The Durutti Column Vino della casa bianco (1990)
The Durutti Column’s dreamy guitar-track homage to white wine centers on a beverage that has been part of human culture for millennia. That’s not an exaggeration: Just this past June, the previously oldest bottle of wine known to humankind—the “Speyer Bottle” found in Germany and thought to be around 1,700 years old—was knocked off its throne by an even older find:
The beverage stealing the title was found in an ancient Roman mausoleum in Andalusia. More specifically, it was found in one of the six urns the mausoleum held (and yes, before you ask, along with the wine in that urn were also someone’s cremated remains).
Although all six urns contained human remains (but only one held wine! Why? Mysterious!), the research team from the university of Cordoba responsible for the dig was unable to gain any information about whose resting place it was, as cremated remains yield no DNA.
What the research team fortunately was able to analyze further is the wine itself: The study they published this past summer confirms that the liquid in the urn is white wine similar to that still produced in the region today—and that the white wine they found in the urn is approximately 2,000 years old (suck it, Speyer Bottle!).
There’s a follow-up project in the works, too: The researchers now plan to compare the Roman wine to today’s regional whites to possibly pinpoint a more exact place of production and to learn more about their exceptional find.
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