Early foragers and farmers made wine from wild grapes or other
fruits. According to archaeological evidence, by 6000 BC grape
wine was being made in the Caucasus, and by 3200 BC domesticated
grapes had become abundant in the entire Near East. In
Mesopotamia, wine was imported from the cooler northern regions,
and so came to be known as ‘liquor of the mountains’. In Egypt
as in Mesopotamia, wine was for nobles and priests, and mostly
reserved for religious or medicinal purposes. The Egyptians
fermented grape juice in amphorae which they covered with cloth
or leather lids and then sealed up with mud from the Nile. By
biblical times, wine had acquired some less dignified purposes.
According to the Old Testament, Noah planted a vineyard, and
‘drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within
his tent’ (Genesis 9:21). Skip to the New Testament and here is
Jesus employed as a wine consultant: ‘And no man putteth new
wine into old wineskins: else the wine bursts the skins, and the
wine is lost as well