Enthusiasts have surely heard of the Speyer wine bottle which looks like a sealed decanter, assumed to hold sumptuous wine, it is called Speyer wine after the place it originated from, being a Roman tomb located in the local town of Speyer in Germany. The Speyer wine is also apparently one of the oldest bottles of wine known to mankind.
A little bit about its History
This particularly peculiar bottle in all likeliness has wine it, and it was found for the first time way back in the year 1867, in this day and age this location is known as the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany near Speyer, which is by far one of the ancient settlements in the region. The work of art in recent times has come to be known as “the creation’s oldest prevailing bottle of wine”. This bottle has been identified to belong the year dated between 325 and 350 AD and is the oldest acknowledged bottle of wine which remains unopened in the world. Ever since the time that it was found and identified, it has been on show at the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer, in the Wine Museum section this bottle of wine is on perpetual display at this spot and will remain to do so in the museum. The “Römerwein” is on show as well in the tower room of the museum.The contains of the bottle are 1.5 L (51 U.S. fl oz) glass decanter with robust looking “shoulders,” yellow-green in tint, with arms shaped like dolphins as handles.
Unearthing
The decanter was exposed during an archaeological site in a 4th-century AD Roman lord’s crypt. The crypt enclosed a couple of caskets, one of the caskets had enclosed within them a couple (man and woman). There was a person who claimed that the Male person was a Roman soldier for whom the bottle of wine was like supply for his journey to the next realm. The Females casket contained six bottles and the males contained 10 bottles. However, only one out of all those bottles had wine left in it.
Its Preservation
Even though reports suggests that the wine has lost all its alcohol content, However further analysis shows that there very miniscule part of it was still wine. The remains of the wine was imbued with a concoction of preservatory herbs. The salvation of the wine is accredited to the hefty volume of heavy olive oil, added to the decanter to pack air-tight the wine, which was on top of w slea made out of hot wax. Petronius who lived between (c. 27–66 AD), in his work he claims of sticking plaster taped up bottles, and this one is related. The use of glass in the decanter is strange, however, as stereotypically Roman glass stood too flimsy to be trustworthy over period.
While researchers have deliberated retrieving the liquescent to further evaluate the content, till date the decanter has stayed shut, for the reason that of apprehensions about how the fluid would act in response when open to air. The Curator for this Museum, Mr Ludger Tekampe, has quantified he has seen no distinction in the bottle in the last 20+ years.
More accurately, the Speyer wine decanter is the first and oldest wine still persisting.