Wine in ancient Egypt

In ancient Egypt, wine was a prestigious product consumed mainly by the upper classes and the royal family. Wine was offered in the daily temple rituals, in funerary offerings and used in medical treatments.

Before a royal winemaking industry was established in the Nile Delta, ca. 3000 BC., the first pharaohs imported wine from the Levant, and soon developed a taste for it.

Vineyards were grown for Egyptian rulers and nobles. Grapevines were introduced as part of gardens or orchards with other fruit and vegetables, while some were cultivated separately in vineyards.

Viticulture and winemaking scenes are depicted on the walls of the ancient Egyptian private tombs from the Old Kingdom (2575-2150 BC) and later in Middle Kingdom private tombs (2055- 1650 B.C. at Beni Hassan). During the 18th dynasty (1550-1295 B.C.) scenes of winemaking became a common motif in the tombs of Theban officials.

Egypt had a very organized system of wine production. Yet, the product was seen as a luxury, suitable for religious ceremonies. Pharaohs and priests used it for temple offerings.

To make wine, the ancient Egyptians picked a bunch of grapes and squeezed all of the juice out by stepping on them in a trough big enough to hold at least six men. This mixture was sealed in a clay pot with the date and vineyard on it. For much of ancient Egyptian history, wine was mostly consumed at the court of the pharaohs.

Ancient Egyptians made at least 24 types of wine, including white, red, and black. A type of the latest was served for funeral ceremonies in the Old Kingdom.
Wine in ancient Egypt

History Earliest Wine

History Earliest Wine
Perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 years ago was discovered that when fruit (or grain, milk or rice) was fermented, the results tasted good, made one happy – or both.

The bible mentions wine consumption in both the Old and the New Testaments.

With all alcohol’s benefits and hazards, it was a universal feature of early civilizations.

At least one legend claims that wine was discovered accidently, by a neglected member of a Persian king’s harem. She attempted to end her loneliness by ending her life drinking from a jar marked “Poison.”

It contained grapes that had fermented. She left so much better drinking the liquid that she gave a cup of it to the king, who named it “the delightful poison” and welcomed her back into active harem life.

Early people all over the world fermented anything that would ferment: honey, grapes, grain, dates, rice, sugarcane, milk, palms, peppers, berries, sesame deeds pomegranates.

Almost all of the world’s wines (the ones made from grapes, that is) can be traced to a single Eurasia grape species, Vitus vinifera.

Gapes were being cultivated as early as 6,000 B.C in the Middles East and Asia.

The Egyptians, Phoenicians and Chinese were all tending their vines at about the same time.

It is believed that the ancient Greeks got their viticulture knowledge from Egyptians, and began to make wine about 2,000 B.C.

Historians continue to debates the exact date origin of the term wine, but there is wide agreement that the Hittite characters that spell wee-on are probably the first recorded word for win, which derived form the Latin vinum and is further traced to the ancient Greek oinos.

Indeed, the Greek term oinos logo (“wine logic”) is the origin of the modern word for the study of wine: enology (the US spelling) or oenology (the British spelling).
History Earliest Wine

Grape Juice and Wine

Grape Juice and Wine
Ancient Egyptian inscription indicate that the grape was grown there in 2375 B.C. Murals to Egyptian tombs carry depictions of grape vines, grape harvesting, and trampling to obtain the juice.

By way of classical Greece and later Rome, the grape vine expanded into all the lands of Europe and North Africa where it will grow.

The Greeks cultivated the grape vine wherever they went; Italy, north Africa, southern France and southern Spain, including the best known wine regions of the world, Bordeaux and Burgundy. The Greeks called Italy the Land of Vines.

Romans grew different varieties and appreciated their diversity. Grapes were grown on trees and trellises, preferentially on terraced hills and banks surrounding river valleys. Romans aged wine in barrels, which they invented. Before then it had been kept in earthenware amphorae.

Grape juice changes naturally into wine when sugar fermenting yeast is present. When grapes are crushed with the skins, yeast comes in contact with the juice. It grows in the juice, using the sugar as its source of energy, and in process transforms the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Alcohol in high concentrations is toxic, and when it reaches a certain level (between 12 and 14 percent), most strains of yeasts cannot grow any more. The wine is now ready. It is young wine and tastes very much likes grape juice alcohol. When the first fermentation is completed (sometimes even before), and especially if the wine is in a warm palace and exposed to the air, special bacteria start growing on the alcohol and transforming it into acetic acid. The wine spoils and turns to vinegar.

Since remotest antiquity, the principal problem was not to make wine but to keep it from spoiling. In classical Greece wines were drunk young and most were probably vinegary. To counter the acid taste a variety of methods were employed. Greeks learned that air speeds up the spoiling process. Amphorae had narrow necks to reduce the contact of wine with air, and they were kept tightly stoppered.

Because air could penetrate earthenware surfaces, the Greeks line their amphorae with resin. This preserved wine for use in commerce. The Romans took a step forward when they invented wooden barrels. They could be stoppered better than amphorae, and the oak imparted flavor from the wine. Some Roman wines apparently kept very well. There are reports of vintages that lasted to a hundred years.
Grape Juice and Wine

Cashew Nuts

Cashew Nuts
Brazilian Indian use of cashew nuts and apples is well documented in French, Portuguese and Dutch accounts between 1550 and 1650. The Tupi name acaju became caju in Portuguese and cashew in English.

The juice of the cashew apple has been and still is fermented to make wine. In 1558, Thevet published a drawing of Indians harvesting what were unmistakably cashew fruits and squeezing the juice from apples.

The cashew was probably spread by the Indians as a dooryard garden tree, but there is nor record of systematic planting. It may have been spread by prehistoric Indians into Guianas and eastern Venezuela.

It was probably a dooryard garden plant of the Caribs in the Lesser Antilles. It was not among the plants of the Arawaks of the Greater Antilles, nor was it in Colombia, Central America, or Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. First Spanish accounts were from Venezuela in the mid 16th century.

The Indians roasted cashew nuts in open fires, burning off the caustic shell oil. The Portuguese were quick to adopt the simple Indian techniques of roasting the nuts and making wine from the cashew apples. They occasionally sent some nuts to Lisbon as early as the mid-17th century.

By 1750, cashews quickly were widely planted throughout tropical America, not just for the nuts but as a multiple-purpose garden tree. It made a fine dooryard shade tree, provided the lower branches were pruned.

It was evergreen and pest free, the sap of the trunk should be tapped for an insect repellent, protective varnish. The cashew apple yielded tasty, fresh juice and could be made into preserves. The wine could be distilled for brandy. Excess volunteer trees were cut for firewood and charcoal. Commercial cashew plantations in tropical America were not begun until the 20th century.

Meanwhile, the species had become pantropical. The Portuguese introduced it into India in the 1560s, perhaps more as a source of wine and brandy than for the nuts. Cashew trees were reported in gardens of Cochin on the Malabar Coast and Goa in the 1570s and 1580s. Four hundred years later India remained the world’s main producer of cashew liquor at a rate of about 250,000 gallons a year.
Cashew Nuts