Evidence of wine making in Georgia 8,000 years ago

Georgia’s claim to be the birthplace of wine has been reinforced.
Recent evidence puts the earliest traces of wine at 8,000 years old and coming from Georgia.

Gerogia is often considered the home of wines, and has some very old wine making techniques that are finding new friends especially in the Natural wine movement.

Its credentials as one of the oldest wine regions was strengthened this week when a team, led by professor Patrick McGovern, collected and analysed organic compounds found on ancient pottery shards in Georgia.

Their results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, ‘provide the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine and viniculture from the Near East, at ca. 6,000–5,800 BC’.

The wine residual proves that wine was being made in Neolithic period and drunk from pottery. This is not definitive proof that Georgia is the home of wine. Georgia did not exist in Neolithic period and wine making was likely to be spread over a region including Iran and Turkey. But Patrick is hoping to be able to explore less well-researched areas such as Iran and Turkey in the future, to identify where the first domestication of the vine took place.