The eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea is the cradle of our modern wine culture, wine grapes (vitis vinifera) as we know them probably originated in the Caucasus Mountains on the border of Turkey and Georgia, and people, we like to think some very smart people, took those grapes and started making wine with them nearly 8,000 years ago! Like all great ideas of history the idea of wine started to spread to surrounding areas and this week we’ll be trying wines from some of the earliest locales of the our favorite beverage!

One of wine’s first stops on its eight millennium journey to today was the middle east, wine has been made in Israel for nearly 5000 years, and while it is hard to tell exactly where it started experts think it would’ve first have vinified in Lebanon around the same time. This week we’ll be trying a wine from each of those two counties, who in modern times have an eye toward the west with grapes being panted and the techniques being used.

Around 4500 years ago wine made its way to Greece and the Balkans, and more than most of their peers the Greeks took wine and ran. The Greeks became a wine centric culture, one of the gods in their pantheon, Dionysus, was the god of winemaking amongst other things. To see the ancient Greeks like the elixir is an understatement! As the Greek’s started exploring westward they took wine with them, in fact they are the ones who introduced wine to the Italian peninsula where the Romans picked it up and spread it to the rest of Europe.

Fast forward to today and Greek and surrounding countries like North Macedonia, are making some great wines from local varietals. Greece also offers up some of the most varied landscapes in the wide world, from sunny Mediterranean islands to windswept mountains and everything in between. That means they can make a wide array of wines. Greece also has kept an eye on tradition while taking a step into modernity. There are grapes like Xinomavro, Assyrtiko and Moscofilero that you’ll rarely find anywhere else, but the Greeks are combining modern winemaking techniques, like using small barrels and stainless steel tanks, to create delicious wines with a traditional flair.

Wine has a long history with twist and turns, revolutions and reactions and more story than we will ever know we like to think that the history of wine is one of the most fun piece of human history, and certainly one of the most delicious!