Ancient Wine: the search for the origins of viniculture Patrick E McGovern Princeton University Press, 365pp, £19.95 ISBN 0691070806

This is a prodigiously learned book by a prodigiously learned man. Patrick McGovern is a professional archaeologist who has not only mastered Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic and the usual classical languages, but is versed in all the scientific and mathematical skills necessary to decipher, from the traces left on a shard of dreary pottery, where it came from, what it contained, who drank from it, who quarrelled over it, and why the whole thing came to a sticky end. McGovern joins the excitement of exploring ruins to the excitement of getting drunk in them, and the result is as intoxicating to the reader as it clearly was to the writer. My only complaint is that he always presents his knowledge in detective-story form, adding excitement where a touch of old-fashioned sober scholarship would be more effective. But this is a book that does a much-needed service to the cause of civilisation by showing, in effect, that civilisation is coextensive with alcohol, and that periods of prohibition and teetotalism have been periods of deep cultural decay.

Of the 100 or so grape varieties that grow wild in Europe, Asia and North America, a single species (Vitis vinifera) is responsible for the wine that we drink, all varietals being cultivars of this grape. And the root vin or fin crops up all over the place, in the Indo-European language group and out of it, as the name for both the plant and the product - although I rather prefer the ancient Egyptian lrp, which conveys the sound of merry drinking more effectively.

Such facts point to an original discovery and manufacture, subsequently spread across the Middle East and further afield. McGovern sets out to find out where and when that discovery occurred. As so often, the Bible proves to be a useful guide - both the story of Noah's drunkenness and the story of Noah's flood, which allow McGovern to speculate in a fascinating way about the original Black Sea basin. Maybe wine was grown there at a time when the surroundings were too cold to cultivate grapes. And maybe it was flooded - such is one plausible hypothesis - when the natural dam of the Bosphorus burst under pressure from a spell of global warming. McGovern does not go into what caused the global warming: maybe hot air from contemporary environmentalists. But just thinking of those first vineyards and the great saviours of mankind who tended them, now drowned under the waters of the grim Black Sea, gave rise to a thirst that needed a whole bottle of Chateau Musar to quench it.

The trade spread south into Assyria and Mesopotamia. It took hold of Egypt, and soon the dynasties were devotees of the grape, associating it with all the events of civil life and public administration, and leaving elaborate records of what they drank and when. The biblical lands, both before and after the Israelite migrations, were colonised by the grape, which served as a kind of advanced guard of the human hordes, taming the landscape and making it possible to celebrate victories in style. The city states of Greece and Persia took over the tradition, and with characteristic chauvinism the Greeks invented the myth of Dionysus, attributing the invention of wine to one of their own deities.

Winos will enjoy McGovern's book for the reverence and knowledge with which he discusses their most trustworthy friend. But this is far more than a history of wine. McGovern uses wine as a vehicle for exploring the reaches of ancient history, and for presenting some of the astonishing archeological discoveries that are still being made. The story of wine begins in the first days of settlement, the time of transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from man the species to man the individual, from the cheerful polytheism of the wanderer to the solemn and monotheistic creeds of those who are settled in a single place and determined to take charge of it. But it gets more exciting as the centuries and millennia unfold. By the time we get to Persia, Greece and Rome it has become truly urgent, because it is now a story of civilisations and their clashes - the story in which we are still involved.

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