Straw wine, a sweet dessert wine made by drying grapes on straw mats to concentrate their sugars, has ancient Mediterranean roots. Neolithic sites in Cyprus show sweet wine was being made there around 6,000 years ago. In which other Mediterranean country were raisin-wine methods described in writing around 800 BC?

Question

Accepted Answer

Greece. In mainland Greece around 800 BC, the poet Hesiod described drying grapes in the sun to make sweet wine, one of the earliest written references to what would become the straw-wine tradition. Cyprus's Commandaria, made in a similar style, claims descent from Neolithic-era wines on the island.