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A new study examining 7,000 years of human consumption of grapes found that the domestication of the fruit occurred gradually rather than suddenly, and that wild varieties continued to be used for wine making long after domesticated species emerged.

The data leaves one to with little else to conclude than that vinting in Italy got better with age.

Italian wine is sold and prized around the world, and the consumption of grapes on the peninsula and its related islands goes back millennia. A team of researchers from Italy and France looked at over 1,700 grape seeds from institutional collections to examine trends in domestication over the years.

The results offer valuable insight into the ancient practice of vinting, and tell the tale of a gradual transition from wild to domesticated types over millennia.

“It was believed that it was the Phoenicians and later the Romans who spread domesticated grapes in Italy, while our study showed that domesticated grapes were already present in Sardinia around 3,000 years ago,” study co-author and archaeobotanist Mariano Ucchesu told Popular Science.

“This discovery led me to further investigate the phenomenon; I wanted to understand whether the case of Sardinia was an isolated one or if there were similar cases elsewhere in continental Italy.”

The authors write in their study that grape seeds from Early Bronze Age sites (2050 – 1850 BCE) display the same characteristics from the Early Neolithic period, that is to say, all wild-type.

The Middle Bronze Age sites (1600 – 1300 BCE) continue to exhibit a predominance of wild grape pips, but a notable transition occurs at the end of that period when grape seeds classified as domestic begin to be found in the majority in archaeological sites, indicating a definitive establishment of cultivation practices and selection of domestic grapes by these communities.

The study found the earliest cultivation evidence in Italy’s Campagna region, and Sardinia.

While domesticated varieties began to be found in large numbers from 1100 BCE onward into the Roman era, the seeds of wild grapes underwent their own remarkable transformations beginning as far back as the sixth millennium BCE, showing how important even wild grapevine was for Neolithic Italians.

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After the Roman period saw wide-scale cultivation of grape vine and winemaking, the surprises didn’t stop.

“During the Roman period… some sites exhibited a high presence of domestic grape pips and intermediate forms between wild and domestic morphotypes, suggesting introgression between local wild and domestic grape allowing the formation of new varieties,” the authors wrote in their abstract.

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In other words, blending—a signature technique in modern vinting which has produced some of the most famous wine names in the world—Bordeaux, Chianti, Champagne, Valpolicella, Amarone, Rijoa, and Côtes du Rhône.

Ucchesu concluded with Pop-Sci, saying he invites readers to imagine that, “with each sip of fine wine, we are tasting the echoes of a thousand-year journey, a story woven through time to arrive at our palate.”

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