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Wine started in clay pots, not crystal glass
No bottles, no brands, no labels. The oldest traces of wine come from clay jars in Georgia, about 8,000 years old. Where wine really began, and the clay pot that never went away.
Updated October 2026
Rewritten by Alper Billik, Advanced Sommelier
3 min read
“So wine started in… Mesopotamia?” Close. Ancient ancient.
No bottles. No brands. Just grapes, clay jars and the instinct to let juice become something more. Thousands of years before wine lists and somm pins, people in the lands that are now Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Türkiye were crushing grapes, sealing them in clay and letting time do the rest.
They didn't call it natural wine. It just was.
The short answer: the oldest chemical evidence of grape wine found so far comes from clay jars at two Neolithic villages in Georgia, south of Tbilisi, dated to around 6000–5800 BC. That's about 8,000 years ago.
The clues are in the clay
- Georgia, around 6000–5800 BC: jar fragments from Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora held traces of tartaric acid, the chemical fingerprint of grapes and wine. The study was published in the journal PNAS in 2017.
- Iran, around 5400–5000 BC: jars from Hajji Firuz in the Zagros Mountains, the record holder before Georgia.
- Armenia, around 4100–4000 BC: the Areni-1 cave held the oldest winery found so far: a basin for pressing grapes, fermentation jars and grape seeds.
Before writing. Before the wheel. Before brunch. And yet they drank with purpose: for ritual, for celebration, for joy. Sound familiar?
The clay pot never left
In Georgia, it never stopped. Wine is still made in the qvevri, a large, egg-shaped clay vessel. The juice goes in with the skins, stalks and pips, the qvevri is sealed and buried in the ground, and the wine ferments there for months. In 2013 UNESCO added the ancient Georgian qvevri wine-making method to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
White grapes made this way, on their skins, give the amber wines many people now call orange wine. See Georgian orange wine.
And the crystal?
Much, much later. Lead crystal glass was developed in England in the 17th century. The fine glass in your hand is the newest chapter of a very old story. (If you want the one I'd choose, see the best wine glasses.)
Wine didn't start fancy. It started feral. And somehow it's still sacred.
More ancient wine: Mesopotamia and wine and Bacchus, the original winefluencer.
Questions people ask
Where was wine first made?
As far as we know today, in the South Caucasus. The oldest chemical evidence of grape wine comes from Neolithic jars in Georgia, around 6000–5800 BC. New finds could still change the answer.
How old is wine?
At least 8,000 years, based on wine residues in Georgian clay jars.
What is a qvevri?
A large, egg-shaped clay vessel, buried in the ground, used in Georgia to make, age and store wine. UNESCO lists the qvevri method as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
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