The Story behind the Wine Glass Cult

The consumption of wine is a tradition that goes back centuries, but the custom of drinking the fermented juice of the vine from glass containers is younger than one might think. Glass was already known in pre-Christian antiquity, and Mesopotamia is thought to be the earliest place of production. In Egyptian Thebes, glass was made into vessels from around 1,500 BC, but wine was still enjoyed from clay cups. The invention of the glassmaker's pipe, which is dated to the beginning of the first century AD, changed everything. From then on, it was possible to shape glass almost at will and to reproduce the previously used drinking vessels made of metal or clay from thin-walled glass. Glass quickly developed into a luxury object for the Romans.