The hot, dry climate of southern Iraq makes it difficult to grow grapevines,
and the textual evidence for viniculture and winemaking in Mesopotamia is
minimal before the 2nd millennium B.C.
But based on chemical evidence for wine inside jars that could've been
used to transport and serve it, wine was probably already being enjoyed by
at least the upper classes in Late Uruk times (ca. 3500-3100 B.C.).
A "banquet" scene on an impression of a lapis cylinder seal from Queen
Pu-abi's tomb.
A male and female on either side of a wide-mouthed jar are shown imbibing
barley beer through drinking tubes, while others below raise high their cups,
probably containing wine, which is served from a spouted jar.
(Queen Pu-abi, who was buried with her servants—who had all been
ceremonially poisoned—was accompanied to the afterlife with hundreds
of gold and silver goblets, drinking-tubes or straws of lapis lazuli, and
a five-liter silver jar, which is thought to have been her daily allotment
of barley beer!)
The wine imported into lowland Greater Mesopotamia could have been brought
from the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran or other parts of the Near East,
at least 600 kilometers away.
The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus describes shipping wine
down the Euphrates or Tigris from Armenia at a much later period: round skin
boats were loaded with date-palm casks of wine and delivered to Babylon.
River transport was also an option in the Late Uruk Period. But if the
demand for the beverage were great enough, transplantation of grapevines
to closer locales in the central Zagros and possibly as far south as Susa
would be anticipated.
When the Late Uruk trade routes were suddenly cut off at the end of the
period, the pressure to establish productive vineyards closer to the major
urban centers would have intensified.
Future excavation will be decisive in tracing the prehistory of viniculture
and winemaking in this region of the ancient Near East; already there is
a strong indication that the domesticated grape plant had already been
transplanted there as early as the mid-3rd millennium B.C.
Elamite cylinder seals, foreshadowing similiar scenes on Assyrian reliefs
some two millennia later, depict males and females seated under grape arbors,
drinking what is most likely wine.
Source:
http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/online_exhibits/wine/winemesopotamia.html
