The beginning of wine and viticulture

The wild ancestor of most of today’s grape cultivars is the eastern Vitis vinifera sylvestris. Archaeological, genetic, ampelographic, and linguistic evidence point to Transcaucasia (today’s Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) and Eastern Anatolia as the regions where V.v. sylvestris was domesticated and the first wines made. This occurred in early Neolithic times, over 8000 years ago. But the earliest-known archeological and chemical proof of wine-making is just over 7000 years old. It was unearthed at Hajji Firuz Tepe, a Neolithic site in North-Western Iran. It took thousands of years for wine and viticulture to reach Western Europe and the rest of the world. The key points of the early history of wine and viticulture are the topic of this contribution.