Researchers have identified the world's oldest wine, a drop of white discovered in an ancient Roman burial site in southern Spain found to be some 2,000 years old.
The wine was discovered in 2019 in a Roman mausoleum near Carmona, a town near Seville, believed to have been a family tomb dating back to ancient Roman city of Carmo.
The burial site contained six urns holding human remains as well as several objects, according to the research team from the University of Cordóba and the town's archaeological department.
In what they described as a "rather exceptional and unexpected" discovery, the scientists found the remains of a male individual submerged in a "reddish" liquid inside a sealed glass funerary urn.
Analysis of the liquid's mineral profile and the detection of certain characteristic polyphenols, biomarkers found in every wine, allowed it to be identified as white wine, according to the findings published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The liquid's red colour was acquired over time, possibly due to "solid residues contained in the urn," they said in the paper.
Identifying the wine's origins proved most difficult as there's nothing left to compare it to, the researchers said. However, they did find similarities in the mineral profile of modern-day white wines produced in Montilla-Moriles, a wine-growing region to the east of Carmona, and sherry wines from Jerez.
While wine was extensively used by the Romans for burial rituals due to its religious significance, the remnants of ancient wines reported so far have all been dried up, often "absorbed on vessel walls," according to the researchers, who noted that their find constitutes "the oldest ancient wine conserved in the liquid state."
Previously, the oldest wine ever recorded was a bottle from Speyer, Germany, discovered in 1867 and believed to have been preserved since the 4th century AD, according to a University of Cordóba press release.
The fact that it was the remains of a male individual that were covered in wine is no coincidence, according to the researchers, who point out that for a long time women were forbidden from tasting wine during the Roman times.