Historical Snapshot: The Origins of Winemaking In Lebanon
In 1999, a team of archeologists and oceanographers found two ancient Phoencian shipwrecks on the floor of the Mediterranean sea near Palestine. The team included Robert Ballard, the very man who had discovered the Titanic. Using deep sea sonar equipment, the team was able to find the ancient ships at more than 300 meters underwater. They concluded that the ships were headed to either Egypt or Carthage around 750 BC, when they encountered a violent storm and sank with their vast cargo of wine.
Welcome to the ancient history of winemaking in Lebanon.
The Phoenicians were a generally industrious bunch, leading the way in their (old) world famous purple dye production and establishing a vast trade network across the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to this, they seem to have had quite a complex and advanced relationship with winemaking.
Wine in Lebanon is cultivated through Vitis vinifera or common grape vine, which was domesticated in Lebanon after arriving through either Mesopotamia or the Black Sea. Soon, Phoenicia’s cities, notably Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon, would become famed for their wine, and export across the Mediterranean to the kings of Egypt and philosophers of Greece.
Chrysippus of Soli, a Greek-Phoenician philosopher, was an intellectual heavyweight in the ancient Stoic tradition, and also a huge fan of wine. While the majority of his written works have been lost to history, his death has been immortalized through two popular stories. The first claims that Chrysippus died after he spun into dizziness due to the undiluted wine he had consumed at a feast, while the second claims that he died of laughter (at his own joke) as he saw a donkey eat some figs and said someone should give him pure wine to wash the figs down.
Wine also became an important aspect of religion during the Phoenician era, and it’s vines became a prominent inscription on monuments such as the great temple of Baalbek.
Winemaking in the ancient world is believed to have begun around 6,100 B.C, although discoveries of winemaking facilities in caves in Armenia has suggested that it could have been an even more ancient practice. When it arrived in Phoenicia, the locals took a developed medium and built upon it through their existing expertise. The Phoencians protected their wine by oxidizing it with olive oil, and giving it a seal of pinewood and resin. They ensured pristine cultivation of grape vines by studying weather patterns and topography, and developed many variants of wine, such as straw wines and early versions of the Greek Retsina.
A Phoenician-specific winemaking knowledge would develop alongside this production, with their trade outposts in places such as Carthage, Malta, and Cyprus replicating Phoenician wine production in the homeland. The two ships that were discovered in 1999, are some of the largest in the ancient world, with one measuring 18m tall. They included a vast cargo of ceramic amphorae filled up with wine.
It is clear that wine and winemaking played a key role in the development and growth of Phoenicia in the ancient era, and an exploration of its history reveals much about how the Phoenicians operated and continue to leave a mark on Lebanon today.
