(Panarmenian) - Researchers have discovered traces of wine in Sicily dating back to the fourth century BC - meaning Italians have been making and drinking wine for much longer than previously thought, The Local reports.

A research team from the University of South Florida carried out tests on an ancient jar found in a cave in Sicily, and found it contained traces of 6,000-year-old wine, they announced last week.

The finding, published in Microchemical Journal, is "significant as it’s the earliest discovery of wine residue in the entire prehistory of the Italian peninsula", the archaeologists said.

In other words, the discovery has popped the cork on everything that we know about the history of wine in Italy.

Previous recovery of seeds and samples had led to the belief that winemaking developed in Italy in the Middle Bronze Age, 1300-1100BC, or just over 3,000 years ago.

But the ancient copper container unearthed – nearly intact – in a cave on Monto Kronio, on Sicily's southwest coast, opens up 3,000 years of winemaking history on the peninsula that were previously unchartered.