8,000 years of wine

The world's oldest wine

At the settlements of Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveri Gora south of Tbilisi archaeologists found pottery bearing tartaric-acid residues dated to about 6000 BCE. This is the oldest known evidence of winemaking — over a thousand years earlier than finds in Iran and Armenia.

The study was published in 2017 by an international team led by Patrick McGovern together with Georgian scholars (Georgian National Museum). It confirmed what Georgian tradition had claimed for centuries: Georgia as one of the cradles of the cultivated grape Vitis vinifera.

Hence wine's special place in Georgian culture — from the supra and the tamada to church use and the word «ღვინო» (ghvino), by one hypothesis cognate with the word for «wine» in many languages.