Archaeologists have unearthed what may be one of the world’s oldest and largest wine cellar — a 3,700-year-old store room that held 2,000 litres of strong, sweet wine — in Israel.
The cellar, containing forty intact jars, each of which would have held fifty litres of wine, was discovered in the ruined palace of a sprawling Canaanite city in northern Israel, called Tel Kabri. The site dates to about 1,700 BC and isn’t far from many of Israel’s modern-day wineries.
“This is a hugely significant discovery — it’s a wine cellar that, to our knowledge, is largely unmatched in age and size,” said Eric Cline chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern languages and Civilisations at The George Washington University.
Andrew Koh, assistant professor of classical studies at Brandeis University, US, analysed the jar fragments using organic residue analysis. He found molecular traces of tartaric and syringic acid, both key components in wine, as well as compounds suggesting ingredients popular in ancient wine-making, including honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins. The recipe is similar to medicinal wines used in ancient Egypt for two thousand years. “This wasn’t moonshine that someone was brewing in their basement, eyeballing the measurements,” Koh said. The team also discovered two doors leading out of the wine cellar — one to the south, and one to the west. Both probably lead to additional storage rooms.