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A team of archaeologists discovered a massive and ancient wine factory capable of making around half a million gallons of wine a year in Israel, an indication of a near-industrial operation that existed in the region 1,500 years ago.
The ancient winery was Located in Yavne, a city of around 50,000 people, it is the largest complex of wine presses known from the Byzantine period, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The archeologists date the site’s grape presses to some point between the 5th and 7th centuries when the area was part of the Byzantine Empire. And according to one of the excavation’s directors, Dr. Jon Seligman, the winemaking facility could be the Mediterranean’s biggest from that period or earlier.
It was widely praised in Byzantine-era literature and known as Vinum Gazetum or Gaza wine because it was exported from the ancient port city near modern-day Gaza.
Also, five winepresses were found by the Archeologists, four large warehouses where the wine was aged, kilns where the clay wine jugs were fired, and tens of thousands of broken pieces of jugs.
Elie Haddad, an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist who co-directed the two-year dig on the outskirts of Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, said that “The proportions here are incredible.”
Archaeologists were called in to survey the area before an overpass is built there.
Each winepress found covers an area of about 2,400 square feet. Around the treading floor, where grapes were crushed by foot, were compartments for fermenting the wine and large octagonal vats that collected the wine.
The dig also unearthed even more ancient wine presses about 2,300 years old, pointing to a longstanding tradition of winemaking in the area. The Talmud speaks of the “vineyard of Yavne” where Jewish religious sages gathered after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
The ancient cosmopolitan city of Yavne was home to a patchwork of Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and others. Who operated the winery is unknown, but archaeologists say the large, intricate conch-shell decorations suggest the owners were wealthy.
The archaeologists even found several, completely intact, slender clay amphorae where the wine was aged and stored for export.
The same kind of long clay jugs has also been discovered in the Gaza Strip, where they are displayed in a museum — testifying to a time when Gaza was not a blockaded area of conflict but rather a bustling portal to the ancient world.
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Source: NPR
