World’s largest Byzantine winepresses uncovered in Israel

A huge complex of 1,500-year-old winepresses capable of producing some two million liters of wine a year has been uncovered by archaeologists in the city of Yavne, south of Tel Aviv.

The plant includes five wine presses, warehouses for aging and bottling the wine, and kilns for firing the clay amphorae in which the wine was stored, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Monday.

The site has been dated back to the Byzantine era, around the 4th-5th century CE, and is the largest such complex known to exist from the period.

Archaeologists discovered intact earthen jars as well as tens of thousands of fragments at the complex, which also featured well-planned access routes between the different facilities.

The directors of the excavation said the size of the site and its capacity to produce such a large quantity of wine using manual production methods was unexpected.