Archaeologists Find World’s Oldest Liquid Wine In Sunken Roman Tomb Hidden Under a Spanish Home

In the old Spanish town of Carmona, history has a way of showing up uninvited. A local family began a simple home renovation and ended up cracking open a portal to ancient Rome, stated ZME Science. Beneath their property was a sealed tomb, untouched for nearly two millennia. What followed was not just a stunning archaeological discovery; it was one man’s final toast.

Inside the tomb, archaeologists discovered something that would take five years to fully understand. Among the six cremation urns, one grabbed the attention of experts. It held a glass vessel filled with about five liters of reddish-brown liquid. What seemed at first a mystery turned out to be the world’s oldest wine ever discovered in liquid form—poured around 2,000 years ago beside the cremated remains of a Roman man named Senicio.

José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, an organic chemist at the University of Córdoba who led the analysis, told The Guardian, "It’s a sunken tomb that was excavated from the rock, which allowed it to remain standing for 2,000 years… Romans were proud, even in death, and used to build funeral monuments, such as towers, over their tombs so people could see them. They wanted to remain in people’s memories."

The tomb had been expertly carved into the rock, creating a sealed environment that protected its contents like a time capsule. Until now, all we had were crusty, dusty residues or chemical traces in ancient amphorae. But this? This was the real deal. Senicio’s urn included not just his cremated remains, but also a gold ring embellished with the two-faced god Janus, and possibly even metal remnants from the bed on which he was cremated. The wine, now tawny and opaque, was not originally red—it was white, experts confirmed, after analyzing the absence of syringic acid, a compound found in red wine decomposition, stated ZME Science.

Polyphenol analysis revealed seven wine-specific markers that perfectly matched modern wines from southern Spain’s Montilla-Moriles and Jerez regions—places still famous today for sherry-like varieties. Ruiz Arrebola noted, "We compared those polyphenols with those from wines from this part of Andalucía – and they matched." And this tomb had its own stories. While Senicio’s urn held wine, another belonging to a woman named Hispana included a 2,000-year-old bottle of Roman perfume, fine fabrics, and jewelry.

The difference was not coincidental. Roman funerary customs allowed elite men to be honored with wine, but women were typically just celebrated with perfumes and silks. Now, for the part whether anyone was tempted to sample this ancient wine, Ruiz Arrebola chuckled, "It’s not in the least bit toxic – we’ve done the microbiological analysis…But I’d have qualms about that because this wine has spent 2,000 years in contact with the cremated body of a dead Roman. The liquid is a bit murky because of the bone remains. But I guess you could filter it and try it. I’d rather someone else tried it first, though," stated The Guardian. In the end, this wine wasn’t meant to be enjoyed—it was meant to endure.