In the Historisches Museum der Pfalz, in a glass case, sits a small sealed amphora of greenish glass containing about half a litre of liquid. It has been there, in one form or another, since archaeologists pulled it from a Roman nobleman's tomb near Speyer in 1867. The liquid inside is still wine-coloured. The bottle has never been opened. It dates to around 325 AD, making it the oldest surviving bottle of wine in the world by a considerable margin.
The bottle is sealed with wax and preserved under a layer of olive oil, which is why the contents have not simply evaporated over seventeen centuries. Scientists have analysed it through non-invasive methods and confirmed it contains organic compounds consistent with wine. Whether it would still be drinkable is a question no one has been willing to answer experimentally — partly out of scientific caution about what opening it might destroy, and partly, one suspects, out of a certain respect for something that has stayed sealed this long. The museum presents it plainly, without much drama, which is the right approach: the object needs no interpretation. You are looking at something that was poured into a bottle before the Western Roman Empire fell, and it is still there.