Amazing that the tomb has survived all this time, hidden from view, through the Roman Empire collapse, the arrival of the Vandals and then the Moors, the Reconquest, Middle Ages, the World Wars... and then someone doing house renovations just happens to stumble upon it.
The spanish civil war was 36-39 and the second world war is generally understood to start in 39 with Hitler's invasion, so although they share a very significant context, the civil war is not the second world war.
Furthermore, the events leading up to Spanish Civil War were internal and completely unrelated to the looming global conflict, regardless of the fact that the Axis powers and the USSR chose to support different sides for ideological or opportunistic reasons.
All else being equal, the Spanish Civil War would have happened even if Italy, Germany and the USSR hadn't intervened in any way whatsoever (though what the result would have been is anyone's guess), and WWII would have happened all the same even if the Spanish Civil War had never happened or if the Spanish Republic had managed to prevail.
> Therefore, the 2019 finding in a Roman mausoleum in Carmona, southern Spain, of an ash urn roughly 2000 years old, containing a reddish liquid, was rather exceptional and unexpected. An archaeochemical study of the liquid allowed it to be deemed the oldest ancient wine conserved in the liquid state.
This is remarkable to me. What a find! Am I alone in being super, super surprised that it remained in liquid form this long? Does that suggest a very perfect seal on the urn?
Most basements had (and still have) a cooler termperature than the ground one.
In a small village of Salamanca, when the temperature outside was around 30C, inside a cellar/basement it would perfectly be at 18 or even 16C depending on the corner.
Also, being underground (or semi-underground under a separate room from the house) was an advantage on wars against pillage or further bombings.
Under the Spanish right-wing dictatorship, a lot of people had banned magazines and books well kept under/inside basement trunks, relatively hidden from the usual rooms at home, as most people would just think of a basement as a room to store old junk, ripped clothes, photos, family related letters or broken hardware. And a bunch of food, maybe.
Rural Spain's homes were built on thick walls often made from stone bricks, they isolated from both heat and cold, which can drop below 0 with ease at Winter on non-coastal zones and reach up to 40C temps at Summer.
Just three to four meters below ground level the temperature is more or less constant <10°C the year around. A root cellar with a well-insulated door and roof (sawdust is great!) is basically a fridge that requires zero power to keep cool.
Not alone, though the part that really got me was the volume - the vessel was still filled to the brim with 5 liters of liquid. Amazing job with sealing. I assume the glass composition of the urn helped prevent any adsorption.
- "In fact, in his Natural Historia, Plinio (2010), Pliny distinguishes up to four types of wine based on their colour: albus (pale white), fulvus (reddish-yellow), sanguineus (blood red), and niger (black). The wine acquires these colours after the fermentation process and through its storage."
- "The nature of the vine. Its mode of fructification | The nature of the grape, and the cultivation of the vine | Ninety-one varieties of the vine | Remarkable facts connected with the culture of the vine | The most ancient wines | The nature of wines | Fifty kinds of generous wines | Thirty-eight varieties of foreign wine | Seven kinds of salted wines | Eighteen varieties of sweet wine. Raisin-wine and hepsema | Three varieties of second-rate wine | At what period generous wines were first commonly made in Italy | The inspection of wine ordered by King Romulus | Wines drunk by the ancient Romans | Some remarkable facts connected with wine-lofts. The Opimian wine | At what period four kinds of wine were first served at table | The uses of the wild vine. What juices are naturally the coldest of all | Sixty-six varieties of artificial wine | Hydromeli, or melicraton | Oxymeli | Twelve kinds of wine with miraculous properties | What wines it is not lawful to use in the sacred rites | How must is usually prepared | Pitch and resin | Vinegar—lees of wine | Wine-vessels—wine-cellars | Drunkenness | Liquors with the strength of wine made from water and corn"
The translation into English "corn" doesn't refer to maize. It's unidiomatic in modern English but Gutenberg only has copyright-free translations, and this one is from the 19th century.
Sweetcorn is a specific maize meant for human consumption, distinct from popcorn or feed corn (which is also used for ethanol production, becoming "distillers grains" that are also fed to livestock).
As there is only one bottle of this wine in the world, I think what matters is the dose but not concentration of Pb.
In addition, the 0.14 mg/L figure reported in the paper is at a similar level to the current safety standard. The International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), an intergovernmental agency comprised of 45 international member states, has a current maximum acceptable limit of 0.15 mg/L for Pb in wine starting from the 2007 harvest year.
From the paper's analysis of the wine - it should be safe to drink, but most likely disgusting. The amount of lead or other bad things isn't particularly high if you just have a bottle.
Now, what would be the oldest enjoyable wine? The oldest that we have any record of anyone enjoying was the 1540 Steinwein, drank at age 421 in 1961 by Hugh Johnson, who took notes: "...We were able to take about two sips of the centuries-old substance, before it died of exposure to the air, gave up its spirit." [0] This is actually common in wines that are past their peak - a brief moment of life before they die forever from the air. One bottle remains but with the notes by Johnson I imagine that the wine will die before it is next tasted; it is "on loan from the Simon family from London."
With time, I expect the record for oldest enjoyable wine to be taken by either madeira (possibly from 1715) or the Rüdesheimer wine from 1653; in 2013, Edwin Vos from Christie's sampled a 1715 JCA & C Terrantez bottle and called it "remarkably youthful and surprisingly sweet." The last person to try the 1653 Rüdesheimer wine was Queen Elisabeth, I can't find her tasting notes :)
For the casual drinker, who wants to drink old wines at home, good options are madeira, port and sauternes. Even if the bottles are past their drinking window, they will still be enjoyable.
