In this Wine Wednesday Back Label Story, we take you to the Caucasus Mountains of the country of Georgia — home to what may be the oldest evidence of wine on earth. Clay jars called qvevri, buried in the ground and stained with 8,000-year-old grape residue, tell the story of a human relationship with wine that predates the pyramids and the Roman Empire.
But the real twist comes from the Greeks and Romans themselves. Despite building entire cultures around wine — complete with gods, poetry, and legendary philosophical drinking parties — they considered drinking wine straight a sign of barbarism. Every symposium, every gathering, every social occasion ran on wine cut with two or three parts water. Drinking it undiluted? That was something the Scythians did. Barbarians. The people you never wanted to be compared to.
So the next time you reach for a glass of water alongside your Cabernet, raise it. You're not being cautious. You're being civilized — exactly the way the ancients intended.
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