Sweet Shirazi wine

Wasn't that how the Persian poet Sa'adi used to put it? I've just spent several precious minutes Googling but can't find anything on that other than that Sa'adi did indeed write frequently about the stuff, sweet or otherwise. Anyway, archaeologists have been doing some digging, as is their wont, and have come up with a possible winery:

Archaeologists digging in southern Iran have found a pool and pots they believe were used some 1,800 years ago for large scale wine production, reinforcing the now-Islamic nation's status as the cradle of wine drinkers.

"We have found an almost intact pool with a canal in the middle of it. This is where the juices from crushed grapes would flow and be collected later in pots for fermentation and turning into wine," Ali Asadi, the head of the excavation team said. The team, which includes a group of Polish archaeologists, is digging at a site called Tange Bolaghi, near the southern city of Shiraz - a name also associated with fine wine.

Asadi said the team has also unearthed grape seeds, huge clay pots and remains of other similar pools in the area.

"The size of the pots and abundance of grapes in the area suggests wine could have been produced for commercial purposes at the facility," Asadi said...

Iran is believed to be the place where wine was first made - a jar containing the remains of 7,000-year-old wine was found some 30 years ago in the kitchen area of a mud-brick building in Hajji Firuz Tepe, a Neolithic village in Iran's Zagros Mountains.

The Daily Star of Lebanon has the story.

Back to the 13th century poet Sa'adi:

"The Rose Garden of Sheikh Muslihu'd-din Sadi of Shiraz"

'Twas in the bath, a piece of perfumed clay
Came from my loved one's hand to mine, one day.
"Art thou then musk or ambergris?" I said;
"That by thy scent my soul is ravished?"
"Not so," it answered, "worthless earth was I,
But long I kept the rose's company;
Thus near, its perfect fragrance to me came
Else I'm but earth, worthless and the same.

Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the tip.

Lacking perfumed clay, bellybutton lint would likely do.