January 11

January 11, 1922: On this day, Franco Biondi Santi was born. His ancestors Clemente Santi and Ferruccio Biondi Santi invented the type of red wine called Brunello di Montalcino, which is produced entirely of Sangiovese grapes in Tuscany. Carrying on the family legacy, Santi led the Biondi-Santi winery from 1970 until he passed away in 2013.

January 11, 2011: National Geographic reported on discovering the world’s oldest winery at the Areni 1 cave complex in Armenia following excavations and archaeological work, which the National Geographic Society itself had partially funded. The winery in question dated to approximately 6,000 years ago and was developed sometime between 4100 BC and 4000 BC when Armenia was still in the Copper Age or Chalcolithic Period. The Areni 1 cave complex was not the earliest centre of viticulture to ever be discovered, but it is seemingly the earliest winery where wine was mass produced thousands of years ago using presses and facilities to produce large quantities, all at the one site. Thus, Armenia holds the title of having been host to the world’s first known winery in the modern sense of the term. For more information, see the article ‘Earliest Known Winery Found in Armenian Cave’, by James Owen in National Geographic , 12 January 2011.

January 11, 2022: The Kings of Napa premiered on OWN. The soap opera is about an African American family who runs a Napa Valley vineyard following the father’s departure from the company.

For more dates in wine history, click here.

 

 

Header image: Librarygroover — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).