PLOS—The domestication of grapevine was a slow process in Italy, taking place over thousands of years, according to a study published April 23, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Mariano Ucchesu of the University of Montpellier, France and colleagues.
Each year, worldwide grape cultivation produces roughly 80 million tons of fresh grapes and 26 billion liters of wine, with Italian wine featuring prominently. While the deep history of viticulture is well-studied in parts of Asia and Europe, data is lacking in the western Mediterranean region. In this study, Ucchesu and colleagues analyzed more than 1,700 grape seeds from 25 archaeological sites in and around Italy spanning seven millennia from the Neolithic Period to the Medieval Period.
Morphological analysis revealed that in sites older than 1000 BC, nearly all of the grape seeds share the size and proportions of modern wild grapevine, suggesting that these fruits were gathered from the wild. Then, from roughly 1000 BC to 600 AD, the majority of grape seeds are more akin to modern domesticated varieties, although there is considerable variation in seed size and proportions, as well as the ratio of domestic to wild grapes from site to site. And in sites from the Medieval Period, starting around 700 AD, domestic grape seeds are abundant and highly similar to modern cultivated grapes.
These results indicate that grape cultivation in Italy likely began during the Late Bronze Age, followed by many centuries of gradual domestication, likely involving the mixing of wild and cultivated vines to produce new domestic varieties. The authors note that these results align with previous genetic and archaeological research, but stress the importance of future study at a wider variety of archaeological sites to fill in the picture of grape cultivation across the Mediterranean.
The authors add: “This research has made it possible, for the first time, to trace the history of the origins of viticulture in Italy. The appearance of the first domesticated grapes during the Bronze Age, in Italian archaeological contexts, points to a long-standing tradition of Italian wine heritage within the broader landscape of Western Europe.”
“This research was made possible thanks to funding received through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Curie Fellowship (2021–2023 n. Agreement-101019563-VITALY) and supported by the ANR MICA project (grant agreement ANR-22-CE27-0026). The successful outcome of the research is also due to the valuable collaboration of the archaeobotanical colleagues from CNRS-ISEM in Montpellier and all the Italian colleagues who generously provided the archaeobotanical materials, valuable advice and suggestions for this research.”
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The domestication of grapevine was a slow process in Italy, according to the study. Jill Wellington, Pexels, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
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Article Source: PLOS news release.
*Ucchesu M, Ivorra S, Bonhomme V, Pastor T, Aranguren B, Bacchetta G, et al. (2025) Tracing the emergence of domesticated grapevine in Italy. PLoS ONE 20(4): e0321653. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321653
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