Wine Basics

There are lots of anecdotes on how wine was discovered. My favorite is a King who so prized his grapes, that he hid them in containers marked "Poison" so no one would eat them. When his wife decided to end her life, she drank from one of the bottles and instead of dying, she discovered the joys of wine. Most historians agree that the first wine production happened in Mesopotamia, now Iran, around 6000 BC. From there we can follow wine drinking to ancient Egypt in heiroglyphics and burial sites where vessels likely to contain wine have been discovered.

As the Greeks conquered new nations, vineyards moved with them to Rome where we see specific references in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The Romans continued their wine education by classifying different types of wine and learning irrigation and fertilizing techniques. The German History Museum of the Pfalz has a wonderful Wine Exhibit available online and in person showing wine antiquities, like the oldest wine bottle discovered in Speyer Germany, from around 325 AD.

So what is wine? Simply put, wine is the fermented juice of grapes. Fermentation involves adding sugar and yeast in order to produce alcohol and CO2. The carbon dioxide dissipates into the air unless the wine is put through a second fermentation process to create Champagne and other sparkling wines which keep the bubbles in the bottle.