Ancient Wines: Medical Marvels and Maritime Trade

Wine – Wine grapes and wine are unquestionably the world's most valuable medicinal plants: the global annual value of wine is over 300 billion dollars. And the history of wine predates the origin of the human species: primates are known to consume fermented fruit to enter an altered state. This episode traces the use of wine as medicine, from ancient Transcaucasia on the Black Sea 8000 years ago, through classical Greece and Rome to the Holy Land at the period when Judaism, Christianity and Islam first arose.

Sources:

McGovern, P. Uncorking the Past. U. of California Press. 2010.

McGovern, P. and S. Calagione. Ancient Brews. W.W. Norton, 2018.

Muraresku, Brian. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. St. Martin's Press, 2020.

Plotkin, Mark J. The Ethnobotany of Medical Wine in the Ancient World. (in press). Herbalgram 2021.

Robinson, J. and J. Harding. The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford University Press. 2015