Food Traditions

Winemaking

Citation Formats

General Reference

Food and Drink Atlas. "Winemaking." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/winemaking.

APA Style

Food and Drink Atlas. (n.d.). Winemaking. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/winemaking

BibTeX

@misc{foodanddrinkatlas-winemaking,
  author = {Food and Drink Atlas},
  title = {Winemaking},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/winemaking},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The craft of fermenting the juice of Vitis vinifera grapes into wine. The earliest chemically confirmed evidence comes from Neolithic pottery jars at Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora in present-day Georgia, dated to the Early Ceramic Neolithic. Traditional Georgian winemaking still ferments and ages wine, skins and all, in large buried clay vessels called qvevri, a method UNESCO has listed as intangible cultural heritage.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Region

The South Caucasus (present-day Georgia), on current chemical evidence; the Zagros Mountains of Iran are a rival early candidate site specialists still weigh, the same tension already recorded on the Wine entity itself. 1

Origin Period, From (Year)

6000 BCE to 4500 BCE 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Expressed By

Georgian Cuisine

Source Georgian Cuisine (Wikipedia)

Wine

Source Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Winemaking (ScienceDaily)

Sources

1. Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Winemaking (ScienceDaily)

ScienceDailyparagraph 2

Quote, paragraph 2

Excavations have focused on two Early Ceramic Neolithic sites (6000-4500 BC) called Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, approximately 50 kilometres south of the modern capital of Tbilisi.

1. Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Winemaking (ScienceDaily)

ScienceDailyparagraph 1

Quote, paragraph 1

The discovery dates the origin of the practice to the Neolithic period around 6000 BC, pushing it back 600-1,000 years from the previously accepted date.

Georgian Cuisine (Wikipedia)

WikipediaExpressed By: Georgian Cuisine, section: Wine

Quote, Expressed By: Georgian Cuisine, section: Wine

Georgia is the oldest wine-producing region in the world...for at least 8000 years.

View the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Wine, Cheese and Spice: A New Threads QuizIncludes a question about Winemaking.

Comments (0)

No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.

Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)

No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.

Switch Atlas

The Inner World

The Civil World

The Natural World