Wine of the Pharaohs

Initially, the project came up when we started to analyze a residue in an amphora from the Roman Empire that we had found in the Museum of Badalona . Then, after talking to a person, who prepared her PhD with us and who was doing a master in Egyptology, we had the idea to try to analyze also the residues of wine from the ancient Egypt.

Obtaining the samples has been one of the most difficult steps of this project, mainly at the bureaucratic level.

We had to develop a very specific and sensitive method, because the Museum of Cairo only gave us permission to take one gram of sample from the amphora. That is a very small quantity. Therefore, we needed a method sensitive enough to detect a marker that demonstrated the presence of wine. Next, we looked for a characteristic compound of the grapes and wine called tartaric acid. Once we had the method to identify this compound, we started the second part of the project that was to determine if the wine was white or red. To pursue this part, we had to develop an analytical method to identify the presence of red wine pigments (syringic acid).

The technique that we have developed is at present considered the most sensitive to identify the presence of wine that has been published worldwide.

The main conclusion is that in the Ancient Egypt both red and white wines were produced, something that was unknown until present. In addition, we also have studied the methods that were used to elaborate wine and found that these were already very sophisticated and produced wines of great quality.

We thank Dr Rosa Lamuela and her group for their kind collaboration in this report .