08-31-2010, 12:14 AM
Interesting, Craig.....and you can follow various links to this interesting item for Romanophiles.....
WINE OF THE SARCOPHAGI
The Romans, as the saying goes, found truth in wine, and they made a habit of draining their cups dry. But they had enough restraint to leave this one bottle behind, stashed in one of two sarcophagi excavated in 1867 in what's now the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The wine in the cloudy, yellowed glass amphora, its neck anchored on either side by small dolphin-shaped handles, dates back to approximately A.D. 300, making it the oldest still liquid wine in the world. Now on permanent display at the History Museum of Pfalz along with other viticultural treasures, the drink is trapped beneath a film of olive oil, which the ancients commonly used to preserve wine from oxidation. Its age shows: thick brown clouds of fluid swirl with sediment, like something an ill-mannered child might concoct in his dinner cup. It may have survived intact, but even the most indiscriminate of Rome's drinkers would find this vintage past its prime.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packa ... z0y8bO63d6
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packa ... 71,00.html
WINE OF THE SARCOPHAGI
The Romans, as the saying goes, found truth in wine, and they made a habit of draining their cups dry. But they had enough restraint to leave this one bottle behind, stashed in one of two sarcophagi excavated in 1867 in what's now the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The wine in the cloudy, yellowed glass amphora, its neck anchored on either side by small dolphin-shaped handles, dates back to approximately A.D. 300, making it the oldest still liquid wine in the world. Now on permanent display at the History Museum of Pfalz along with other viticultural treasures, the drink is trapped beneath a film of olive oil, which the ancients commonly used to preserve wine from oxidation. Its age shows: thick brown clouds of fluid swirl with sediment, like something an ill-mannered child might concoct in his dinner cup. It may have survived intact, but even the most indiscriminate of Rome's drinkers would find this vintage past its prime.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packa ... z0y8bO63d6
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packa ... 71,00.html
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
