Posted on 09/06/2018 10:56:14 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The age of the Speyer wine bottle is epic, estimated at around 1,650 years. Its makers did well by sealing it with hot wax and splashing it with olive oil, which is how the bottle, containing a presumably once drinkable white wine, has maintained the liquid inside it... Microbiologists have recommended not opening the wine and the same opinion was shared by the museum's wine department curator, Ludger Tekampe, who in the past stated that if the bottle were to be opened, "We are not sure whether or not it could stand the shock of the air." ..finding the Speyer Wine in the grave of a Roman noble in 1867, in the Rhineland-Palatine region of Germany... The antique bottle took its name from the city of Speyer, which was located in close proximity to the tomb it was found in. The nobleman, along with his wife, had been buried there with the wine around 350 AD, and archaeologists were utterly baffled when they realized the bottle still contained liquid. To date, the wine is considered the earliest known liquid wine ever excavated from an archaeological site anywhere in the world... the identity of the nobleman... suggests that he was a Roman Legionnaire... A chemist analyzed the Speyer bottle during World War I, but he did not dare to open it and after that, the wine was stored in the German museum in Speyer. While many scientists have hoped to obtain permission to analyze the bottle's contents thoroughly, nobody has been granted one yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at thevintagenews.com ...
Romans cremated their dead. I don’t understand the burial thing here.
How do they know its wine if they haven’t opened the bottle?
Hmmmm?
‘Face
;o]
Looks bad but I’ve drank worse. A bottle of ripple when I was 17.........A night to remember and a morning after I’ll never forget.
Elaine,,,
Oh!
Ummmmm.....no thanks. That looks positively toxic.
Eventually somebody will open it and drink it on YouTube.
Wouldn’t suprise me if you could buy something like this at Beverages & More or Total Wine ... or perhaps by the case at Costco.
Have you heard?
What’s the word?
It’s Thunderbird!
There’s some nasty stuff growing on the bacteria in that bottle, and best stay closed.
"We will sell no wine, until its time."
I didn’t eat it, I swallowed it whole.
Certainly not drinkable, but a sample could be taken using an atmosphere of inert gas like argon and then analyzed. It would be neat to know the DNA pedigree of the grapes.
That’s a really nice bottle!
They just excavated some cheese from Croatia that's twice that age but they didn't publish a picture. I bet they ate it at a drunken faculty party.
When I used to get within an inch of the worm, I’d pass the bottle to someone else, with a caveat.
Are they sure someone wasn’t just saving their bacon grease?
Never ate no 1,650 year old worm thats for sure. lol
Romans didn't always cremate their dead, that's what's going on here.
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