Image via Jour­nal of Archae­o­log­i­cal Sci­ence: Reports

Back in 2017, we fea­tured the old­est unopened bot­tle of wine in the world here on Open Cul­ture. Found in Spey­er, Ger­many, in 1867, it dates from 350 AD, mak­ing it a ven­er­a­ble vin­tage indeed, but one recent­ly out­done by a bot­tle first dis­cov­ered five years ago in Car­mona, near Seville, Spain. “At the bot­tom of a shaft found dur­ing con­struc­tion work,” an exca­va­tion team “uncov­ered a sealed bur­ial cham­ber from the ear­ly first cen­tu­ry C.E. — untouched for 2,000 years,” writes Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s Lars Fis­ch­er. Inside was “a glass urn placed in a lead case was filled to the brim with a red­dish liq­uid,” only recent­ly deter­mined to be wine — and there­fore wine about three cen­turies old­er than the Spey­er bot­tle.

You can read about the rel­e­vant research in this new paper pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Archae­o­log­i­cal Sci­ence: Reports by chemist José Rafael Ruiz Arrebo­la and his team. “The wine from the Car­mona site was no longer suit­able for drink­ing, and it had nev­er been intend­ed for that pur­pose,” writes Fis­ch­er.

“The experts found bone remains and a gold ring at the bot­tom of the glass ves­sel. The bur­ial cham­ber was the final rest­ing place for the remains of the deceased, who were cre­mat­ed accord­ing to Roman cus­tom.” Only through chem­i­cal analy­sis were the researchers final­ly able to deter­mine that the liq­uid was, in fact, wine, and thus to put togeth­er evi­dence of the arrange­men­t’s being an elab­o­rate send­off for a Roman-era oenophile.

Though the funer­ary rit­u­al “involved two men and two women,” says CBS News, the remains in the wine came from only one of the men. This makes sense, as, “accord­ing to the study, women in ancient Rome were pro­hib­it­ed from drink­ing wine.” What a dif­fer­ence a cou­ple of mil­len­nia make: today the cul­tur­al image slants some­what female, espe­cial­ly in the case of white wine, which, despite hav­ing “acquired a red­dish hue,” the liq­uid unearthed in Car­mona was chem­i­cal­ly deter­mined to be. With the sum­mer now get­ting into full swing, this sto­ry might inspire us to beat the heat by putting a bot­tle of our favorite Chardon­nay, Ries­ling, or Pinot Gri­gio in the refrig­er­a­tor — a con­ve­nience unimag­ined by even the wealth­i­est wine-lov­ing cit­i­zens of the Roman Empire.

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Glass Bowl in Per­fect Con­di­tion

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

The Wine Win­dows of Renais­sance Flo­rence Dis­pense Wine Safe­ly Again Dur­ing COVID-19

The Old­est Unopened Bot­tle of Wine in the World (Cir­ca 350 AD)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Amer­i­cans doing “e‑mail jobs” and work­ing in the “lap­top class” tend to make much of the quan­ti­ty of cof­fee they require to keep going, or even to get start­ed. In that sense alone, they have some­thing in com­mon with Civ­il War sol­diers. “Union sol­diers were giv­en 36 pounds of cof­fee a year by the gov­ern­ment, and they made their dai­ly brew every­where and with every­thing: with water from can­teens and pud­dles, brack­ish bays and Mis­sis­sip­pi mud,” write NPR’s Kitchen Sis­ters. “The Con­fed­er­a­cy, on the oth­er hand, was decid­ed­ly less caf­feinat­ed. As soon as the war began, the Union block­ad­ed South­ern ports and cut off the South’s access to cof­fee.”

Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry cura­tor Jon Grinspan tells of how “des­per­ate Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers would invent makeshift cof­fees,” roast­ing “rye, rice, sweet pota­toes or beets until they were dark, choco­laty and caramelized. The result­ing brew con­tained no caf­feine, but at least it was some­thing warm and brown and con­sol­ing.” (See video at bot­tom of the post.) The stark caf­feina­tion dif­fer­en­tial that result­ed must count as one of many fac­tors that led to the Union’s ulti­mate vic­to­ry. Part of what kept their cof­fee sup­plies robust was imports from Liberia, the African repub­lic that had been estab­lished ear­li­er in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry by freed Amer­i­can slaves.

“The Union’s abil­i­ty to pur­chase and dis­trib­ute cof­fee from Liberia, along­side oth­er sources, was help­ing the army’s morale,” writes Bron­wen Ever­ill at Smithsonian.com. “In Decem­ber 1862, one sol­dier wrote that ‘what keeps me alive must be the cof­fee.’ ” Mean­while, a north­ern gen­er­al famous­ly gave this advice to oth­er gen­er­als: “If your men get their cof­fee ear­ly in the morn­ing, you can hold.” Many har­row­ing bat­tles lat­er, “at the Con­fed­er­ate sur­ren­der at Appo­mat­tox in April 1865, Michi­gan sol­dier William Smith not­ed that the Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers present were lick­ing their lips hope­ful­ly, with ‘a keen rel­ish for a cup of Yan­kee cof­fee.’ ” (John­ny Reb had pre­sum­ably acquired this taste between those bat­tles, when sol­diers from both sides would meet and exchange goods.)

The Civ­il War in Four Min­utes video above explains the cof­fee-drink­ing Yan­kee’s habits in more detail. “If there was an ear­ly morn­ing march, the first order of busi­ness was to boil water and make cof­fee,” says actor-his­to­ri­an Dou­glas Ull­man Jr. “If there was a halt along the march, the first order of busi­ness when the march stopped was to get that hot water going to drink more cof­fee.” Sol­diers would keep their cof­fee and mea­ger sug­ar rations in the same bag in order to ensure “the tini­est hint of sug­ar in every drop. Think about that the next time you order your caramel soy mac­chi­a­to.” But such bev­er­ages were still a long way off after the Civ­il War, which gave way to the era of what we now call the Wild West — and with it, the hey­day of cow­boy cof­fee.

via Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

Watch an Exquis­ite 19th Cen­tu­ry Cof­fee Mak­er in Action

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

The His­to­ry of the U.S. Civ­il War Visu­al­ized Month by Month and State by State, in an Info­graph­ic from 1897

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Accord­ing to many his­to­ri­ans, the Eng­lish Enlight­en­ment may nev­er have hap­pened were it not for cof­fee­hous­es, the pub­lic sphere where poets, crit­ics, philoso­phers, legal minds, and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al gad­flies reg­u­lar­ly met to chat­ter about the press­ing con­cerns of the day. And yet, writes schol­ar Bon­nie Cal­houn, “it was not for the taste of cof­fee that peo­ple flocked to these estab­lish­ments.”

Indeed, one irate pam­phle­teer defined cof­fee, which was at this time with­out cream or sug­ar and usu­al­ly watered down, as “pud­dle-water, and so ugly in colour and taste [sic].”

No syrupy, high-dol­lar Mac­chi­atos or smooth, creamy lattes kept them com­ing back. Rather than the bev­er­age, “it was the nature of the insti­tu­tion that caused its pop­u­lar­i­ty to sky­rock­et dur­ing the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies.”

How, then, were pro­pri­etors to achieve eco­nom­ic growth? Like the own­er of the first Eng­lish cof­fee-shop did in 1652, Lon­don mer­chant Samuel Price deployed the time-hon­ored tac­tics of the moun­te­bank, using adver­tis­ing to make all sorts of claims for coffee’s many “virtues” in order to con­vince con­sumers to drink the stuff at home. In the 1690 broad­side above, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, Price made a “litany of claims for coffee’s health ben­e­fits,” some of which “we’d rec­og­nize today and oth­ers that seem far-fetched.” In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry are asser­tions that “cof­fee-drink­ing pop­u­la­tions didn’t get com­mon dis­eases” like kid­ney stones or “Scur­vey, Gout, Drop­sie.” Cof­fee could also, Price claimed, improve hear­ing and “swoon­ing” and was “exper­i­men­tal­ly good to pre­vent Mis­car­riage.”

Among these spu­ri­ous med­ical ben­e­fits is list­ed a gen­uine effect of coffee—its relief of “lethar­gy.” Price’s oth­er beverages—“Chocolette, and Thee or Tea”—receive much less empha­sis since they didn’t require a hard sell. No one needs to be con­vinced of the ben­e­fits of cof­fee these days—indeed many of us can’t func­tion with­out it. But as we sit in cor­po­rate chain cafes, glued to smart­phones and lap­top screens and most­ly ignor­ing each oth­er, our cof­fee­hous­es have become some­what pale imi­ta­tions of those vibrant Enlight­en­ment-era estab­lish­ments where, writes Cal­houn, “men [though rarely women] were encour­aged to engage in both ver­bal and writ­ten dis­course with regard for wit over rank.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee: An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Few of us grow up drink­ing cof­fee, but once we start drink­ing it, even few­er of us ever stop. Accord­ing to leg­end, the ear­li­est such case was a ninth-cen­tu­ry Ethiopi­an goatherd named Kal­di, who noticed how much ener­gy his rumi­nant charges seemed to draw from eat­ing par­tic­u­lar red berries. After chew­ing a few of them him­self, he expe­ri­enced the first caf­feine buzz in human his­to­ry. Despite almost cer­tain­ly nev­er hav­ing exist­ed, Kal­di now lends his name to a vari­ety of cof­fee shops around the world, every­where from Addis Aba­ba to Seoul, where I live.

His sto­ry also opens the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, “How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee.” We do know, explains its nar­ra­tor, that “at some point before the four­teen-hun­dreds, in what’s now Ethiopia, peo­ple began for­ag­ing for wild cof­fee in the for­est under­growth.” Ear­ly on, peo­ple con­sumed cof­fee plants by drink­ing tea made with their leaves, eat­ing their berries with but­ter and salt, and — in what proved to be the most endur­ing method — “dry­ing, roast­ing, and sim­mer­ing its cher­ries into an ener­giz­ing elixir.” Over the years, demand for this elixir spread through­out the Ottoman Empire, and in the full­ness of time made its way out­ward to both Asia and Europe.

In no Euro­pean city did cof­fee catch on as aggres­sive­ly as it did in Lon­don, whose cof­fee hous­es pro­lif­er­at­ed in the mid-sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry and became “social and intel­lec­tu­al hotbeds.” Lat­er, “Paris’ cof­fee hous­es host­ed Enlight­en­ment fig­ures like Diderot and Voltaire, who alleged­ly drank 50 cups of cof­fee a day.” (In fair­ness, it was a lot weak­er back then.) Pro­duc­ing and trans­port­ing the ever-increas­ing amounts of cof­fee imbibed in these and oth­er cen­ters of human civ­i­liza­tion required world-span­ning impe­r­i­al oper­a­tions, which were com­mand­ed with just the degree of cau­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty one might imag­ine.

The world’s first com­mer­cial espres­so machine was show­cased in Milan in 1906, a sig­nal moment in the indus­tri­al­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion of the cof­fee expe­ri­ence. By the mid-nine­teen-fifties, “about 60 per­cent of U.S. fac­to­ries incor­po­rat­ed cof­fee breaks.” More recent trends have empha­sized “spe­cial­ty cof­fees with an empha­sis on qual­i­ty beans and brew­ing meth­ods,” as well as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for cof­fee pro­duc­tion using “min­i­mum wage and sus­tain­able farm­ing.” What­ev­er our con­sid­er­a­tions when buy­ing cof­fee, many of us have made it an irre­place­able ele­ment of our rit­u­als both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al. Not to say what we’re addict­ed: this is the 3,170th Open Cul­ture post I’ve writ­ten, but only the 3,150th or so that I’ve writ­ten while drink­ing cof­fee.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.