A 400-year-old wine bar in England?

n recent years, archaeologists have uncovered everything from a mysteriously ruined ancient wine shop to a 2,000-year-old Pompeiian snack bar to presidential bottled cherries. So what’s new under the earth? A potentially 400-year-old bar and smoking lounge in Dover, England.

Earlier this year, Canterbury Archaeology Trust researchers uncovered broken bottles and ceramic jugs, plus clay tobacco pipes, at a dig site in the southeast English town. “The objects perhaps relate to an inn [and] tavern that is thought to have lain in the vicinity,” a Dover District Council spokesperson told Wine Spectator via email. “This was potentially known as the Phoenix and dated to the 17th [or] 18th century.” Sadly, this phoenix didn’t rise again.

While we don’t yet have specifics on the bottles, the ceramic fragments provide more insight: They’re pieces of Bellarmine jugs, aka Bartmann jugs. Designed to look like bearded men, these distinctive stoneware vessels were used for a range of purposes—including wine decanting—across Europe (and farther afield) beginning in the 16th century.

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