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(photo Source: futurism) Writing | Su Chengyu

Everyone knows that old wine is better. The longer a bottle of wine is stored in a dark cellar and the more dust accumulates on the bottle, the better the flavor of the bottle will be.

Would you like to try this 1700-year-old bottle of wine buried in the tomb?

Photo Source: wikipedia has a bottle of 1700-year-old wine that has never been opened for a century at the Pfartz Museum of History in Spiner, Germany.

Wikipedia, a bottle of wine in the Rhineland-Pfarz region of Germany, near Speer, found a sealed glass bottle containing an indescribable liquid, but it can be guessed that it was at least a bottle of wine.

Photo Source: the liquid bottle of HEllo india is buried in a 4th century Roman aristocratic tomb with two sarcophagus, one containing the body of a man and the other containing the body of a woman. It is said that the owner of the tomb is a member of the Roman Legion, and this bottle of wine is prepared for his trip to heaven.

Needless to say, as soon as the bottle was discovered, it went straight to the Guinness Book of World Records and won the title of the oldest wine in the world.

In fact, there is more than one bottle of wine in the tomb. In the process of archaeological excavation, it is also found that there are 6 bottles in the female sarcophagus and 10 bottles in the male sarcophagus (presumably because the male owner is more able to drink). But only one bottle, the existing one in the museum, was found to contain liquid, and the others were empty bottles.

When it was first discovered, only 1/3 of the bottom of the 1.5L bottle was transparent liquid, and the rest was a turbid, rosin-like mixture. It makes people look very unappetitive, even disgusting.

Photo Source: the futurism bottle still holds liquid, in part because it is sealed with hot wax instead of a traditional cork.

In the era of underdeveloped bottling technology, there are no heat-shrinkable caps and tin caps. After sealing the bottle with an oak cork, the winery will put a wax seal on the bottle mouth.

As early as Roman times, Gaius Petronius Albitt, a novelist, introduced wine sealed with paraffin in his book Sutrick.

Wax seal source of modern wine: because the network is sealed with wax, it can better maintain the humidity in the bottle and help prevent the wine from oxidation due to the entry of oxygen. This is especially important for wines that need to age for a long time.

In addition, the wax seal can prevent the metal or cork from coming into contact with the wine, thus avoiding the chemical reaction between the metal or cork and the wine and maintaining the quality of the wine.

There is another unscientific reason for the use of wax-sealed wine in modern times. Wax-sealed wine is a very traditional way of bottle sealing, which is rarely used now (the cost is too high). Because of its uniqueness, it increases the aesthetic appearance of the wine and makes it look more upscale and distinctive. To some extent, this also improves the collection value of wine.

The opening method of wax-sealed wine has to be heated before the source of the wax seal can be removed: the Internet does not have to think about it, this bottle of wine has not been opened until 2023. Although scientists want to open it for research, there is a constant debate about whether to open the bottle or not. Because of the fear that the strange liquid inside will react with the air at the moment of opening, it will lose the smell. Or this is a precious historical relic, so it is not willing to open it in the name of science.

Ludger Tekampe, the curator of the museum who is in charge of keeping the bottle, said that because of its age, the bottle of wine may not be able to stand the test.

But according to the observation and analysis of the internal liquid from the outside of the bottle, this ultimate 1700 vintage contains not only traditional wines, but also a variety of herbal mixtures and large amounts of olive oil.

Photo Source: atlasobscura in ancient times, Westerners often poured olive oil into wine bottles, trying to insulate the wine from the outside air in order to preserve the wine. In addition, olive oil can kill bacteria and mold in wine. Therefore, the olive oil in it also plays a role in anticorrosion. This method of preservation can no longer be seen.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons, it can be seen that most of the wine bottle is full of oil, only a small part of the wine.

So can I drink this bottle of wine or not?

Wine professor Monika Christmann said: "from a microbiological point of view, it may not have deteriorated, but (from the appearance) it will not bring any pleasure to the taste."

That's true.

Cover source: wiki

Reference:

The Roman Wine of Speyer: The oldest Wine of the World that's still liquid

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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