A votre sante! The first French wine was medicine — and tasted like it

(NBCNews) - The first wines stomped and fermented in France included brews flavored with pine resins and rosemary. The additives, revealed in a new analysis of wine-making storage tools and containers dating back to 425 B.C., could have been flavoring, but also may have served a healing role.

"[Wine] was sort of the medicine of the ancient world," Patrick McGovern, an expert on ancient alcohol at the University of Pennsylvania, told NBC News. A fermented beverage containing alcohol not only dissolved organic medicinal additions, it was also safer than drinking water, which could contain diseases.

Traces of tartaric acid in ancient amphoras unearthed at an archaeological site in Lattes, France, confirm that the jars contained grape wine, along with the aromatic and herbaceous additives. McGovern and his colleagues explain their findings in a paper published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wine making has its origins in Iran around 9,000 years ago. By the 7th century B.C., the Gallic and Celtic residents of southern France were slinging back imported wines, shipped in from Etruria (Tuscany) in the holds of cargo ships. The first French wine makers were Greeks living in the colony of Massalia — today's Marseille — who started making and jarring a grape brew around 525 B.C., archaeological evidence indicates.