Ancient Winemaking in Armenia

The recent edition of Journal of Archaeological Science and some mainstream media report on the earliest known winemaking site to date, found in Armenia. The cave site reveals a complex of wine-making vessels and bio-molecular evidence and wine residues that imply not only wine drinking, but wine-making as well. The authors cite the presence of malvidin in potsherd residues, as determined by reverse-phase SPE combined with a quadrupole mass spectrometer, as evidence for wine production. Let's raise our glasses to that!

Barnard, H., et al., Chemical evidence for wine production around 4000 BCE in the Late Chalcolithic Near Eastern highlands, Journal of Archaeological Science (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.11.012