GREEK ALCOHOL
The arrival of
alcohol in ancient
Greece is undocumented.
Many believe it
was brought to
Crete by Phoenician
traders. It is
also likely that
it arrived from the
north as well, via
the land route from Asia
Minor. The earliest evidence
of alcohol in Greece is a
stone foot press at Vathipetro,
a Minoan villa on Crete, dated to 1600 BC.
The sophistication of the site suggests that Minoan production of wine had been underway for some time. Decoded Linear B tablets from the Minoan site at Knossos in Crete revealed an advanced economy fueled by trade with Eastern cultures, including Egypt. Archaeological finds on the Greek mainland indicate a close connection with the Mycenaean culture. By the sudden end of the Minoan civilization shortly after 1500 BC, winemaking was probably common throughout mainland Greece and the Aegean.
The period from 750-550 BC saw the establishment of Greek city states. The needs of a growing Greek population were met by further expansion throughout the Mediterranean coast and along the Black Sea. These colonies were able provide the Greeks with a wide variety of staple goods including meat grain, fish, wool and timber in exchange for olive oil, wine and manufactured commodities. Some of these colonized areas were ideal for the cultivation of the vine. Greek colonists from Phocaia in Asia Minor had themselves founded a colony called Massalia, later Marseilles, on the southern coast of what is now France. This event has become a subtext in Greek cookbooks for thirty years, in which claims are made that the Greeks introduced Bouillabaisse to France. This is unfortunate because these relatively meaningless assertions detract from the likely role the Greeks had in initiating an advanced level of viniculture in the south of France.
The Greek trade in wine was extensive. An early system of appellation designation was implemented to assure the origins of esteemed products. Wine traveled wherever ships sailed. This, the first golden age of wine, entirely an age of Greek wine, came to a close with the disintegration of Magna Graecia during the Peloponesian Wars. By the time Athens fell to the Romans in 86 BC, however, the groundwork for advanced viticulture had been laid throughout a vast expanse of the Western World.