New Class of the Rock-cut Wine-presses in the South-western Crimea

There are more than 230 rock-cut wine-presses from the Early Mediaeval Period located in the south-western Taurica, at the local “cave towns” (Mangup, Eski-Kermen, Kachi-Kal’on, and others) or in their environs. This source base allows the one to develop a classification with four main classes of rock-cut wine-presses (named I–IV) identified. As the new devices for the primary processing of grapes in the Bakhchisarai administrative area, structurally different from the previously known monuments, are discovered and documented, the existing classification needs to be amended. There are four rock-cut wine-presses discovered in the area in between of the town of Bakhchisarai and the village of Skalistoe, where the former villages of Ulakly and Balta-Chokrak were located. These wine-presses consist of a pressing platform, a juice receiver, and a rock-cut base to install the vertical post carrying the press lever. These constructions do not have a juice drain connecting the press with the receiver. These features allow the one to unite these constructions into class V. Although the preliminary estimation relates them to the Late Mediaeval or Early Modern Period (sixteenth to nineteenth century), they may have been carved out already in the nineteenth century. Another group of three portable wine-presses, consisting of a pressing platform and a juice drain with a spout, is located on the territory of the Khan’s Palace in Bakhchisarai (2) and atop of Chufut-Kale (1). These three wineries are identified with class VI. While wine-presses of classes I–V existed at the same site only, being stationary structures, the wine-presses of class VI were portable. The account of written sources allows the one to date the portable wineries in question from the late-eighteenth to the early-twentieth century.