🍷 Noah's vineyard
Also known as: Noah's vineyard, Noah and the vineyard, Noah and wine, Noah's drunkenness, Genesis 9 vineyard, Noah the winemaker
The biblical story of Noah planting the first vineyard after the Flood, set beside the oldest archaeological traces of wine in Georgia.
Noah's vineyard is the biblical story of the patriarch Noah, who planted the first vineyard after the flood. Noah's vineyard (Noah and the vineyard) is the biblical story of Noah planting the first vineyard after the Flood. It is told in chapter nine of the Book of Genesis. The text calls Noah the first to do so and goes straight on to show what happened when he drank the wine.
First the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4). Then Noah took up farming, planted a vineyard, drank the wine and, drunk, lay uncovered in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw it and told his brothers. Shem and Japheth covered their father with a cloak, walking backward so as not to look. Waking up, Noah cursed Canaan and blessed Shem. The story spends only a few words on the wine; what counts in it is what the sons did and what the father said.
Archaeology offers a quite different angle, unconnected to the Bible. In PNAS (2017) scientists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Georgian National Museum described wine residues on pottery from early Neolithic sites in Georgia. The finds date to about 6000–5800 BC and are the earliest biomolecular evidence of grape wine in the Near East. The huge jars probably served for fermenting, ageing and serving. Their culture reached western Azerbaijan and northern Armenia.
The Bible gives no dates, so the two paths should be set side by side with care. They are different kinds of evidence: a tradition and a chemical analysis. The history of wine puts them side by side, and the page on wine covers the wider theme.
A 2023 study proposed two separate domestications of the grapevine, one south of the Caucasus and one in the northern and central Levant. The Genesis 9 scene itself is placed by scholars in the Ararat region, possibly Urartu, south of the Caucasus near modern Armenia and Georgia. The word for wine hints at an old shared root: terms are alike across Indo-European, Semitic, Egyptian and Kartvelian languages, and Hebrew yayin likely goes back to an older wayin.
Facts
| Document kind | Bible, Book of Genesis 8:4 and 9:18–27 1 |
|---|---|
| Duration | Oldest chemically confirmed wine: Georgia, about 6000–5800 BC 2 |
| Region | Ararat (in the Bible); South Caucasus, Georgia (archaeology) 2 |
How it connects to Wine
🍷 Noah's vineyard → image → 🍷 Wine
Links
- Next step
- 🍷 History of wine
- Related to
- 🍷 Wine
- Part of
- 🍷 History of wine
Frequently asked questions
Who planted the first vineyard in the Bible?
Noah. Genesis 9:20 says he was the first to plant a vineyard, after the Flood.
What happened after Noah drank the wine?
He lay uncovered in his tent. Ham told his brothers, and Shem and Japheth covered their father, walking backward. Noah then cursed Canaan and blessed Shem (Genesis 9:21–27).
Where did Noah's ark land?
Genesis 8:4 says the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day.
Is the oldest known wine from the time of Noah?
The Bible gives no dates. The oldest chemical evidence of grape wine comes from Georgia, about 6000–5800 BC, according to a 2017 PNAS study.
Is it true that the Bible says Noah invented wine?
Not exactly. The text says he was the first to plant a vineyard, and it does not describe how wine began.
Similar
🍷 Kiddush · 🍷 Toast (honor) · 🍷 In vino veritas · 🍷 Eucharist · 🍷 Jean-Antoine Chaptal · 🍷 Saint Nino
Sources
- Genesis 8:4 and 9:18–27, The JPS Tanakh (Revised JPS Edition, 2023), Jewish Publication Society
- McGovern P. et al. Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus. PNAS 114(48): E10309–E10318, 2017 (University of Pennsylvania Museum; Georgian National Museum)
- Bible and Interpretation, tracing the origins of wine in language and literature