Wine in ancient Greece

The influence of wine in ancient Greece helped Ancient Greece trade with neighboring countries and regions. Many mannerisms and cultural aspects were associated with wine. It led to great change in Ancient Greece as well.

The ancient Greeks pioneered new methods of viticulture and wine production that they shared with early winemaking communities in what are now France, Italy, Austria and Russia, as well as others, through trade and colonization. Along the way, they markedly influenced the ancient European winemaking cultures of the Celts, Etruscans, Scythians and ultimately the Romans.

Viticulture has existed in Greece since the late Neolithic period, with domestic cultivation becoming widespread by the early Bronze Age. Through trade with ancient Egypt, the Minoan civilization on Crete was introduced to Egyptian winemaking methods, an influence most likely imparted to Mycenaean Greece. The Minoan palaces had their associated vineyards, as Spyridon Marinatos demonstrated in excavations just south of the palace site at Archanes, and the Minoan equivalent of a villa rustica devoted to wine production was unearthed at Kato Zakros in 1961.

In Minoan culture of the mid-second millennium BC, wine and the sacred bull were linked in the form of the horn-shaped drinking cups called rhyta; the name of Oinops (Greek: οἶνοψ, "wine-colored") is twice attested in Linear B tablets at Knossos and repeated twice in Homer. Along with olives and grain, grapes were an important agricultural crop vital to sustenance and community development; the ancient Greek calendar followed the course of the vintner's year.

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