Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – An old brownish-red stain that has been an enigma for archeologists working on an excavation site near Basel has turned out to be red wine made from black grapes, thus offering proof that the cellar uncovered at Pratteln, southeast of the city, is part of the oldest Swiss medieval winery, or wine farm. The stain was analyzed using highly sophisticated new mass spectometry equipment.
Excavations at the site in June 2007 turned up two brick cellars but the stain on the floor of one was baffling. To determine its origin, several Swiss groups worked together: the federal Changins-Wädenswil ACW agriculture research station, the Functional Genomics Centre in Zurich, the archeology department of canton Basel-state and the Swiss national museums. The new tool, called Maldi-tof/tof, allowed the team to combine cutting-edge technology with tried and true methods used on a stained sample of cellar floor. It had a wine marker called syringic acid, which releases anthocyanin malvidin-3-glucoside, the colouring agent in red wine.
Other work on the site has helped archeologists identify the group of farm buildings as belonging to a “mayor” or tax collector of the period who oversaw the domain, including tithes due by the peasants to St Albans, a convent near Basel.
Ed. note: the name Maldi-tof/tof stands for Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionisation-Time Of Flight/Time Of Flight.