People have been making wine for about 8,000 years from grapes and other fruit juices. But how did they do it in ancient times?
Did they have yeast? Did they have sterilized containers to do it? Did they even know what sterilized meant?
Ancient hieroglyphics from the early Mesopotamian culture indicate that they did have knowledge of how to make wine. But those glyphs continue to tell us a little more…
First of all, grapes grown outdoors or in vineyards have their own yeast on the outside of the skins. Isn’t that useful? If you harvest grapes and crush them to extract the juice BUT leave the skins on the grapes, the mixture will ferment on its own due to the natural yeast. In most cases, natural yeast is NOT the yeast we would use today, but it apparently served its purpose in ancient times.
But, if you wanted, you could make wine the same way our ancestors did and just let nature do the fermentation for you with the natural yeast. It won’t be as strong in alcohol as it would be if you used some currently available commercial winemaking yeast, but it will still work.
But what about the need to have everything clean and sterilized before you start? Surely there was no way to accomplish this in ancient times…
Well yes and no. It is mentioned several times in many ancient texts that silver has an antibacterial effect. To this day we know that silver kills bacteria or severely inhibits bacterial growth. The ancients could start their wine in large silver-lined vessels and let it ferment in them.
Once the alcohol content was high enough, the wine itself and the alcohol it contains is enough to keep bugs from growing.
Fast forward to today’s times and we use sulfites to preserve the wine and to prevent bugs or other bacteria from thwarting the juice as it ferments. By the way, sulfites are MUCH cheaper than silver lined containers!