Seven Thousand Years of Wine

Appears in
From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table
From Persia to Napa

By Najmieh Batmanglij

Published 2015

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Fashioned by silversmiths of the Proto-Elamite culture around 3000 B.C.E., a six-inch-high kneeling bull holds a spouted vessel that may have been used for wine libations. The Proto-Elamites, centered in southwestern Iran, often represented animals in human postures in their art.

A bird-shaped vessel from Uruk in Mesopotamia (circa 3300 B.C.E.) and a cluster of Shiraz grapes (grown in Napa, California) are shown.

“W hoever seeks the origins of wine must be crazy,” a Persian poet once wrote, implying that such a quest is not only hopeless but also irrelevant: Enjoyment is what matters.