Greeks domesticated grapes about 4000 years ago to improve wine-making

By Joshua Rapp Learn

Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy

The Greeks domesticated grapevines around 4000 years ago, according to a comparison of ancient seeds discovered in archaeological excavations.

We know that people began making wine by fermenting wild-picked grapes before the fruit was domesticated – in Greece some of the earliest evidence of wine-making, in the form of grape residues in pottery, dates back to at least 4300 BC – but now researchers have found that by around 2000 BC, people in central Greece had already begun to develop a finer taste for wine.

“This means that people knew better how …