Israel has been home to many cool wine discoveries, including an ancient wine press and millennia old beer. So it comes as no surprise that yet another oenological uncovering has been made in the holy land, this time in the form of a nearly 4,000 year-old “wine cellar” in ancient Canaan.
The so-called wine cellar was excavated at the Tel Kabri palatial complex. Four storage rooms in total held no less than 120 clay storage jars. An organic residue analysis of the jars from the first room revealed that the jars once held aromatic red wine. The rest of the jars are about to go through the same process, and we can only hope they contained the same juice.
Known info about the Tel Kabri palace is shockingly scant. According to Haaretz, the 6,000 square meter space contains “not a shred of written evidence,” although people lived in the luxe palace from 1850 BCE to 1600 BCE. The four-roomed wine cellar also contained over 50 different types of jars, some still holding the remainders of ancient grapes.
So beyond just being cool, why is discovering these grapes significant? Well, by analyzing these grapes, we can get a better understanding of what the Canaanite people liked to sip. Who knows – maybe we’ll even be able to recreate the old wines one day. After all, we all know how people in the Torah loved their booze.
H/t Haaretz
