The Shape of Wine

Its Packaging Evolution

Henry H. Work

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351401982
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Grape wine has been produced for at least 4,000 years, having been aged, stored and transported in every conceivable type of vessel. Its seductiveness has been enhanced by this packaging: primarily three strikingly different containers – amphorae, wooden barrels and glass bottles.

Henry H. Work brings extensive wine experience as a cooper, working with wine barrels and living in California's Napa Valley to provide a richly detailed and vivid account of wine containers through the ages. This book delves into the history, evolution, and present use of containers, vessels, and stoppers; from animal skin sacks to barrels, from glass bottles to upstart packaging such as wine casks, and even aluminium cans. It considers the advantages and weaknesses of their construction, designs and labels, methods of shipment and storage, as well as their impact on marketing wine to customers.

This is an enlightening and innovative read which draws on the most current archaeological research, scientific data and wine business trends. It is richly peppered throughout with the author's own visits to many of the locations explored in the book, bringing history to life. This book will appeal to individuals within the wine industry, undergraduates in the fields of history, archaeology, food and hospitality, as well as all people interested in wine.

1

Animal Hide Sacks and Early Ceramic Pots and Jugs

Wild grapes

Our Neolithic hunter–gatherer predecessors roamed far and wide for their next meal. Recent archaeological studies have found that these peoples’ understandings of the flora and fauna of their environment has been under-appreciated (McGovern, 2009). More specifically, the evidence of their wine making skills is being pushed back further and further into the past. Let us start by looking at what kinds of vessels our winemaking forebears might have used.

What to put it in?

Wine takes its place on the altar of those few precious items that undergo long journeys in order for people, far and wide, to enjoy them. To this end, the story of the vessels used for wine is intertwined with the methods to first make the wine, and then to transport to it to the next town, across the Mediterranean, or around the world.

Before ceramic containers were invented, the Neolithic hunter–gatherer peoples must have sought natural receptacles to store and transport a variety of liquids (McGovern, 2009). Most probably the earliest need for those containers was to carry water in dry locations. Later they would need vessels for wine, and once they started domesticating animals, containers would have been required for milk and yogurt. Before the invention of ceramic pots, these containers were most likely a piece of wood with a natural depression, a gourd or large nut, a sea shell, or even a piece of animal gut or hide. Later, perhaps, fibre baskets would be added to their list of possible containers. All would have worked relatively well, and be, to one degree or another, adaptable to the nomadic lifestyle.

Nevertheless, all those vessels had shortcomings. The wood, the nut and the shell would have been difficult to close to keep the liquid from sloshing out if it was being transported. The animal skin might have impacted the flavour, as could have the gourd. Thus, one can imagine that those early people were constantly seeking other alternatives and materials which had all the attributes they required for their liquid and particular travel or storage situation.

Pottery did not appear to be one of these vessels until relatively recently. Evidence that people started moulding clay and then firing it, or at least baking it in the hot sun, suggests it started about 25,000 years ago (Cooper, 2000). Clear archaeological conformation of man making pots and bowls, however, does not appear until the Jomon culture of Japan, dated to about 12,000 years ago. By about 9,000 years ago pottery started showing up in the Middle Nile Valley (Cooper, 2000).

Related to the vessels used for wine, at some point our forebears realized that prolonged exposure to oxygen was detrimental. Or at least they recognized that wine left in an open bowl or pot turns bad. Eventually they must have made the connection that putting wine in ceramic pots and jars, those made with small openings which could then be sealed, remained drinkable longer.

As the working with pottery evolved, before glazes were developed, the insides would have been smoothed with stones to minimize the porosity (Cooper, 2000). Later, the interior was glazed, or coated with resins or pitches to reduce seepage or the contact with air, and to minimize any negative tastes. Until the pots and jars evolved to the long, thin, amphorae shape, transporting the bulbous styles would not have been easy.

The initial pots and jars would have been small. Slowly, as ceramic technology improved, their size was increased to hold more and more wine or other liquids. The majority of the archaeological remains indicate that, as the wine making evolved, some of these large earthenware jars were partially or fully buried in the ground to keep the contents cool, as well as to reduce the evaporation. It is likely then that the wine would have been dipped or ladled out into smaller jars or into animal skin sacs for transporting further afield.

During the past century of archaeological digs and finds, many of the ceramic pots and jars dated to well before the current era (before Christ) have been assumed to contain wine, or wine-like liquids. The key word, however, is ‘assumed’, as no actual wine has been found; an occasional residue yes, but their original organic contents dried up and decomposed hundreds or thousands of years ago.

How do we know those jars contained wine? Until recently, it was at best educated speculation: was there a red residue inside the jars; have grapes pips been found in or near the jars; was there a hieroglyph or stamp on the container which indicated wine contents; or were the jars or pots in an area where native wild grapes grew?

In an age of more rigorous science, however, that secondary evidence is not quite good enough. We now realize that there were many other possibilities for fruit concoctions which the ancient peoples could have been making (McGovern, 2009). In the past 20 years the archaeological inquiry into what vessels actually held wine has evolved from speculation to fact. Science now has the ability to examine the portions of residue, detailing the contents of those vessels with far greater accuracy.

One man who has pioneered these investigations is Dr Patrick E. McGovern.¹ Skilfully combining his biochemical competence and his passion to unravel some of the ancient mysteries of wine and beer, he has travelled the world to provide rigorous scientific testing of the oldest vessels believed to contain wine and other alcoholic beverages (Penn Museum, 2018).

McGovern suggests that the first alcoholic beverage was honey and rain water naturally fermented in a notch of a tree, hundreds of thousands of years ago (McGovern, 2009). Fast forward to our hunter–gatherer forebears living in Africa, then migrating on to Europe and into Asia. Whether they collected this concoction, or even whether they were able to duplicate it in a vessel, is unknown. At this point there is no evidence, at least none has been found; whatever vessels were potentially used have likely long since rotted away.

McGovern theorizes these ancient peoples might have made wine, initially perhaps accidently, later with some understanding of what they were doing. In the greater Middle East and China, the Eurasian variety (Vitis vinifera sp. sylvestris) of wild grapes was available (McGovern, 2009). Those vines have been around at least for 50 million years (Lukacs, 2012). As hunter–gatherer tribes moved through the river valleys during the late summer and early fall, they gathered the wild grapes. If, instead of eating them right off the vine, they placed them in vessels – wooden bowls, gourds, or an animal sack – some juice would have seeped from the grapes to the bottom of the vessel (McGovern, 2009). The juice may have tasted as good as eating the grapes.

Further, if perhaps some juice was left in the gourds or wooden vessels, it would have fermented naturally. “Owing to natural yeast on the skins, it gradually ferments [the grapes] into a low-alcohol wine”, McGovern suggests, “a kind of Stone Age Beaujolais Nouveau” (2009). Upon tasting of the juice, the ancient peoples would have noticed the ‘sugariness’ of the grape had been replaced by a ‘sweetness’ from the alcohol, along with a complexity of flavours and aromas. Left too long, of course, eventually they would have detected a tart, sour flavour, that which we now associate with vinegar – the oxidation by bacteria of the alcohol in the wine into acetic acid and ethyl acetate.

A few opportunities of ‘hitting the booze’ at the right time – just after fermentation and before the vinegar set in – and some of these peoples probably thought this was pretty good stuff. Perhaps they even thought of it as a ‘nectar from the gods’ (Suckling, 2007), although that phrase did not come about until government leaders saw the advantage of controlling the use of wine or priests started utilizing it in their services, and the poets wrote about it, these lines from John Milton being some of the most famous:

Though in Heaven the trees

Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines

Yield nectar …

(Masson, 1890: 293)

Eventually, the early people figured out the ideal time to pick the grapes, which containers facilitated fermenting the juice, and when best to drink it. Along with using materials for the vessels that did not impact the flavour of the wine, the ability to close or cap the container would have been one of the most important early milestones in winemaking technology (McGovern, 2009). Ceramic bowls and pots became key containers, although precisely how or when has yet to be discovered.

Further on, early ‘vintners’ must have experimented with adding flavourings to the wines. At some point, they learned that various additives – such as terebinth, a resin from a pistachio tree – preserved the juice. Other additives were used to change or enhance the wine flavours such as pine and cedar resins, frankincense and myrrh (McGovern, 2009). Lacking other forms of sugar, honey was a common addition to sweeten tart or sour wines.

Archaeologists suggest that many peoples could have discovered the enjoyment of fermented grapes, or other fruits such as figs, baobab fruit, or sweet gourds, at various times and in various places. For the nomadic tribes, thousands of years of exploring the flora of Africa, Europe and Asia must have resulted in numerous experiences with fermented fruit. The evolutionary changes of the flora, the people’s understandings of them, along with vessels to collect and store the resulting harvest, can only suggest that over time, the ideal fruits and the methods to process them, became standardized for each group of people.

Making wine in a clay jar

If some of the first vessels used to contain fermented wine were wooden, the early wine makers may have realized that they were not ideal. Wine in a shallow wooden bowl, with its large surface exposed to the air, would have quickly turned to vinegar. Nor, until barrels and enclosed tanks were developed in the last millennium BCE, could a wooden container have been large enough to hold any significant volume of juice. A vessel in the shape of a hollow tube of some sort – say bamboo or the like – might have been better at minimizing the oxygen contact, especially if it could have been stoppered. It may, however, have also introduced off-flavours into the wine.

Another problem with utilizing wooden containers occurs during re-use. Over time, microorganisms hide and accumulate in the pores and crevasses of the wood. While some of these, like yeasts, are helpful, others are not. They create moulds which impact the wine’s flavours. Even today’s wine barrels are not immune. Despite rigorous cleaning, overtime the bacteria build up. Most wineries do not keep their barrels used to make table wines much longer than ten or 15 years.

The first hints that pottery was used for wine-type liquids was during the Neolithic period in China, roughly 7000 to 5600 BCE. McGovern and his Chinese colleagues have found traces of wine residue in ceramic jars dating from that period at the Jiahu site in Henn Province, south of Beijing and west of Shanghai. From several of the jars the scientific team was able to extract a residue. Using high-tech equipment – “liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis, and infrared spectrometry” (McGovern, 2009) – they were able to determine that the contents were a fermented beverage made from either grapes or hawthorn fruit (both of which grew wild in the area), with honey and rice added.

The jars they were examining were the shape of a bulbous amphora; two handles with a narrow opening at the top, and capacities of between 15 to 30 litres. The shape would have been a reasonable size for pottery – large enough to store a significant quantity of liquid though still smallish and not too heavy in order to move them about if necessary.

If the liquid did contain the grapes, as opposed to the hawthorn fruit, it was probably the world’s first documented grape ‘wine’ (McGovern, 2009). But McGovern wonders why, with the apparent migration of man out of Africa, passing through the Middle East before eventually reaching China, wine was not made there first. Perhaps it was, but archaeologists have yet to find that early evidence. Or the earliest possible vintners in the Middle East had yet to discover how to make clay bowls and jars. If they were using wood or animal skin sacks, most likely those types of containers would have long since decomposed, lost as clues or evidence to their efforts.

Middle Eastern wine

To examine the next oldest archaeological evidence of wine we jump to the Middle East. For a number of years, excavations of historic sites have taken place in the mountainous area between the Black and Caspian Seas. This is now the region encompassing eastern Turkey, northern Iran and Iraq, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. It is known to have the wild Eurasian grape (Vitis vinifera sp. sylvestris). As the scientists prowl among the ruins, they uncover older and older evidence of winemaking.

Recently, two sites have shown evidence of winemaking, going back to 6000 to 5800 BCE; about 8,000 years ago. Working in Georgia, an international group of archaeologists have been excavating the ruins of two small villages, Shulaveris Gora and Gadachrili Gora, located about 50 kilometres south of the present-day capital of Tbilisi (McGovern et. al., 2017). Among the uncovered relics have been the sherds of large pots. Some of these sherds are definitely the bases, or portions of the base, of these containers. It was these pieces which were chosen to be tested, as they were the most likely to yield any wine residue. The results of the chemical analysis showed positive for tartaric acid, a clear indicator of wine. The plant and animal remains’ in the soil next to the sherds provided accurate dating of the pots and wine.

The next oldest site, relative to finds of winemaking equipment, is to the south, found in a Neolithic village, Hajji Firuz Tepe. McGovern and his colleagues (2009) discovered ceramic containers there which are 7,000 years old, dated from 5400 to 5000 BCE. The site is located in the northern Zagros Mountains in what is now Iran.

Arranged next to a wall in what is believed to be a kitchen of one of the village houses were six ceramic jars set into the floor. Each of these were of about nine litres capacity, and h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of explorations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Animal hide sacks and early ceramic pots and jugs
• 2. Amphorae
• 3. Wooden barrels: origins to 1500 CE
• 4. Wooden barrels: from 1500 CE to current times
• 5. Glass bottles and other glass vessels
• 6. Large fermenting and storage vessels for wine
• 7. Alternative packaging: bag-in-box, plastic bottles and aluminium cans
• 8. Wine container stoppers and closures
• 9. Labels for wine containers
• 10. Moving wine around the world
• 11. Wine packaging sustainability: recycling and waste
• Index