Ancient seeds show the wine evolution in Italy: the study by the University of Montpellier

Italian wine has been always a point of reference for world viticulture, but its history is not so known as that of other countries, in Europe, and Asia. To fill this gap, a team headed by Italian archeobotanist Mariano Ucchesu of the University of Montpellier, in France, analuzed over 1,700 ancient seeds coming from 25 archaeological sites in Italy covering a time frame of about seven millennials, from Neolithic Age up to Middle Age discovering that the domestication of vine in Italy was a slow but gradual process, which lasted thousands of years. The team wanted to monitor the progresses made by human beings in transforming wild grapeseeds with smaller and rounder seeds and small protuberances on the seed, known as pegs, into domestic grapes, which included bigger seeds with more extended pegs. The study, entitled “Tracing the emergence of domesticated grapevine in Italy”, was published in the scientific magazine Plos One.
Researchers discovered that, initially, wild seeds were widespread between the Ancient Neolithic Age, and Ancient Bronze Age, this last dated between 2050 and 1850 Bc. Seeds of grapes, or grapeseeds, in this period, were likely to modern wild grapes structurally rather than to domestic grapes, which, according to the team, could indicate that human communities would collect mainly berries from wild plants. This trend continued until the medium Bronze age, around 1600-1300 Bc. Researchers claim that human beings of Ancient Bronze Age would have probably started the process of vine cultivation basing on the changes in the form and length of grapeseeds dating back to that period.
“The first theory suggests that the varieties of domestic grapes arrived in Italy through trade with the regions of Eastern Mediterranean – declared Mariano Ucchesu to website “Popular Science” - we know that communities in Sardinia, during the Bronze Age, purchased copper, and, which, through these trade exchanges, the varietie4s of domesticate grapes could have been introduced in the island. The second theory, on the contrary, proposed that Sardinian communities started to select wild grape, which, still today, grows on the islands, and started autonomously to cultivate vine, giving the start to an event of secondary domestication”.
The first trials of changes occurred around the Late Bronze Age, between 1300 and 1100 Bc. Studying the grapeseeds from the wells of site Sa Osa in Sardinia, the team discovered that 45% of grapeseeds had domestic origin. Further comparative analyses confirmed substantial structural changes in the length and form of wild grapeseeds from the ancient Neolithic Age compared to the ancient Bronze Age. The team supposed that human beings of the Late Bronze Age started the most dynamic changes through grape selection and cultivation.
But, some questions remain, inasmuch as the exact ancestry of modern Italian grape is not known, and not all the regions of Italy were examined for this study. Willing to collect more info, the team hopes that future studies implement multidisciplinary approaches with geometrical, morphometric, and paleogenetical analyses. The research, funded by the European Union through Horizon 2020, and supported by collaborations with Cnrs-Isem of Montpellier, and many Italian colleagues, represents the first detailed reconstruction of the history of the origins of viticulture in Italy, inserting it in the wider European context. But, it is fascinating to think that “with any sip of prestigious wine, we are tasting the echos of a millennial trip, a history which embraced in time to reach the palate”, declared Mariano Ucchesu.