In 2019, a family in the quiet Spanish town of Carmona stumbled upon something unexpected while renovating their property: a sealed Roman tomb, carved into the rock and untouched for nearly 2,000 years. But it got much, much weirder.
Inside the tomb, archaeologists found six cremation urns. In one, nestled among cremated bones and a gold ring, was a glass vessel filled to the brim with a reddish-brown liquid. It wasn’t water, and it wasn’t residue from a recent flood.
Now, five years later, scientists have that the reddish liquid was wine—Roman wine, some 2,000 years old, and the oldest ever discovered in liquid form.
But it gets weirder still. The urn also contained, among other things, the cremated bones of a Roman man.
A Toast from the Afterlife
What might seem like a poetic detail—wine sealed in a tomb—turned out to be a scientifically extraordinary find. The vessel’s remarkable preservation offered researchers a rare chance to study a piece of ancient life frozen in time.
“It’s a sunken tomb that was excavated from the rock, which allowed it to remain standing for 2,000 years,” José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, the organic chemist at the University of Córdoba who led the analysis told The Guardian. The rock tomb and sealed chamber had preserved the contents with remarkable care: no evaporation, no looting, no microbial invasion.
This discovery, now published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, represents the oldest wine ever recovered in liquid form—even older than the famous Speyer wine bottle, unearthed in Germany in 1867 and dated to the 4th century CE. Unlike the Speyer wine, the Spanish find was thoroughly analyzed chemically, giving researchers unprecedented insight into the composition of actual Roman wine.
The urn belonged to a Roman man named Senicio, whose name was inscribed on the vessel. Along with his cremated bones, archaeologists found about five liters of wine sealed in a glass jar, known as an olla ossuaria. A gold ring bearing the two-faced Roman god Janus, and possibly the metal feet of the bed used for cremation, were also enclosed.
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The presence of wine in a Roman funerary urn wasn’t unusual. It was part of elite burial rituals, a final libation to accompany the dead on their journey. But it was typically a privilege reserved for men. Women, like Hispana—whose remains were found in another urn in the same tomb—were instead honored with jewels, perfume, and fine fabrics. Roman society prohibited women from drinking alcohol, even in death.
What Kind of Wine Was It?
Tasting was off the table, no doubt. As tempting as it is. So instead, scientists turned to chemical analysis.
First, they ruled out mundane explanations for the liquid. No signs of flooding or condensation were present. Adjacent urns were bone-dry under identical conditions. The only explanation was that this was original, poured there as part of the burial ceremony.
Tests revealed that the liquid had a pH of 7.5, making it somewhat similar to water—modern wines are typically much more acidic, with a pH closer to 3. But that was no surprise after 2,000 years of chemical degradation.
The real breakthrough came from polyphenol analysis. Using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, researchers identified seven distinct wine polyphenols, biomarkers found in all wines. These included compounds that matched those in today’s Andalusian wines from Montilla-Moriles, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and Jerez—regions known for their pale, dry fino and manzanilla styles.
Interestingly, although the wine now appears reddish-brown, researchers determined it was originally white. The absence of syringic acid—a chemical that forms when red wine pigments break down—confirmed this. “We looked for polyphenols exclusively from wine – and we found seven wine polyphenols,” Ruiz Arrebola explained. “We compared those polyphenols with those from wines from this part of Andalucía – and they matched.”
Eternal Remembrance
This is the first time scientists have chemically studied Roman wine in its original liquid state. Until now, research on ancient wines relied on dried residues or absorbed traces in clay pots. This find provides a rare opportunity to directly compare the chemical evolution of wine across millennia.
It also offers a glimpse into ancient beliefs about death and memory. Romans gave their dead a sendoff with symbols of status, belief, and the sensory comforts of life. “Romans were proud, even in death,” Ruiz Arrebola said. “They wanted to remain in people’s memories.”
As for the wine’s drinkability? Ruiz Arrebola hesitated. Tests showed no toxins. But the idea of sipping a beverage steeped in human remains for two thousand years did not seem appealing to researchers.
Still, in a way, the wine has served its final purpose—not to be enjoyed, but to be remembered. And now, thousands of years later, it is.