A reddish liquid found in a 2000-year-old Roman mausoleum in Spain is the oldest known liquid wine in existence, a chemical analysis has revealed.

“I was surprised and full of disbelief,” says at the University of Cordoba in Spain. “It seemed impossible that a liquid could have remained in this state for 2000 years.”

Until now, a sealed vessel found near Speyer, Germany, and believed to be about 1700 years old, was thought to contain the oldest known wine, but it has never been opened.

The Spanish tomb, accidentally discovered in 2019 in Carmona, near Seville, dates from the 1st century AD and belonged to a wealthy family. Eight burial niches, carved in its walls, held six urns made from limestone, sandstone or glass. Half of them contained the cremated remains of women and the other half those of men. Two urns bore the names of the deceased: Hispanae and Senicio.

One of the glass urns, encased in a lead shell, contained bone remnants of a 45-year-old man, a gold ring bearing the image of the two-faced Roman god Janus, and approximately 5 litres of liquid.

Ruiz Arrebola and his team studied the composition of the reddish liquid by various methods, including liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. They found that it had a pH of 7.5 – much more alkaline than normal for wine, indicating strong decay.

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Its mineral profile was similar to that of modern sherry and fino wines from Spain. It also contained seven polyphenols, natural antioxidant compounds, exclusively found in wine.

The absence of syringic acid, a compound produced when the main pigment in red wines decomposes, confirmed its identity as a white wine. The wine was probably meant for the deceased to drink on their voyage into the afterlife.

“The discovery of a 2000-year-old liquid presumed to be wine in a Roman urn is rare and significant, providing unique insights into Roman burial practices,” says at the University of South Florida. “It demonstrates the continuity between ancient and contemporary wine production.”

Ruiz Arrebola plans to carry out further tests to identify any remains of microbes such as bacteria or yeasts that might be present in the wine.

Whether you crave salty dishes or snack on fruit, your genes may influence the food choices you make. Gaining a better understanding of how this varies from person to person could one day lead to bespoke food plans that help people make nutritious choices by taking into account their genetic preferences.

“Dietary intake is influenced by so many other factors – like socioeconomic status, culture and disease diagnoses – that teasing apart the direct genetic component from the environmental or indirect genetic components intrigued me,” says at the University of Colorado.

 that are associated with various aspects of a person’s dietary intake, including how much fruit, vegetables, meat and fish they eat.

The team wanted to better understand if these regions directly or indirectly influence a person’s food choices. “For example, genes that impact diabetes risk may also be associated with dietary intake due to disease management changes, like eating less sugar, and not because the gene is directly influencing someone’s eating behaviour,” says Cole.

The researchers carried out a so-called phenome-wide association study for the 814 regions. This involves taking a single genetic variant and scanning it for certain traits – such as taste preferences, eating habits and health conditions – to see if there is an association. Each region was scanned for more than 4000 traits, using data from around 500,000 participants of the UK Biobank study.

From this, the researchers identified 481 regions in the genome that appear to directly affect dietary intake through flavour perceptions and preferences. The work was presented at , the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition in Boston, Massachusetts. Some of the foods and drinks that are most affected by these genes include salt, water, fish, alcohol and fruit.

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“Consumers report flavour as the primary driver of food choice, therefore, identifying how different people experience different flavours may be the key to personalised nutrition to improve healthy eating,” says Cole.

“I’m focusing now on identifying these sensory genes involved in dietary intake and understanding how different people with different gene versions of these taste and smell receptors have different pleasure and reward activation in the brain. The goal is to make eating healthier easier for different people and I think flavour is key.”