Winepress

The winepress did not emerge to produce a beverage. It emerged to commune with the dead—specifically, to create the intoxicating liquid that could bridge the gap between the living and their ancestors, transforming funeral rites into occasions of transcendence.

The world's oldest known winery lies inside the Areni-1 cave complex in Armenia's Vayots Dzor Province, discovered during excavations beginning in 2007. Radiocarbon dating places the facility at approximately 4100-4000 BCE—the Late Chalcolithic period, more than a thousand years older than any previously documented winery. The installation that archaeologists uncovered was not primitive but sophisticated: a one-meter-long clay pressing basin, a 60-centimeter-deep fermentation vat, large storage jars called karases, drinking cups, and remarkably preserved organic remains including grape seeds, pressed skins, desiccated vines, prunes, and walnuts.

The adjacent possible for winemaking required the convergence of several developments. Grape domestication—the selection of Vitis vinifera varieties with larger, sweeter fruit—had been underway in the mountains of the South Caucasus for centuries. Pottery technology provided vessels for fermentation and storage. Understanding of fermentation itself, the microbial transformation of sugar into alcohol, had been accumulated through observation and accident. The winepress combined these elements into a systematic production process.

The pressing method at Areni-1 was the oldest-fashioned one imaginable: human feet. Grapes were piled into the clay basin and stomped, with juice draining through the sloped floor into the fermentation vat below. There the liquid was left to transform—wild yeasts on the grape skins initiating fermentation, sugar converting to alcohol over weeks of controlled decomposition. The cool, dry cave conditions provided a natural cellar that maintained consistent temperatures year-round.

Biochemical analysis published in the Journal of Archaeological Science confirmed wine production through detection of malvidin, a red wine pigment, in residues from both the pressing basin and storage jars. Botanical and genetic testing identified the grape remains as domesticated Vitis vinifera, evidence of advanced viticulture rather than opportunistic wild grape collection. The Areni wine was not an accident but a product of deliberate cultivation and processing.

The ritual context of the Areni winery illuminates wine's original purpose. Approximately twenty individuals were buried near the pressing installation, their graves containing pottery vessels and drinking cups. One pot held a human skull with remarkably preserved brain tissue. The winery was not a commercial facility but a ceremonial space—wine production was inseparable from death rituals, the intoxicating drink serving as an offering to ancestors or a medium for communion with the departed.

The DNA evidence for grape domestication converges on the same region. Studies of cultivated grape varieties had previously pointed to the mountains of Armenia, Georgia, and neighboring countries as viticulture's birthplace. The Areni discovery confirmed what genetics suggested: the South Caucasus was where humans first transformed wild grapes into the intentional, repeatable production of wine.

The cascade from the winepress extends through every subsequent wine region. The technology spread south into Mesopotamia and Egypt, west into Greece and Rome, eventually circling the Mediterranean and reaching every continent. The screw press, which multiplied extraction efficiency, descended directly from the treading basins of Areni. Modern pneumatic presses, which can process tons of grapes per hour, solve the same fundamental problem: separating juice from grape solids.

By 2026, global wine production exceeds 260 million hectoliters annually, the industry generating over $300 billion in economic activity. The Areni-1 cave has become a tourist attraction alongside the annual Areni Wine Festival, which celebrates the 6,000-year heritage. The conditions that made winemaking inevitable—grapes that ferment readily, humans who value intoxication, the desire to mark significant occasions with altered consciousness—persist wherever the climate permits viticulture.