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Full title: What would Jesus drink? Experts guess what wine was like in ancient times and what modern ones are similar Christ was a vintner. And if you heed the Scriptures, quite a good one, according to the maitre d' at the wedding in Cana. "... the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.'" (John 2:9-10). In ancient times, wine was precious and revered, mentioned more than 140 times in the Bible. As Easter and...

The Board of Equalization has proposed taxing certain wines as distilled spirits, which would increase the excise tax on the wine from 20 cents a gallon to$3.30 a gallon, a 1,550% jump. The higher tax is on wines to which distilled alcohol has been added, such as wine specialties, flavored table wine, wine cocktails, wine coolers or blends of wine from different fruits. It is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2012. The issue exemplifies the slippery slope that government starts down with a well-intentioned tax increase with unexpected consequences.

I'm making some cheap wine. When I say cheap I mean one step above Pruno. Right now I'm just getting down the basics, collecting equipment and experimenting with different concoctions. My first try was apple juice, sugar and bread yeast which actually came out quite well. I have 2 bottles of it sitting in the fridge now waiting until my 5 litre box of Blush runs out before I start drinking it. The main reason I chose apple juice first was for the 128 ounce bottle. Now that it's done I'm using the bottle to make other wines 64 ounces...

Was 0 a good year? June 21 2003 at 09:45AM Beijing - Aged wines don't get much older than this. Archaeologists in western China discovered five earthenware jars of 2 000-year-old rice wine in an ancient tomb and its bouquet was still strong enough to perk up the nose, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday. Xinhua said five litres of the almost clear blue-tinged liquor was found, enough to allow researchers their best opportunity yet to study ancient distilling techniques. Archaeologist Sun Fuzhi was quoted saying the tomb dated from the early Western Han dynasty, which held sway over...

The earliest known examples of wine-making as we know it are in the regions of modern-day Iran, Georgia, and Armenia -- and researchers believe that modern winemaking slowly spread westward from there to Europe... The Etruscans, a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy, are thought to have gained wine culture from the Phoenicians -- who spread throughout the Mediterranean from the early Iron Age onward -- because they used similarly shaped amphoras... Dr McGovern's team focused on the coastal site of Lattara, near the town of Lattes south of Montpellier, where the importation of amphoras continued up until the period 525-475 BC....

Research into the dispersal of Philistine cooking methods among various populations in Israel shows that the Philistines spread their culture beyond the areas under their control... Unlike most of the peoples living in the region in the biblical era, the Philistines were not Semites... They prepared meals in a characteristic sealed pottery vessel suited to long cooking times at low heat, while most inhabitants of Canaan at the time used open pots and faster cooking methods. The bones found at the Philistine cities showed that... the Philistines ate mainly pork, with an occasional meal of dog meat. The Philistines' wine...

Beer enthusiasts are using a barn in Norway’s Akershus County to brew a special ale which has scientific pretensions and roots back to the dawn of human culture. The beer is made from einkorn wheat, a single-grain species that has followed humankind since we first started tilling the soil, but which has been neglected for the last 2,500 years. “This is fun − really thrilling. It’s hard to say whether this has ever been tried before in Norway,” says Jørn Kragtorp. He started brewing as a hobby four years ago. He represents the fourth generation on the family farm of...

Between 2007 and 2012 a team led by Dr Lindy Crewe from the University of Manchester have been excavating a Cypriot Bronze Age site at the south-western settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia near Paphos.Excavation of a malting kiln The team excavated a two by two metre domed mud-plastered structure and have now demonstrated by means of experimental archaeology and various other evidence that it was used as a kiln to dry malt for beer making three-and-a half-thousand years ago.The form of this construction suggests that the most likely function was as a drying-kiln, and that one of the primary uses of this...

Sandia researcher Ted Borek used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze vapors produced by mild heating of pot samples. (Photo by Randy Montoya) The belief among some archeologists that Europeans introduced alcohol to the Indians of the American Southwest may be faulty. Ancient and modern pot sherds collected by New Mexico state archeologist Glenna Dean, in conjunction with analyses by Sandia National Laboratories researcher Ted Borek, open the possibility that food or beverages made from fermenting corn were consumed by native inhabitants centuries before the Spanish arrived. Dean, researching through her small business Archeobotanical Services, says, “There’s been...

Monday November 12 10:18 AM ET Ancient Tablets Offer Beer Primer DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - A Syrian-Belgian-British archaeological mission unearthed 3,800-year-old Babylonian beer-making instructions on cuneiform tablets at a dig in northern Syria. Abdel-Massih Baghdo, director of the Hassakeh Archaeological Department, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that the 92 tablets were found in the 14th layer of Tell Shagher, a site just north of Hassakeh. He said the tablets showed beer-making methods and tallied quantities of beer produced and distributed in the region.'' Hassakeh, 400 miles northeast of Damascus, is known these days for its wheat production. ...

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a microscopic stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria. The stowaway, a yeast that may have been transported from a distant shore on a piece of wood or in the stomach of a fruit fly, was destined for great things. In the dank caves and monastery cellars where 15th century brewmeisters stored their product, the newly arrived yeast fused with a distant relative, the domesticated yeast used for millennia to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. The resulting...

Public release date: 27-Jul-2004 Contact: Greg Borzo gborzo@fieldmuseum.org 312-665-7106 Field Museum Ancient brewery discovered on mountain top in Peru Field Museum online expedition still in progress describes discovery of 'Beer of Kings' Archaeologists discover a 1,000-year-old brewery from the Wari Empire's occupation of Cerro Baúl, a mountaintop city in the Andes. Remains of the brewery were well preserved because a fire set when the brewery was closed made the walls collapse over the materials. Photo by Patrick Ryan Williams, courtesy of The Field Museum CHICAGO--Archaeologists working in southern Peru found an ancient brewery more than 1,000 years old. Remains of...

They taught the French to make wine and the Romans to build roads, and they introduced writing to Europe, but the Etruscans have long been considered one of antiquity's great enigmas. No one knew exactly where they came from. Their language was alien to their neighbors. Their religion included the practice of divination, performed by priests who examined animals' entrails to predict the future. Much of our knowledge about Etruscan civilization comes from ancient literary sources and from tomb excavations, many of which were carried out decades ago. But all across Italy, archaeologists are now creating a much richer picture...

We know what became of Marcus Aurelius -- considered the last of the "Five Good Emperors." He ruled for nearly two decades from A.D. 161 to his death in A.D. 180, a tenure marked by wars in Asia and what is now Germany. As for the Villa Magna, it faded into neglect. Documents from the Middle Ages and later mention a church "at Villa Magna" lying southeast of Rome near the town of Anagni, in the region of Lazio. There, on privately owned land, remains of Roman walls are partially covered by a 19th-century farmhouse and a long-ruined medieval monastery....

Ancient ale Prehistoric yeast takes beer drinkers back millions of yearsBy Suzanne Bohan Contra Costa Times Sep 24, 2009‎ GUERNEVILLE, Calif. - Inside a stainless-steel tank at a brew pub here overlooking the redwood-rimmed Russian River, a 45-million-year-old yeast proves its mettle. And the remarkably resilient prehistoric microbe hasn't just garnered a devoted pack of Fossil Fuels Beer fans, it's also providing palpable proof of the tenacity of life on this planet. When the Australian-born owner of Stumptown Brewery, Peter Hackett, first learned of the ancient yeast, he doubted this long-extinct strain would ferment anything drinkable. It took the urging...

Rare pre-Greek site to be exploredEnotrians ('wine lovers') renamed their kingdom 'Italia' (ANSA) - Palinuro, March 20 - A very rare example of surviving pre-Greek settlement in southern Italy is to be excavated and explored. The site, at Molpa in the hills above Palinuro south of Naples, is believed to contain the remains of a large village of the Enotrians, the earliest known inhabitants of Calabria and southern Campania. The Greeks who settled across southern Italy from 700BC to create Magna Graecia had an idealised vision of the Enotrians ("wine lovers") as coming from the Eden-like land of Arcadia ....

Czech archaeologists excavate Ancient Greek town flattened by Bohemian Celts [20-09-2005] By Pavla Horakova Listen 16kb/s ~ 32kb/s For twelve years, Czech archaeologists have been helping their Bulgarian colleagues in the excavations of an Ancient Greek market town in central Bulgaria. The twelve years of work has yielded valuable results, including a hoard of coins, and discovered a surprising connection between the ancient town and the Czech Lands. PistirosThe river port of Pistiros was founded in the 5th century BC by a local Thracian ruler. From the excavations we know that wine from Greece was imported to the town in...

Saturday, 3 August, 2002, 10:06 GMT 11:06 UK Brewers concoct ancient Egyptian ale Did King Tut sup on the Old Kingdom recipe? A Japanese beer maker has taken a 4,400-year-old recipe from Egyptian hieroglyphics and produced what it claims is a brew fit for the Pharaohs. The Kirin Brewery Co. has called the concoction Old Kingdom Beer. It has no froth, is the colour of dark tea and carries an alcohol content of 10% - about double most contemporary beers. Sakuji Yoshimura, an Egyptologist at Waseda University in Tokyo, helped transcribe the recipe from Egyptian wall paintings. Kirin spokesman Takaomi...

The discovery that Stone Age humans were interested in growing fruit and developing fermentation processes provides many clues into the lifestyle of early Homo sapiens. The production of wine requires a relatively "stable base of operations," McGovern stated. His research suggests that these early Near East and Egyptian communities would have been more permanent cultures with a stable food supply and domesticated animals and plants. With this abundance of food came the need for containers that were durable and made from a material that was easily pliable—like clay. The porous structure of these clay vessels is what has made it...

Saturday, 3 August, 2002, 10:06 GMT 11:06 UK Brewers concoct ancient Egyptian aleDid King Tut sup on the Old Kingdom recipe?A Japanese beer maker has taken a 4,400-year-old recipe from Egyptian hieroglyphics and produced what it claims is a brew fit for the Pharaohs. The Kirin Brewery Co. has called the concoction Old Kingdom Beer. It has no froth, is the colour of dark tea and carries an alcohol content of 10% - about double most contemporary beers. Sakuji Yoshimura, an Egyptologist at Waseda University in Tokyo, helped transcribe the recipe from Egyptian wall paintings. Kirin spokesman Takaomi Ishii said:...