Wine of the Sarcophagi
The Romans, as the saying goes, found truth in wine, and they made a habit of draining their cups dry. But they had enough restraint to leave this one bottle behind, stashed in one of two sarcophagi excavated in 1867 in what's now the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The wine in the cloudy, yellowed glass amphora, its neck anchored on either side by small dolphin-shaped handles, dates back to approximately A.D. 300, making it the oldest still liquid wine in the world. Now on permanent display at the History Museum of Pfalz along with other viticultural treasures, the drink is trapped beneath a film of olive oil, which the ancients commonly used to preserve wine from oxidation. Its age shows: thick brown clouds of fluid swirl with sediment, like something an ill-mannered child might concoct in his dinner cup. It may have survived intact, but even the most indiscriminate of Rome's drinkers would find this vintage past its prime.