The French are known to be expert wine-makers. But archaeologists have analysed a stone platform dated to 425 BC to 400 BC from a site in southern France. The traces of tartaric acid on it suggest that people used the platform for stomping on the fruit to make wine. They also analysed the pottery shipping containers used to import wine into France from an old civilization of Etruscan near Rome. These potteries are older than the stone, which suggests that the French used to depend on merchants from Italy to deliver the first batches of wine well before they started making their own. So, France learnt winemaking from Italy.
