The findings were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, according to the University of York release as republished by EurekAlert and Phys.org. The public release did not provide a DOI in the accessible text reviewed for this draft, so the article attributes the detailed claims to the researchers' summary rather than to an independently inspected full paper.
Cetamura del Chianti is a hilltop settlement in the Chianti region that was occupied by Etruscans, Romans and later medieval Italians. The researchers said grape pips dropped into deep wells between about 300 BCE and 300 CE were preserved in oxygen-poor mud, allowing ancient-DNA analysis.
Oya Inanli, who completed the work as part of her doctorate at York's Department of Archaeology, said the team sequenced DNA from 80 seeds and found continuity across the samples. The release says a large share of the tested seeds belonged to one identical variety that passed from Etruscan to Roman phases and was maintained for centuries. Genetic markers indicated that the dominant clone produced white berries.
That point matters because modern Chianti is associated with red Sangiovese wines. The result does not show that Chianti's present-day wines directly descend from the ancient clone. It shows that, at this site, the best-preserved genetic evidence points to a white-berry grape dominating earlier cultivation.
The researchers also reported new grape varieties appearing after the Roman conquest of the settlement, which they interpret as possible evidence for vines introduced from other parts of the empire. The York release says the dominant Cetamura clone was genetically close to two ancient grape seeds previously tested from southern France, while another Cetamura seed belonged to a grape family still grown in Central and Eastern Europe.