Just as the Nile represented resurrection to the Egyptians, Dionysus, the god of the vine, was the sacred symbol of resurrection and immortality to the Greeks. Grapes were plentiful; wine production began by 1500 B.C. The Greeks drank it sweetened with honey, because the amphoras-the ceramic vessels they used to store wine-were waterproofed with resin, a sticky secretion from trees that tasted like turpentine, also a resin.
The taste persists today in the Greek alcohol retsina. Like the wine he represented, Dionysus had many sides: he could lift men out of their ordinary state of mind and inspire them, but men also sometimes committed terrible acts under his influence. Women were rarely allowed to have wine. For instance, public banquets were usually restricted to men. On the rare occasions when women were invited, they didn't get the good, strong, aged wine the men got.
They were served “sweet wine or barely fermented grape juice.” Drinking wine was regarded as sacred because it altered human consciousness and brought men closer to god. At one of the most sacred Greek ceremonies, it was not consumed with dinner as a beverage, but after, at what the Greeks called a symposium.
