‘Last sip’ for dead Roman found still wet in ancient grave: ScienceAlert

There is a new contender for the title of worst drink in history.

In the ancient Roman necropolis of Carmo in what is now Spain, archaeologists have unearthed a wine jug that was still sealed and still leaking liquid some 2,000 years later.

There’s just one catch. The wine was part of the grave goods that came with the burial of a Roman – and his cremated remains were thrown into the glass container before it was sealed. The wine, once a sweet white wine, is now reddish in color and contains human dust.

Despite human dust and reddish stains, this wine is now the oldest known vintage in the world, surpassing the Speyer wine bottle from the 4th century AD by hundreds of years.

“We were very surprised,” says archaeologist Juan Manuel Román from the city museum in Carmona, “that a liquid was preserved in one of the burial urns.”

The mausoleum itself, likely the communal tomb of a particular family, is a pleasing rarity. Over the millennia, ancient tombs are often plundered, leaving historians little to ponder over. But in 2019, archaeologists in southern Spain came across the chamber, still sealed, protecting its contents from the ravages of time and grave robbers.

There they found a number of luxurious grave goods – patchouli perfume, jewels and jewelry, fabrics, glass objects and a large lead container. When the researchers opened the container, they found a sealed glass urn half filled with a liquid.

Pouring wine over the cremated remains of a loved one is a funerary custom that dates back to Roman times, but there is also the possibility that the liquid got into the urn by accident.

SSealed or not, there are other ways liquid could have gotten into the tomb, as we saw with the sealed sarcophagus from ancient Egypt that turned out to be full of water. The tomb could have been flooded at some point, or the mausoleum could have sprung a leak. Or something could have condensed inside the vessel.

Led by chemist Daniel Cosano of the University of Cordoba in Spain, the researchers conducted a comprehensive series of chemical analyses to determine what the liquid actually was.

They measured the pH of the liquid and the organic matter in it. They used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to identify the chemical elements in the liquid’s mineral salts. And high performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry was used to identify polyphenols, chemical compounds that can be found in foods and beverages.

These data were then compared with wines from nearby regions: Montilla-Moriles, Jerez and Sanlúcar.

Both the mineral salt profile and the polyphenols were consistent with the wine, showing similarities to all three wine regions. In addition, a particular polyphenol expected in red wine, syringic acid, was absent. This suggests that although the color of the liquid was red, it was originally a white grape variety.

The team then tried to narrow down where the wine might have been made. They couldn’t make a definitive decision as they had no contemporary local wines to compare it to, but it did share some similarities with modern local wines. Interestingly, it seemed very similar to the sweet wines of Montilla-Moriles, a wine-producing region where Poe’s famous Amontillado comes from. While this has nothing to do with it, it’s a fun coincidence.

The Roman, buried in an urn containing wine, was buried in the same chamber as five other people. Another glass urn at the site contained the ashes of a woman named Hispana. She was not immersed in wine (although some Roman women were buried with wine); her urn contained, alongside her remains, amber jewelry, a jar of rock crystal with patchouli, and fabric that was once silk.

The Roman’s urn was not without riches either. Its vessel contained a gold ring engraved with a depiction of Janus, the Roman god of time, transitions, transitions and endings.

There are worse ways to be remembered.

The team’s results were published in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.