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Tradition and Technology: The Early Development of the Wine Press
What happened during prehistory? No one remembers because we didn’t write it down. Now we find ourselves stuck with the likes of archaeologists, linguists, and bioanthropologists trying to piece together what we used to do. Unfortunately their explanations are hardly precise enough to explain the moment something important occurred–like when we first learned to make alcohol. While we can estimate that ancient Armenians were making wine over 6 thousand years ago, no one can say that Tatev was the one who figured it out. Who taught them to ferment the grape juice? Who got drunk first? How did they squeeze the juice from the grape?
The earliest wine-makers, as far as we know, set up shop in the Areni-1 cave around 4,000 BC. The evidence that these vintners left behind indicate that they trod upon the grapes in a slanted aragast or clay basin and let the grape juice run into buried vats in which it would ferment.
It seems that humans instinctively recognized the foot as a suitable grape squashing tool. We could not begin to estimate how many feet have trodden how many grapes, as this method of pressing juice has been continuously practiced for 6,000 years. Treading floors like the clay basin in Areni-1 prove it. Even though we have hydraulic presses and other technology today, it seems there is something sticky about tradition that keeps us pressing grapes in as our ancestors did.
While treading is a simple process, early wine-makers had techniques to make it easier. Ancient grape presses were often lined with bored holes into which tall wooden posts were placed. From these posts, ropes could be strung across the treading ground so that clean-footed men could stabilize themselves on something. Other times, the treaders at the very edge of the press might have an anchor, but the others would simply link arms for support. Still other presses had ropes hanging from a ceiling. While not properly “technologies,” these press accessories helped to ease the process of treading grapes early on.
Our ancestors started their viticultural journey by taking one step–onto a grape–but we have picked up some new tricks along the way. The ancients utilized other pressing techniques alongside the basic treading. The same cup indentations used for stability poles, Gosta Ahlstrom suggests, might have even been used as a mini-press for a single cup of juice. Perhaps as their fathers marched upon the large treading floors of grapes, young children carved their own cups and crushed a small share of grapes for a festive drink.
In both Egypt and the Levant, wringing also accompanied normal treading. Sacks were filled with grapes and strung between two poles which were then twisted to tighten the cloth and extract the juice. Egyptian murals depict such scenes, and the Egyptians learned viticulture from the Levant. These bag-and-pole presses, however, do not feature prominently in the story of wine press technology, as none are ever found in archaeological digs. Unlike plaster and stone presses, these bags must have decayed.
Around 1,400 BC, the first major advance in press technology occurred in Syria. Treading floors were equipped with a lever and a weight to help press the stubborn juices from grapes. Mechanical pressing, first done with these rudimentary levers, could increase the total wine yield by 25%! It became complimentary to treading and optimized production. After the feet had done their work, the remaining grape matter could be collected and mechanically squeezed.
The lever press has since come in many shapes and forms. The long wooden levers were sometimes manipulated by a rotating drum, other times with weights, and still others a screw. These mechanisms all allowed the height of the level to be changed, forcing the large wooden pole down onto the grapes for pressing. Eventually, the screw mechanism that controlled the lever’s height was isolated all together. Likely some time during the 1st Century BC, the screw press came about.
A long line of scholars have suggested that the historical trajectory from foot to lever to screw was linear and irreversible. The efficiency gained, they thought, with each new technology would immediately obsolete the former methods. Newer criticism counters that this is simply wrong. Rather, certain localities preferred certain presses and developed expertise in building, maintaining, and using them. Each of the techniques existed contemporarily for thousands of years, even up to the modern era. Obviously the screw press did not make treading grapes obsolete.
The debate is fueled by a passage written by Pliny in the late 1st Century. The classical thinker wrote:
Men of old would drag [the levers] down with ropes and leather straps and also with hand-spakes. Within the last 100 years ‘Greek-style’ [presses] have been devised, with the threads of the rod running throughout the length of the screws; with the star of the pole being fixed in position by some, in some with the pole raising with itself boxes of stones, which is especially favoured. Within the past 22 years there has been devised a way, with small presses and in a smaller press building, with a shorter rod directed toward the middle, to press plates placed on top of the marc from above with all its weight and to build a mass above the presses.” (Burton and Lewit Translation)
The precision with which Pliny identified the dates of invention (down to 22 years ago), and the apparent chronology of use have been relied on to argue that wine press technology was adopted and traditional methods were left to the “men of old”. Regardless of how random Pliny’s dates are, the archaeological record shows that technological progress did not march across Mediterranean vineyards. Rather, presses reflected local styles and were used for centuries.
In the paintings of Pompei we can find a lever and drum press. In the remains of southern Israel, unique octagonal vats collected the pressed juices of the harvest. In northern Africa, the screw press appears entirely absent during ancient times. It was not until the 6th and 7th centuries that screw presses began appearing in places like Greece.
It is difficult to pull apart prehistory, and the brown area between history and prehistory, without making some assumptions. We imagine that wine-makers would obviously want to use the shiniest new technology for their wines, but this assumption overlooks important considerations. For starters, at least in ancient Rome, land owners were responsible for providing their tenants with a wine press. In other places, a treading floor by the vineyard would make more sense than a large installment. Ripe grapes are tender and will lose the best and sweetest juice if carried over distance. At the end of the day, treading was also a culturally ingrained practice. While the pressing or grapes for wine was undoubtedly an economic activity subject to efficiencies, it was also an important cultural rite to be celebrated and honored.
Today, the bottles of wine that we drink are likely squeezed using stainless steel and inhuman pressure. The human touch, even the touch of natural surfaces like wood and stone, are sterilized from the industrial process. No matter, for in certain corners of the world our ancient tradition continues. Every year at least a couple feet get stained with the juices and skins of the grape harvest.
Sources Cited
Ahlström, Gösta W. “Wine Presses and Cup-Marks of the Jenin-Megiddo Survey.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 231, 1978, pp. 19–49. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=oah&AN=OTA0000028418&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Avshalom-Gorni, Dina, Rafael Frankel, and Nimrod Getzov. “A Complex Winepress from Mishmar Ha-‘Emeq: Evidence for the Peak in the Development of the Wine Industry in Eretz Israel in Antiquity.” ‘Atiqot/עתיקות (2008): 65-67.
Burton, Paul, and Tamara Lewit. “Pliny’s Presses: the True Story of the First Century Wine Press.” Klio 101.2 (2019): 543-598.
Harutyunyan, Mkrtich, and Manuel Malfeito-Ferreira. “Historical and heritage sustainability for the revival of ancient wine-making techniques and wine styles.” Beverages 8.1 (2022): 10.
Lewit, Tamara. “Oil and wine press technology in its economic context: screw presses, the rural economy and trade in Late Antiquity.” Antiquité tardive 20 (2012): 137-149.
Lewit, Tamara, and Paul Burton. “Wine and oil presses in the Roman to Late Antique Near East and Mediterranean: Balancing textual and archaeological evidence.” Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt: Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations andstone vessels from the Prehistory to Late Antiquity. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2019.
Turshan, Nizar, and Matthew Cox. “YA’AMUN MAIN WINE PRESS FROM ROMAN TO THE END OF UMAYYAD AND EARLY ABBASID PERIODS IN NORTHERN JORDAN.” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 15.3 (2015): 131-139.
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