DNA Reveals Phoenicians Brought Wine Grapes to Spain

Spain’s wine industry has long been credited to the Romans. Ancient DNA extracted from grape seeds tells a different story, one that starts centuries earlier with Phoenician traders.

Rewriting the Origins of Iberian Wine

An international team led by the University of Valencia, the Institute of Grapevine and Wine Sciences, and the Institute of History set out to trace the roots of Iberian viticulture using ancient DNA. Their study, published in the journal Current Biology, concludes that the first cultivated grapevines on the peninsula arrived from the eastern Mediterranean roughly 3,000 years ago, well before the Roman conquest of Iberia in the third century BC.

Twenty-Eight Seeds, Three Thousand Years

Researchers coordinated by Carolina Royo, working with Guillem Pérez-Jordà and Leonor Peña Chocarro, analyzed 28 ancient grape seeds recovered from archaeological sites across the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia. The earliest cultivated varieties turned out to be genetically related to domesticated vines grown by Eastern Mediterranean settlers who established colonies in the southern and eastern parts of the peninsula, tracing viticulture’s spread directly to Phoenician traders.

Crossing With Wild Vines

Pérez-Jordà said the imported vines crossed early on with local wild grape populations, a process that shaped many of the traditional varieties still grown across Iberia today, some already identifiable in seeds dating to the fourth century BC. That crossbreeding helped the eastern varieties adapt to their new environment while creating entirely new genetic lineages unique to the region.

A Variety Still Growing After 1,100 Years

One of the study’s most striking findings involves genetic continuity. By comparing seeds from different time periods, researchers traced family relationships stretching from medieval seeds to varieties grown today, including the Valencian raisin grape. The team confirmed that heben, a founder variety introduced by early settlers, has remained in continuous cultivation for at least 1,100 years. Researchers say the spread of viticulture across the western Mediterranean was driven primarily by Phoenician settlers, and that local populations adopted the practice quickly, turning vineyards into a commercial industry across southern and eastern Iberia by the late eighth century BC.

Sources

This report draws on the University of Valencia’s own announcement of research published in Current Biology.