Evidence of the earliest winemaking in France has been described - and it indicates Italian origins, reports the BBC.
Shaped vessels called amphoras, known to have been imported from the Etruscan people of Italy around 500 BC, have shown chemical evidence of wine.
A wine press identified in the same region shows that the beverage quickly gained favour and launched a local industry that would conquer the world.
The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There is also evidence that the wines contained herbal and pine resins, which may have helped preserve them for shipping.
The history of wine development is a patchy one, principally because wine leaves behind few chemical markers that archaeologists today can ascribe definitively to wine, rather than other agricultural products.
The earliest known examples of wine-making as we know it are in the regions of modern-day Iran, Georgia, and Armenia - and researchers believe that modern winemaking slowly spread westward from there to Europe.
Read more of this report from the BBC.