The world's largest and oldest wine cellar was unearthed in northern Israel, the Discovery News reported.

A team of American and Israeli researchers found the artifact in a 75-acre site called Tel Kabri within the ruins of a northern Canaanite city which dates back to approximately 1700 B.C.

"This is a hugely significant discovery-it's a wine cellar that, to our knowledge, is largely unmatched in its age and size," Eric Cline, chair of George Washington University's Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, said in a press release.

The excavation in the ancient city of Tel Kabri uncovered 40 jars "in sizes that could have filled about 3,000 modern wine bottles," Bloomberg News reported. The jars reportedly had vestiges of wine when discovered.

The researchers named a three-foot-long jar in the cellar "Bessie."

"We dug and dug, and all of a sudden, Bessie's friends started appearing - five, 10, 15, ultimately 40 jars packed in a 15-by-25-foot storage room," Cline said.

The wine cellar was located near a hall where banquets once took place; during these banquets the kabri elite consumed goat meat and wine, according to Dr. Yasur-Landau, and chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa in Israel.

"The wine cellar and the banquet hall were destroyed during the same violent event, perhaps an earthquake, which covered them with thick debris of mud bricks and plaster," Landau said.

The group had been digging since 2005 at the site, the wine cellar is the only such art to be found in Israel so far.

Dr. Andrew Koh, an assistant professor of classical studies at Brandeis University, analyzed the jar fragments using organic residue analysis. He found traces of tartaric and syringic acids, both key components in wine, as well as compounds suggesting the presence of ingredients popular in ancient wine-making, including honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins. The recipe is similar to medicinal wines used for 2,000 years in ancient Egypt.

"This wasn't moonshine that someone was brewing in their basement, eyeballing the measurements," Koh said in a statement. "This wine's recipe was strictly followed in each and every jar."

After this discovery, researchers now want to continue analyzing the composition of each solution, possibly discovering enough information to recreate the ancient wine or its flavor.