meland of grapes and the cultivation of this plant began there 6,000–8,000 years ago. Yeast'one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms'occurs naturally on the skins of grapes'leading to the discovery of alcoholic drinks such as wine. The earliest archeological evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia. The oldest known winery'the Areni-1 winery'was found in Armenia and dates back to around BC. By the 9th century AD'the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz'a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes'and history attests to the ancient Greeks'Cypriots'Phoenicians'and Romans growing purple grapes for eating and wine production. The growing of grapes would later spread to other regions in Europe'North Africa'and eventually in North America. In 2005'a team of archaeologists concluded that Chalcolithic wine jars discovered in Cyprus in the 1930s dated back to 3500 BC'making them the oldest of their kind in the world. Commandaria'a sweet dessert wine from Cyprus'is the oldest manufactured wine in the world with origins as far back as 2000 BC. In North America'native grapes belonging to various species of the genus Vitis proliferate in the wild across the continent and were a part of the diet of many Native Americans'but early European colonists considered them to be unsuitable for wine. In the 19th century'Ephraim Bull of Concord'Massachusetts'cultivated seeds from wild Vitis labrusca vines to create the Concord grape'which would become an important agricultural cro