Since its discovery, wine has always aroused the interest of man, who has attributed to it beneficial, thaumaturgical properties throughout history, even going so far as to consider it the drink of the gods, or even to ban it for fear of its effects on the mind. Bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics tell us about the wine produced in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, where it was reserved for the rich (unlike beer) and offered to the gods through the libation ceremony. Amphorae containing wine (complete with “labeling” indicating the vintage, place of production and quality) were even part of the funerary objects of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
Subsequently, viticulture spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, arriving first in Ancient Greece.
For the Greeks, wine was a fundamental tool for socialization, to which, as is known, they also dedicated a deity: Dionysus. In fact, the drink and the God were the protagonists of the Symposium, a sort of wine party ante litteram: a group of men (nine at most) gathered, usually after the evening meal, to discuss philosophy, politics, war and enjoy those pleasures of life considered at the time a divine gift. During the Symposium, men used to amuse themselves with dancers and entertainers (the only women allowed), while drinking a mixture of water and wine. At the time, in fact, the winemaking and conservation techniques (including boiling) allowed to obtain a very sweet, alcoholic and syrupy product, extremely different from what we know today as wine and which therefore needed to be lightened with water and flavored with honey and spices. On the contrary, the Celts were able to produce much lighter and thirst-quenching wines, which they preserved in wooden barrels, unlike other ancient populations, who relied for centuries on amphorae and ceramics of various shapes and sizes.
It was also from Greece that wine arrived, together with amphorae, ceramics and the cult of Dionysus, to the Etruscans (who identified the divinity as Fufluns). From then on, winemaking techniques spread throughout the peninsula, later being improved by the Romans, who not only intuited and exploited the bactericidal properties of wine, but also understood its economic value, so much so that today we know, for example, that the area of Pompeii was at the time, one of the most renowned for wine production in the entire ancient world.
Liber, also known by the name Liber Pater was the God of wine, fertility and agriculture in Rome. Liber was one of the tutelary deities of the Roman plebs, his feast, the Liberalia, (celebrated on March 17) was associated with freedom of speech and the rights that came with maturity. Young men celebrated reaching manhood by cutting their first beard and dedicating it to the guardian deities of their home, and if they were free citizens, they wore their toga virilis for the first time, reserved exclusively for adult men. Liber was also the personification of male sexual power, however his attributes were slowly absorbed by Bacchus and Dionysus, with whom he ended up sharing myths and peculiarities.
The cult of the god Bacchus arrived and spread to Rome around the 2nd century BC. Similarly to the cult of Dionysus in Greece, from which it derives, it was a mystery cult, reserved only for initiates (initially only for women, called bacchantes) with mystical purposes. During the celebration of the bacchanalia, not only did they drink, but they also practiced sexual activity, often in ways that were contrary to the laws of Rome. For this reason, in a short time the followers of Bacchus ended up clashing with the official religion, until in 186 BC. the Senate, issued the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, with the aim of annihilating the cult of Bacchus by demolishing the temples and persecuting the followers. Subsequently, the bacchanalia survived as propitiatory festivals celebrated on the occasion of the harvest or sowing, but without the mysterious component.
With the collapse of the Empire, the spread of Christian morality and subsequently of Islam in the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin, there was a sharp decline in production. Ironically, it was thanks to the monks that wine found its refuge. In fact, within European monasteries, wine was widely used: recognized as the blood of Christ, a fundamental element for the Eucharist, it was once again charged with symbolic meanings; not only was it drunk (in moderation), but it was even used as a medicine to invigorate the sick, to wash the altar and the body of the deceased or as a reward for hard work. At the same time, it could be denied as a penance and its consumption was discouraged, to avoid the onset of “sinful behaviors”. Wine was therefore a bearer of virtues, but also the father of all vices, a drink that if taken without moderation led to dissolution and sin.
This dichotomy also exists in the East: Ayurveda, the oldest healing system in the world, considers wine a sort of elixir capable of curing many pathologies, as well as a substitute for Soma, a sacrificial juice extracted from the plant of the same name and also defined as the “drink of the immortals”. However, the same texts define wine as a bearer of intoxication that upsets the mind.
In Europe, wine regained its role only during the Renaissance: many were the writers and artists of the time who praised its qualities. With the advent of master coopers in the seventeenth century, the spread of cork stoppers and cheaper bottles, wine returned to being the protagonist of Western culture, a symbol of peasant life, tradition and seasonality.
Even today, we can trace in all the production phases, ritualizing elements and codified gestures, inherited from popular tradition, which transform viticulture and wine production into a great ritual that runs through all the seasons and ends with the most sacred moment of all, the opening of the bottle and its consumption, an operation that involves all the senses: the sound of the cork being removed, the colors in the glass, the aromas, the scent, the consistency; a true sensory experience, in a certain sense mystical, that we can do every day at home.
We hope you enjoyed this brief (and certainly not exhaustive) historical-cultural excursus focused on the cults linked to wine and its production. See you soon with a new article!
