Alicia Steffann

It consisted of a simple stone basin where people presumably stomped the grapes, letting the juice go down a drain.

It's easy to imagine this would have produced a pretty inconsistent product.

Somewhere along the way, people figured out that they could extend the life of their wine by adding tree resin, which had antibacterial properties.

While it certainly lengthened the shelf life of the wine, it also would have given the drink a sharp tang.

In short, the wine probably tasted a lot more like tree sap than it did like grapes.

Nonetheless, according to Lou Katch's book, that practice lasted literally for millennia.

Persisting across cultures all the way to the Romans, nobody in all that time found a better solution.

At the outset of the Common Era, prolific writer Pliny the Elder noted, it is the peculiarity of wine among liquids to go moldy or else to turn into vinegar.

Although the Romans tried additives such as gypsum, lead, lime, lye ash, marble, dust, and myrrh, every wine would eventually go sour.

This was an ongoing problem that was tough to resolve.

Despite the sharp taste, wine consumption only increased during the era of the Romans

As hard as this is for us to imagine, clean, fresh water was very scarce.

Adding wine to water in even small quantities made it safer to drink, as it neutralized impurities.

Plutarch wrote that adding water in a ratio of two or three to one portion of wine would relieve the harsh and irregular motions of the soul and secure deep peace for it.

In plain language, it prevented illnesses.

For this, people were more than willing to suffer through the taste of tree sap.

As the common era grew nearer, an important shift occurred.

Until that point, the making of wine had been viewed as a largely universal natural process.

In short, wine was the gift of the gods or the gift of the earth.

It was not a human made product.