Alex and I have speculated that there must be ancient vines in Ireland because we did have early Christians here for a long time. As wine was central to their rituals, the monks must have brought along vines to plant so they could reproduce the blood of Christ. We've asked Seedsavers if they are aware, and they do apparently have some vines grown from ancient vines near monastic ruins. We'll have to visit them.
I also had been wondering where the culture of winemaking first started. I knew that ancient Egyptians made wine and beer and cultivated the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. But were they the first? Perhaps the Mesopotamians were the geniuses that created the elixir of the gods? But today, I saw an article about how the fall of the Soviet Union changed wine forever and I was drawn to investigate.
It turns out that Ukraine's neighbour, Georgia was known to be cultivating grapes and making wine 8000 years ago. Archaeologists actually uncovered a vessel that was used to store wine and dated it to 6000 BCE. That's 2000 years before the Ceide Fields in Ireland were populated by farming peoples. Georgians claim that their region is the cradle of winemaking, and that could put Ukrainians on equal footing.
Stalin essentially destroyed the winemaking tradition during the Soviet era, forcing farmers to join collectives that focused on cheap food production of mediocre quality, not like that of their winemaking expertise. Wine was considered elite, a drink for the royalty not the proletariat. Yet somehow, people managed to preserve some of the techniques and after the fall of the Soviet Union, restored the remaining vineyards for a new era. I'll need to research their methods in greater detail as they must have farmed organically.
We've had Bulgarian wines at our favourite restaurant in Westport, Sage. And they are top quality so I am now eager to sample more wines from the countries of the former Eastern bloc. Let the adventure begin.
