Earliest known winery found!

[Grancru]

6,000 yrs ago, in Armenia: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20110111/ancient-winery-found-in-armenia-110111/

Sorry all you brewers. This is clear evidence wine was first.

I can feel the die-hards blood boiling.

 

[BendBrewer]

Wow a wine press as old as the Earth............

 

[birvine]

I was nearby just over a year ago to the Republic of Georgia, the cradle of winemaking, so I'm not surprised. It's all good!

B

 

[SumnerH]

Godin Tepe in Iran has evidence of beer and wine making from only a few years later (about 5600 years ago):
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/05/world/jar-in-iranian-ruins-betrays-beer-drinkers-of-3500-bc.html

That's the earliest beer-making evidence I know of.

But http://www.pnas.org/content/101/51/17593.abstract dates Chinese wine-making back to c. 6000 BC, which would be about 2000 years older than the Armenian find--but unlike in Armenia they didn't find the actual winery, just the wine.

 

[biochemedic]

Mead was before both wine and beer anyway, so nanny-nanny-poo-poo!

 

[bierhaus15]

I was nearby just over a year ago to the Republic of Georgia, the cradle of winemaking, so I'm not surprised. It's all good!

Damn, Georgia is up there on the list of countries I would LOVE to visit! How was it? Khinkali dumplings with a good georgian red wine... must be heaven!

 

[Hermit]

6,000 yrs ago, in Armenia: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20110111/ancient-winery-found-in-armenia-110111/

Sorry all you brewers. This is clear evidence wine was first.

I can feel the die-hards blood boiling.

Sorry. You are reaching conclusions based on limited data points. This is NOT "clear evidence" by any reasonable criteria.

 

[arturo7]

Sorry all you brewers. This is clear evidence wine was first.

I can feel the die-hards blood boiling.

When did it become a contest?

 

[Hermit]

When did it become a contest?

Putting by of grain, honey and fruit was probably all being done around the same time. Some probably 'went bad' in a 'good way'. I would imagine it took a lot of time to perfect the processes because most of the stuff that probably went bad did so in a disgusting manner.

 

[SumnerH]

Wine, cider, and mead don't need a mash step, though; you can pretty much just have a wild ferment of juice that turns out more than drinkable. To get starches converted to something yeast can eat needs more temperature control, as we all know. So it seems likely that beer came later, but who knows.

 

[Hermit]

Wine, cider, and mead don't need a mash step, though; you can pretty much just have a wild ferment of juice that turns out more than drinkable. To get starches converted to something yeast can eat needs more temperature control, as we all know. So it seems likely that beer came later, but who knows.

Like I said, I believe that the stuff would have had to evolve. Put some grain in a jar, it gets wet and sprouts then ferments.... Not really much more of a start than that. They probably tried to keep the grains longer while they would probably have tried to use the fruit stuff as quick as possible. Or maybe they dried it? Grain was an item better equipped for storage and may have commanded more of their attention.

Mead? Someone snitching more than their fair share may have started to water it down so their actions wouldn't be noticed. That could have lead to fermentation.

Anyhow, all of this stuff probably ended up in jars and the stuff in some of those jars started going bad, fermenting, whatever. Like I said, it probably took a long time to get a consistent product and not just rotted food.

 

[SankePankey]

They probably tried to keep the grains longer while they would probably have tried to use the fruit stuff as quick as possible.

Because the fruit starts to ferment naturally simply when the skin is punctured.

Seriously, I'm sure a cave man (actually, a cave woman) noticed the funky taste and feeling that a spoiling piece of fruit would give long before grains were accidentally watered in a storage vessel.

Just IMO. I'm glad we came up with both.

 

[Hermit]

Because the fruit starts to ferment naturally simply when the skin is punctured.

Seriously, I'm sure a cave man (actually, a cave woman) noticed the funky taste and feeling that a spoiling piece of fruit would give long before grains were accidentally watered in a storage vessel.

Just IMO. I'm glad we came up with both.

I could 'argue' both sides of this debate. But for the sake of debate....

I think working grain would have preceded storage vessels. You don't even have storage vessels until you have the rudiments of civilization. Grain was probably pounded on concave rocks, or rocks that became concave from pounding. Dentistry being what it was early humans probably needed to 'pre chew' as much food as possible. The more grain you pounded, the more of a bowl you had. Eventually some of the powder in the bowl got wet and infected with wild yeast and they wanted to save it for the next day. (Or they could have realized that cooking their grain soup, like they cooked their meat, made it more palatable and easier to digest) Then a 'miracle' happened. After they set the rock next to the fire to keep the bugs the food grew over 5 times in size during the night. Now we have them working grain to make bread. (Again, this was probably not an overnight discovery but an evolutionary process. Cleaning their bowl would have been wasting food in their minds and the yeast probably just continued to collect. ) This may have lead to beer first. It may not have been even recognized as beer yet. They could have just been drinking some of the fermented products that went into making bread. This is even before they have vessels to store fruit in. (You could argue they would throw fruit into the grain mixture but certainly fruit bread never seems to have taken hold) Bread and the little pickup they got from the 'pre bread' could have been the impetus to finally start cultivating grain. NOW they would start working on vessels to store grain and eventually fruit. They could have taken some of the fermented juices and started adding them to the fruit. This seems more likely than the other way around. We know in Egypt the bakery and the brewery were located in the same building. So, if bread came first then it is more likely beer preceded wine. Again, only stone tools were needed.

Now the counter argument would be that ripe fruit could have a small amount of alcohol but do we consider over ripe fruit wine before it is pressed into a vessel? Seriously, the punctured skin theory is easily testable. I don't think yeast are going to get very far into the fermentation process before the fruit becomes inedible. Also, the fruit was probably more the size of small berries at that point. it would take a lot to get a recognizable buzz. Working grains for bread would have led to greater concentrations and volumes.

The point? I think both processes evolved over time and 'ease' of process is a moot point because the earliest beer was not what we think of today. Malting and lautering weren't done for their own sake but were still part of the primitive, albeit accidental, evolutionary process. The working of grain for bread and its role in civilization is well documented. Beer was probably either a by product or even a co product.

 

[Hex]

I've got persimmons on our tree that birds pecked holes in the top. Didn't taste, but the smell was recognized instantly. No jar necessary, fruit will ferment wild, as it has since the beginning...

 

[biochemedic]

I put forth the mead argument more as a joke about the way this type of discussion could get very heated, but seriously, there is a good case for the possibility, although it's definitely pure conjecture. Ken Schramm outlines the argument in his book, but the basic idea as I recall is that while we know when humans started cultivating grapes and grains, but there is evidence that honey foraging was practiced much longer before, and, since the discovery of fermentation was likely an accident (as some have hinted here already), the fact that honey was one of the first fermentables that was gathered in a readily workable form (as long as it was added to even a little bit of water...you really don't need to dilute honey all that much to make it fermentable), makes it likely that it could have been the first fermented beverage. The grapes and other fruit would more likely just have been eaten, and while malting could happen by accident on a limited basis, it just adds another step to the chain of "accidents" that would have to occur for humans to discover fermentation, and the joys thereof...

 

[Hermit]

I put forth the mead argument more as a joke about the way this type of discussion could get very heated, but seriously, there is a good case for the possibility, although it's definitely pure conjecture. Ken Schramm outlines the argument in his book, but the basic idea as I recall is that while we know when humans started cultivating grapes and grains, but there is evidence that honey foraging was practiced much longer before, and, since the discovery of fermentation was likely an accident (as some have hinted here already), the fact that honey was one of the first fermentables that was gathered in a readily workable form (as long as it was added to even a little bit of water...you really don't need to dilute honey all that much to make it fermentable), makes it likely that it could have been the first fermented beverage. The grapes and other fruit would more likely just have been eaten, and while malting could happen by accident on a limited basis, it just adds another step to the chain of "accidents" that would have to occur for humans to discover fermentation, and the joys thereof...

Like I said, I could argue for any of these methods. My point was that assuming that beer was last because of complexity is a huge leap of faith given the relationship between civilization and bread. There may also be a difference between what was discovered first and what was given the most attention the earliest. Bread was pretty important early on and some have suggested it was the basis of civilization. The grain lasted well without much storage effort. That would favor beer as a by product. Remember, things like pots became household goods when people stopped being nomadic and the evidence is grain made it possible for them to stop their nomadic ways. There is no way to know which was first and first may have been different in different regions. We don't know that any of these things had a single origin.