Wine is older than writing, cities and almost anything we call civilisation. Few products have accompanied us for so long and yet continue to evolve. This is the story in brief, without embellishment and without needing to be a sommelier to follow it.
When and where was wine born?
The earliest evidence of winemaking comes from Georgia, in the Caucasus, and dates back around 8,000 years. Remains of clay vessels containing fermented grape residue have been found there. The discovery was probably accidental: wild grapes stored in a container, natural yeasts doing their work, and someone curious enough to taste the result.
Georgia still preserves a living tradition today: qvevris, large buried amphorae in which wine is fermented and aged. It is one of the oldest techniques in the world and remains in use.
Wine timeline: the major milestones
- Around 6000 BC: the earliest evidence of wine in the Caucasus.
- Around 3000 BC: wine is already commonplace in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In the tombs of the pharaohs, amphorae labelled with the vintage and origin were stored.
- 1000–500 BC: the Phoenicians and Greeks carry it across the Mediterranean and plant vineyards in Sicily, southern Italy and along the Iberian coast.
- 2nd century BC to 5th century AD: Rome turns wine into a large-scale business. It extends viticulture across Gaul, Iberia and the Rhine and Danube basins. Many of Europe’s wine regions today began then.
- Middle Ages: monasteries, especially Benedictine and Cistercian, preserve knowledge and observe which plots produce the finest wines. This is where the idea of “terroir” in Burgundy emerges.
- 17th–18th centuries: the glass bottle and cork stopper make it possible to store wine for years. The modern concept of age-worthy wine emerges, along with Champagne sparkling wine.
- 1855: Bordeaux classifies its great châteaux. It is the first major system of commercial hierarchy in wine.
- Second half of the 19th century: phylloxera, an insect from America, destroys almost all European vineyards. The solution was to graft European vines onto resistant American rootstocks, saving wine as we know it.
- 1976: in what became known as the “Judgment of Paris”, Californian wines outperform leading French wines in a blind tasting. The New World is no longer a curiosity.
- 21st century: sustainable viticulture, natural wines, emerging regions and new approaches to winemaking and ageing.
How has wine changed over time?
For millennia, wine was an everyday drink, often harsh, consumed young and diluted because it did not keep. Three changes transformed it:
- Preservation. With glass and cork, wine stopped spoiling within months and gained a new value: time.
- Science. Pasteur explained fermentation in the 19th century, and since then we have gained greater control over yeasts, temperatures and hygiene.
- The focus on origin. We moved from drinking “wine” to drinking “the wine from this area, this year, this plot.”
What are the world’s main wine regions?
Vines thrive in two belts of the planet, between the 30th and 50th parallels, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Below or above these latitudes, it is too hot or too cold for grapes to ripen properly.
The Old World (Europe and the Mediterranean): tradition, appellation regulations and wines that express the place before the variety.
- France: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Rhône, Loire.
- Italy: Tuscany, Piedmont, Veneto, Sicily.
- Iberian Peninsula: Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Priorat, Rías Baixas, Douro, and in the Basque Country, the txakolis of Bizkaia, Araba and Gipuzkoa—fresh, saline whites shaped by the Cantábrico.
- Germany and Austria: Riesling and highly precise white wines.
The New World: greater freedom of style and a focus on the variety.
- United States: Napa and Sonoma in California.
- Argentina and Chile: Mendoza, Uco Valley, Colchagua.
- Australia and New Zealand: Barossa, Marlborough.
- South Africa: Stellenbosch, Swartland.
Regions that no one was looking at thirty years ago are also emerging strongly: Georgia, Lebanon, Uruguay, the Canary Islands and even southern England, where climate change is opening up new possibilities.
What now? Wine is still evolving
Each era has added its own chapter: the amphora, the barrel, the bottle, stainless steel. One of the most recent is being written underwater. In Crusoe Treasure we have been ageing wine submerged in the Cantábrico since 2008. But we began earlier, in 2006, with the LSEB (Underwater Beverage Ageing Laboratory) off Plentzia, in Bizkaia. After years of study, we succeeded in creating our own artificial reef winery beneath the sea, in waters off Plentzia, to produce the wines Crusoe Treasure. In 2024, we expanded our underwater facilities to a new location and depth off Getxo, at a depth of 28 m. As the world’s first artificial reef winery, after years of research in the rough waters of the Cantábrico, we now have two underwater facilities designed as reefs. They serve as both wineries and artificial reefs, providing shelter for marine species and wine bottles within them. Seen through the lens of history, the idea makes perfect sense: wine was born at the bottom of a buried vessel, and now we are exploring what happens when we return it to a stable, dark and constantly moving natural environment. Underwater winemaking does not break with tradition; it continues it along another path.
A quick overview
- Wine was born around 8,000 years ago in the Caucasus.
- The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans spread it throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.
- Monasteries, glass bottles and cork turned it into a wine for ageing.
- Phylloxera nearly destroyed it in the 19th century; grafting saved it.
- Today it is produced around the world between the 30th and 50th parallels, and it continues to reinvent itself.
If you would like to learn about our underwater ageing process, visit underwaterwine.com or write to us at visit @ crusoetreasure.com.