine! And they loved it some 6,100 years ago:
Stefan K. Estreicher, a professor at Texas Tech University and author of "Wine: From Neolithic Times to the 21st Century," said the Armenian discovery shows "how important it was to them" to make wine because "they spent a lot of time and effort to build a facility to use only once a year" when grapes were harvested.
The wine was probably used for ritual purposes, as burial sites were seen nearby in the cave. [Excavation co-director] Dr. [Gregory] Areshian said at least eight bodies had been found so far, including a child, a woman, bones of elderly men and, in ceramic vessels, skulls of three adolescents (one still containing brain tissue).
The winery consists of "a vat for fermenting, a press, storage jars, a clay bowl and a drinking cup made from an animal horn." It's the earliest production facility yet found, but it's not the oldest evidence of wine consumption; residue in jars found in northwest Iran suggests that winemaking dates back at least 7,400 years. Even so, its sophistication could mean that earlier winemaking was more elaborate than previously thought.
And there's something kind of nice about that, isn't there? The thought that some seven millennia ago, human beings were doing the same thing you are? Sure, they harvested, fermented and pressed all their own wine, while you just smuggled yours out of the 7-11 under your coat. And they likely drank their red wine as part of an elaborate funeral ritual, while you drink yours as part of your far less elaborate "watching King of Queens reruns" ritual. But the important part is this: 7,000 years ago, as today, human beings were getting tanked on cheap red wine.
[NYT]
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It's good to know they were doing a primitive version of us walking out of a convenience store with bottles of beer in our socks and the bottles angled on the right side so the cashier wouldn't see our teenage asses walking out of the store with a beer they wouldn't sell us.Some things never change... Reply
Theories are that we became agricultural societies firstly to have the raw product for our get high. Reply
Wine is for the people who like fancy shmancy new things, like the iPad and Prius. Beer is for people who like classy old shtuff, like 7,000 year old stuff (or older - as old as the dawn of civilization).... [beeradvocate.com] And if you're curious what it may have tasted like, Dogfish Head makes a couple brews based on the ancient Egyptian and Chinese recipes. ReplyEdited by hilikusopus at 01/11/11 12:29 PM
If they find a 6000 year old cardboard box with wine residue inside, I'll just have to conclude that I haven't really evolved that much at all. Reply
Well of course - they had to invent shoes to go to the store for more wine.
No shoes/no servive." Replytoniperdido promoted this comment
I wonder when mixed drinks were invented. I'm sure some bright stone age guy thought of it first, as a way to get cave girls drunk and easy. Reply
". . . . same Armenian cave where they found a 5,500-year-old shoe."This clearly demonstrates that the art of getting drunk and losing footwear has been in practice for a very long time. Reply
achilleselbow promoted this comment
This isn't really surprising.
First you need the wine bar to go to.
Then you need the little cordovan pumps to wear there. ReplyEdited by DoctorNine at 01/11/11 9:18 AM
If I was alive back then, I would be drunk all the time. I can barely handle all the responsibilities I have today, and I can order anything I want online and have it delivered. Reply
Scientists believe that the wine making operation was suddenly abandoned by the ancient vintners when they discovered that something called "Two Buck Chuck" was available for barter from a local trader named "Joe". ReplyAnotherBob promoted this comment
New evidence suggests ancient civilizations have been making forms of alcohol since the dawn of the neolithic revolution some 10,000 years ago.Also, being a bit of a wino myself; here is a fun fact! Did you know that the earliest form of "corks" was a layer of olive oil floated a top wine to preserve it from oxidation? Reply
I'm not sure it is safe to draw the conclusion that because they coincidentally buried bodies in the same cave they made wine that the wine was used for ceremonial purposes. Maybe it was, I mean I've been to a lot of wakes and funerals where wine was served, but I've also been to a lot of other parties where wine was served and no one was dead. Maybe, just maybe they figured out that wine doesn't spoil as fast in a cave, and hey, we have this cave where we buried some people, let's stuff the wine down there. Or vice-versa. Reply
This is crazy. Next you'll probably try to convince me that people also enjoyed sports or sex 7,000 years ago. Reply
I wish I lived in an area where 7-11's sold alcohol but no, PA has special stores for liquor and special stores to buy beer. Reply
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Two of my favorite subjects wine and history
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Thank you Marla for sending this link to me. I love my pantry filled with canned tomatoes, and I was so bummed when I found out about the bispheno-A issue. Now there is an alternative. Will post when I see them retail.
Happy New Year! I’ve just finished reading final papers from The Idea of Wine class I teach at the University of Puget Sound. This semester several students probed the intersecting worlds of wine and technology. Here, for your consideration, are quick summaries of five papers that explore variations on this very contemporary theme.
There’s an App for That!
Anna wrote about wine Apps. Apps are creatures of the 21st century — application programs that run on smart phones, iPads and similar electronic devices. There are thousands of Apps (the iTunes App Store and Android Market are full of them) and so it is no surprise that there are wine Apps, too.
Anna discovered five basic types of Apps, which she classified as wine journals, wine glossaries, wine-food pairing programs, electronic sommeliers that provide recommendations from lists of wines and wine quizzes and games. SmartCellar is an example of a sommelier-type App — restaurants can use SmartCellar-equipped iPads instead of printed wine lists to help their guests make well-informed wine choices.
Project Genome, a Constellation Brands study, identified six distinctive groups of wine buyers ranging from Overwhelmed to Enthusiast. Anna matched wine Apps with buyer profiles and concluded that there is something for everyone. But are any of them perfect?
No. Anna imaged the perfect wine App for her — given her particular interest in wine today. No single existing App would satisfy all her needs, she concluded, but there soon will be given the pace at which new Apps appear.
QR — the New Face of Wine?
Jack wrote abut QR (Quick Response) codes. QR codes work on the same principle as Universal Product Codes, but whereas UPC codes can store 12 characters of information, QR codes hold much more. You scan a QR using an App on your smart phone and the App uses the embedded information to direct its display. QR codes are everywhere these days, especially in advertisements. Jack reports that some new graves in Japan feature QR codes that, when scanned, show photos of the deceased. QR codes at Japanese tourist sites provide detailed visitor information.
Jack found several applications of QR codes to wine, but he thought that the potential of this technology is not yet fully exploited. QR codes in advertisements or wine labels are a way to give the consumer more information. More advanced technology — already in use in other consumer goods markets — would allow QR Apps to connect with local retailers or to interface with online communities like CellarTracker.
“The more you think about it, the more it’s clear that QR codes have the potential to change everything about wine shopping,” Jack concluded. “They are free, easy to make and will soon have an army of smartphone users” to exploit them. Japan has been using them for 16 years, he said. Time for wine makers and buyers in the U.S. to catch up.
Wine and Social Media
Alyssa and David wrote very different papers about wine and social media. Social media refers to electronic communities that link people in flexible arrangements and allow them to interact and to share information of various sorts. Alyssa examined Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere to find the potential of each to forge durable wine-based interest groups.
David’s paper explored the role of the Internet (and social media) in building or sustaining consumer communities using a very creative approach — comparing wine with beer. Beer has long been marketed as a group thing — a bunch of people get together and have a good time over a few beers. Wine’s marketing is not as consistently focused, David asserted, and the community element not so clearly developed.
This has an effect on how beer and wine build communities on the web. Beer brings community to the Internet, according to David, but wine tries to draw community from the web — an interesting point. “Every day, more and more people are being brought to wine through the Internet,” he concludes, “and lovers of wine are finally finding the community they’ve always wanted.”
Napa Valley versus Silicon Valley
Finally, Ben’s paper looked for linkages between Northern California’s two famous valleys. Not Napa and Sonoma (although that would be an interesting paper) but Napa and Silicon. What can we learn about wine, Ben asked, by looking at microchips? Quite a lot, he discovered.
Ben compared Annalee Saxenian’s account of the development of Silicon Valley in her book Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 with James Lapsley’s history of the Napa Valley wine industry, Bottled Poetry: Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to the Modern Era. He found rather interesting parallels between the two seemingly separate spheres of California life and concluded that Saxenian’s model of high tech regional development explains Napa’s evolution very well.
Going further, however, Ben asserts that both valleys reflect a certain regional spirit. “That this culture of creative destruction permeates as diverse of industries as IT and winemaking demonstrates the influence that a regional consciousness can have over all manners of activities that will within its physical purview.”
“In this sense,” he concludes, “Napa is a genuine reflection of its terroir … Wine is a microcosm of our collective ties to our environment and the various techniques and technologies used to elucidate a certain character from a wine are ultimately efforts at understanding and strengthening this relationship. And in that pause given to us by that perfect glass of wine, we cannot help but feel closer to the world around us.”
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Sorry, I cannot distribute these papers directly, but if you are interested I will try to connect you with the student authors.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
As an apprentice wine-o I am gung-ho on technology assisting me on my path to knowledge. Here are some great new technologies that are out there via the student papers of the Wine Economist.
No more drive through stops for white wash, white coffee hook ups. These folks were a pleasure while it lasted but no more.
Take your drive through caffeine needs to Akamai Coffee just down the Dairy Road in front of Home Depot.
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As the editorial director of EatingWell Magazine and EatingWell.com, it always amazes me to see how a trend starts in a restaurant kitchen, a nutrition journal or a TV show and wends its way out to the general public. For instance, thank Michael Pollan's diatribe against Big Corn in The Omnivore's Dilemma for the backlash against high-fructose corn syrup (trending down) or Sex and the City for the elevation of the cupcake from afterschool parties to red-carpet fare over the past few years. (What You Missed: 5 Top Food Trends of 2010)
Food may not be as trend-ridden as fashion but it's getting close. These days, hot foods, super nutrients and restaurant themes come and go faster than hemlines rise and fall. Here's my quick take on what's trending up, what's trending down and what is so, so over for 2011. (Plus, my favorite trend for 2011: #10.)
1. Super fruits
Trending: Down
Once the darlings of the nutrition world, so-called "super fruits" have become the victims of their own hyper-marketing. Fruits like pomegranates, açaí berries and goji berries can do a lot for you. Pomegranates, in particular, are packed with antioxidants, such as vitamin C, which can help fight colds. But can these fruits (or the myriad juices, supplements and other products made from them) cure cancer or erectile dysfunction? Help you lose weight? Enable you to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Um... no. And last year, the FDA cracked down on POM Wonderful and a handful of other companies making misleading health claims.
Related: 10 Best Superfoods You're Already Eating2. Gluten-free diets
Trending: Still trending up
Experts estimate that 3 million Americans (about 1 percent of the population) have celiac disease, an autoimmune condition that makes gluten--a protein found in wheat, barley and rye--damaging. But millions more Americans have become convinced they feel better if they go gluten-free, even though there is little hard science to support this. (12 More of the Biggest Food & Health Myths Busted) As EatingWell nutrition editor Brierley Wright points out, "When you go gluten-free, you tend to cut out a lot of processed foods that are often also high in calories, fat, sugar and/or salt, so you might initially feel better." The problem: there are now more and more gluten-free processed foods that are no healthier than their counterparts.
Related Recipes: Healthy, Gluten-Free Snacks3. Street food
Trending: Up
First it was hot dogs, then it was tacos, now if you see a small truck or food cart up the block, dishing out something that smells so enticing you have to cross the street, it could well be a Korean barbecue or a fancy French creperie. Three cheers for diversity in our street food!
Related: Korean Street Food Made Simple for Your Grill
Tasty Taco Recipes to Make at Home
Taco Truck Secrets: How to Make the Ultimate Taco4. Omega-3s
Trending: Up. And that's a very good thing.
If you don't yet know what an omega-3 is, you should. These fatty acids have been shown to have some of the broadest and strongest impacts on our health, potentially providing protection from everything from heart disease to depression. Increasingly, they are being added to products ranging from eggs to oils. However, not all omega-3s are equal: the most powerful, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), are found in oily fish, such as sardines and salmon. The third, ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), is found in flaxseed and walnuts.
Related: How Omega-3s Can Help Fight Depression
Do You Need an Omega-3 Supplement?
5 Top Food Sources of Omega-3s
Recipes Packed with Omega-3s5. Cupcakes
Trending: Down
They came. They took America by storm. And we adored them: Cupcakes--so cute, so perfectly portion-controlled, so easy and playful. And now that there are "cupcakeries" on nearly every corner, so over. We still love you, cupcakes. But it's time for something new and from what we are hearing from celebrity chefs around the country, it's pies, and especially fruit pies, in all their deconstructed formats (watch for crisps, grunts, slumps and betties too).
Recipes to Try: Still Love Them? 6 Amazing Cupcakes to Bake
Deep-Dish Apple Pie and More Homemade Pie Recipes6. Meatless meals
Trending: Up
"Meatless" is not just the new vegetarian: it's bigger than that. Meatless Monday--a campaign launched in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with the mission of getting Americans to cut their intake of saturated fat by 15 percent--has taken off. Now cities like San Francisco and public schools in Baltimore, Oakland and New Haven have adopted Meatless Monday, and celebrity chef supporters like Mario Batali are encouraging people to follow their lead. Going meatless one day a week accomplishes the goal of reducing saturated fat by 15 percent and could help reduce our risk of chronic conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke. (Meatless Recipes You Must Try)7. Probiotics
Trending: Up
Probiotics are the "good" bacteria naturally found in fermented foods, such as yogurt, kefir and sauerkraut, and, increasingly, in products with "added" probiotics, such as yogurts and juices. Why the rush to add them? Probiotics have been touted as helping everything from boosting our immune systems to aiding digestion to increasing our resistance to cancer. The jury is still out on many of these claims, though science has shown that eating probiotic-enhanced yogurts might help soothe upset stomachs among people who are on antibiotics and even colicky babies. A further caveat: there are many different strains of probiotics, so it's best to consult your doctor to see what is right for you.
Related Recipes: Healthy Breakfasts with Yogurt8. Growing Your Own
Trending: Up
Local, schmocal: If you want to be on the front lines of the food revolution you'd better become a farmer. That's right, a farmer, not a "gardener." The difference? A farmer grows food--anything from herbs to chickens. Last year, there was a 28 percent increase in gardening for food among 28- to 34-year-olds. Watch for even more young farmers in 2011.
Related: How to Start Your Own Vegetable Garden: An Easy Plan & Map9. Bacon
Trending: Down
Enough already! Yes, bacon may be the most lip-smacking, tastiest treat on the planet. But it doesn't need to be candied, covered in chocolate or added to just about everything from breakfast to dessert. A little can go a long way, and at EatingWell we do use bacon judiciously to flavor dishes. But putting bacon in chocolate truffles? That's downright decadent.
Related: 5 "Bad" Foods You Should Be Eating10. Simpler, More Wholesome Food
Trending: Up. Hurray!
This is my favorite trend of the year: simpler, more "natural" food. Witness the prevalence of new products that tout what's not in them: Häagen Dazs Five ice cream (just five ingredients), FreeBird and Just Bare Chicken and the slew of other hormone- and antibiotic-free, free-range meats. At EatingWell, we've always believed that the best food is homemade, using just a few simple, healthy ingredients.
Get In On the Trend: Our newest cookbook, The Simple Art of EatingWell, is 500 pages of our best tips, techniques and recipes--many of which use fewer than 12 ingredients, cost less than $3 a serving and can be served in 45 minutes or less. That's simple.
What food trend do you think will take off in 2011?
By Lisa Gosselin
Lisa Gosselin is the editorial director of EatingWell Media Group, publisher of the award-winning EatingWell Magazine, books such as EatingWell 500-Calorie Dinners and EatingWell in Season: The Farmers' Market Cookbook, EatingWell.com and EatingWell Custom Publishing. She lives in Vermont, near EatingWell's headquarters and Test Kitchen.
Related Links from EatingWell:
- Buy It Now: The Simple Art of EatingWell
- How to Save $2997 This Year on Food
- EatingWell.com's 10 Most Popular Recipes of 2010
- Get a free trial issue when you subscribe to EatingWell Magazine and sign up for our free e-newsletters!
Follow EatingWell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eatingwell
yes I am still trend crazy right now. I liked this list because of the trending up and trending down marks, letting me know where these fads are right now.
My sister doesnt like her chorizo too greasy. My trick to cutting the grease quotient is to cook it off for a while then add the egg in. It dries it out a bit. Then its make your own, I put out chopped tomato, cucumber, warmed tortillas, and other fillings like fresh cilantro. Every one puts together their own creations.
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I totally cheated using my mix instead of scratch, but in a pinch it works like a charm. I just dump about a cup of frozen berry mix - its got blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry in it. I top it w powdered sugar and butter by my preference, but the kids usually have one serving with maple and one with powdered sugar.
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Chaos with kids! But the food is so ono... Shrimp tempura, chicken katsu, saimin, fried noodles. Their menu has family size share plates too. The kids ate everything! And they are very family friendly. It was only $45 for all.
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