1,500-year-old Byzantine wine complex found in Israel

Archeologists in Israel say they have excavated the ancient world’s largest winemaking complex. The Gazan white wine was exported across the eastern Mediterranean during the Byzantine era.

Gregory of Tours in the 6th c. writes in his Histories (7.29) that Gaza wine was one of the most prized wines in Gaul. Now a huge facility from the Byzantine period producing precisely this kind of wine was discovered in Israel. Late antique connections!

A massive wine factory, the largest complex of winepresses known in the world from the Byzantine period was found in recent months in Yavne, Israel. The archaeologists: “Approximately 2 million liters of wine were produced every year”.

What people are saying?

John003 After the Jewish exile in 75AD….It was Roman then Byzantine then Christian crusades….Then conquered by Arabs then Ottoman then British in 1917…Then the Jewish state in 1948….Palestine bit in 1948 was part of Jordan after the British left.

catgast But even in a good article like this you’ve the usual mistake: “one finds the hallmarks of industrial activity that far back, from the Middle Bronze through the Romans; and come the Byzantines, the site was upgraded to a wine mega-factory”