The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran (Persia) ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). Wine reached the Balkans by 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects.. In 2017 the research led by Dr. Patrick E. McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia acknowledged Georgia as the birthplace of wine. The earliest archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence for grape wine and viniculture, dating to 6000–5800 BC was found on the territory of modern Georgia.
History
Wine
Wine | History
The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran (Persia) ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China, Georgia, Iran, and Sicily. Wine reached the Balkans by 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran (Persia) ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran (Persia) ( BC), and Sicily ( BC).
how late can i buy beer in oregon
user
2:30 a.m
assistant
how does people consume it?
user
In 2007, Oregon's 2.6 million adults on average drank 32 gallons of beer each, versus 4 gallons of wine and 2 gallons of spirits.
assistant
what are some other drinks that they consume?
user
Beer, wine, liquor, whiskey, vodka, tequila, Jack Daniel etc
assistant
what is the second one mentioned?
user
It  is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grape juice.
assistant
what is the historical account behind it?
user
7000 B.C.” Additionally, Professor Hames' research stated: “The earliest wine, or fermented liquor, came from China, predating Middle Eastern alcohol by a few thousand years. Archeologists have found pottery shards showing remnants of rice and grape wine dating back to 7000 BCE in Jiahu village in Henan province.” Archaeologists have discovered production from native "mountain grapes" like "V. thunbergii" and "V. filifolia" during the 1st millennium BC. Production of beer had largely disappeared by the time of the Han dynasty, in favor of stronger drinks fermented from millet, rice, and other grains. Although these huangjiu have frequently been translated as "wine", they are typically 20% ABV and considered quite distinct from grape wine () within China.
History of wine | Ancient China
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History of alcoholic drinks | References
A housewife of the merchant class or a servant in a noble household would have served wine at every meal, and had a selection of reds and whites alike. Home recipes for meads from this period are still in existence, along with recipes for spicing and masking flavors in wines, including the simple act of adding a small amount of honey. As wines were kept in barrels, they were not extensively aged, and thus drunk quite young. To offset the effects of heavy alcohol consumption, wine was frequently watered down at a ratio of four or five parts water to one of wine.
History of wine | Medieval Europe
The fermenting of strains of this wild "Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris" (the ancestor of the modern wine grape, "V. vinifera") would have become easier following the development of pottery during the later Neolithic, BC. The earliest discovered evidence, however, dates from several millennia later. The earliest archaeological evidence of wine fermentation found has been at sites in China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran ( BC), Greece ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). The earliest evidence of steady production of wine has been found in Armenia ( BC). The Iranian jars contained a form of retsina, using turpentine pine resin to more effectively seal and preserve the wine and is the earliest firm evidence of wine production to date.
History of wine | Prehistory
The origins of wine predate written records, and modern archaeology is still uncertain about the details of the first cultivation of wild grapevines. It has been hypothesized that early humans climbed trees to pick berries, liked their sugary flavor, and then began collecting them. After a few days with fermentation setting in, juice at the bottom of any container would begin producing low-alcohol wine. According to this theory, things changed around 10,000–8000 BC with the transition from a nomadic to a sedentism style of living, which led to agriculture and wine domestication. Wild grapes grow in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the northern Levant, coastal and southeastern Turkey, and northern Iran.
History of wine | Prehistory
This was considered to be the reason why drunkenness "drives men out of their senses and crazes them, inasmuch as they are then filled with the blood of their forebears". Residue from five clay amphoras in Tutankhamun's tomb, however, have been shown to be that of white wine, so it was at least available to the Egyptians through trade if not produced domestically.
History of wine | Ancient Egypt
This is approximately the time when barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East.
History of alcoholic drinks | Archaeological record
Professor McGovern continued: “The Jiahu discovery illustrates how you should never give up hope in finding chemical evidence for a fermented beverage from the Palaeolithic period. Research very often has big surprises in store. You might think, as I did too, that the grape wines of Hajji Firuz, the Caucasus, and eastern Anatolia would prove to be the earliest alcoholic beverages in the world, coming from the so-called “Cradle of Civilization” in the Near East as they do. But then I was invited to go to China on the other side of Asia, and came back with samples that proved to be even earlier–from around 7000 BC.” Furthermore, other scholarly research has stated that: “There is also evidence for various types of alcoholic beverage production, including rice and grape wine, beer, and various liquors including baijiu in China, ca.
History of wine | Ancient China
Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The evidence of wine in China ( BC), Armenia ( BC),Georgia[10][10] from 6000 BC, Iran from 5000 BC, and Sicily from 4000 BC. The oldest archaeological evidence of wine produced from grapes has been found at sites in China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Levant ( BC), Iran ( BC), Greece ( BC), Armenia ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). The earliest-extant evidence of wine production has been found in Armenia ( BC). The altered consciousness produced by wine has been considered religious since its origin. The ancient Greeks worshiped Dionysus or Bacchus and the Ancient Romans carried on his cult.
History of wine | Introduction
Alban wine—Ancient Greece and wine—Ancient Rome and wine—Ancient Rome and wine—Caecuban wine—Chian wine—Coan wine—Conditum Paradoxum—Cretan wine—Falernian wine—Great French Wine Blight Fumarium—History of wine—History of American wine—History of Bordeaux wine—History of California wine—History of French wine—History of Oregon wine production—History of Rioja wine Hypocras—Lesbian wine—Marriage at Cana—Passum—Persian wine—Police des Vins—Retsina—Shedeh—Shirazi wine—Vino Greco
Index of sociology of food articles | Wine History
A major step forward in our understanding of Neolithic winemaking came from the analysis of a yellowish residue excavated by Mary M. Voigt at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran. The jar that once contained wine, with a volume of about 9 liters (2.5 gallons) was found together with five similar jars embedded in the earthen floor along one wall of a "kitchen" of a Neolithic mudbrick building, dated to c. 5400-5000 BC. In such communities, winemaking was the best technology they had for storing highly perishable grapes, although whether the resulting beverage was intended for intoxication as well as nourishment is not known.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Persia (or Ancient Iran)
There are many etiological myths told about the first cultivation of the grapevine and fermentation of wine. The Biblical Book of Genesis first mentions the production of wine by Noah following the Great Flood. Greek mythology placed the childhood of Dionysus and his discovery of viticulture at the fictional and variably located Mount Nysa but had him teach the practice to the peoples of central Anatolia. Because of this, he was rewarded to become a god of wine.
History of wine | Legends of discovery
In the Middle Ages, wine was the common drink of all social classes in the south, where grapes were cultivated. In the north and east, where few if any grapes were grown, beer and ale were the usual beverages of both commoners and nobility. Wine was exported to the northern regions, but because of its relatively high expense was seldom consumed by the lower classes. Since wine was necessary, however, for the celebration of the Catholic Mass, assuring a supply was crucial. The Benedictine monks became one of the largest producers of wine in France and Germany, followed closely by the Cistercians.
History of wine | Medieval Europe
Herodotus, writing about the culture of the ancient Persians (in particular, those of Pontus) writes that they were "very fond" of wine and drank it in large quantities.
History of wine | Ancient Persia
According to the latest research scholars stated: "Following the definition of the CNCCEF, China has been viewed as “New New World” in the world wine map, despite the fact that grape growing and wine making in China date back to between 7000BCE and 9000BCE. Winemaking technology and wine culture are rooted in Chinese history and the definition of “New New World” is a misnomer that imparts a Euro centric bias onto wine history and ignores fact." Furthermore, the history of Chinese grape wine has been confirmed and proven to date back 9000 years (7000 BC), including "the earliest attested use" of wild grapes in wine as well as "earliest chemically confirmed alcoholic beverage in the world", according to Adjunct Professor of Anthropology Patrick McGovern, the Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia.
History of wine | Ancient China
In the early 1990s, the laboratory identified the earliest chemically confirmed instances of grape wine and barley beer from the Near East, viz., from Godin Tepe in Iran, ca. 3400-3000 B.C. Several years later, the earliest date for wine was pushed back another two millennia to the Neolithic period (ca. 5400-5000 B.C.), based on analyses of jars from the Museum's excavation at Hajji Firuz in Iran. In a paper published 2017 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of historians and scientists explicated the biomolecular archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence for a further backdating to 6000–5800 B.C.
Patrick Edward McGovern | Investigations of ancient dyes, foods, beverages, and other organics
Consumption of ritual wine, probably a certain type of sweet wine originally, was part of Jewish practice since Biblical times and, as part of the eucharist commemorating Jesus's Last Supper, became even more essential to the Christian Church. Although Islam nominally forbade the production or consumption of wine, during its Golden Age, alchemists such as Geber pioneered wine's distillation for medicinal and industrial purposes such as the production of perfume.
History of wine | Introduction
The Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries brought many territories under Muslim control. Alcoholic drinks were prohibited by law, but the production of alcohol, wine in particular, seems to have thrived. Wine was a subject for many poets, even under Islamic rule, and many khalifas used to drink alcoholic beverages during their social and private meetings. Egyptian Jews leased vineyards from the Fatimid and Mamluk governments, produced wine for sacramental and medicinal use, and traded wine throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.
History of wine | Medieval Middle East
Under Roman rule, in the century and a half BC, the majority of the wine consumed in the area was required by law to be Italian in origin, as the distribution of fragments of wine amphorae found throughout Gaul after about 100 BC, especially along the coasts and rivers, suggests: some of the earliest amphorae, from the 2nd century BC, bear Iberian shipper's marks, indicating that distribution of wine predated conquest. It wasn't till the first century AD that there was record of Gaul's wine being of any note or renown. In his "Natural History" (book xiv), Pliny the Elder noted that in the region near Vienna (modern day Vienne in the Rhone wine region), the Allobroges produced a resinated wine that was held in esteem and commanded a high market price.
History of French wine | Early history
Several ancient sources, such as the Roman Pliny the Elder, describe the ancient Greek method of using partly dehydrated gypsum before fermentation and some type of lime after, in order to reduce the acidity of the wine. The Greek Theophrastus provides the oldest known description of this aspect of Greek winemaking. In Homeric mythology, wine is usually served in "mixing bowls" rather than consumed in an undiluted state. Dionysus, the Greek god of revelry and wine—frequently referred to in the works of Homer and Aesop—was sometimes given the epithet "Acratophorus", "giver of unmixed wine". Homer frequently refers to the "wine-dark sea" (, "oīnōps póntos"): in lack of a name for the color "blue," the Greeks would simply refer to red wine's color.
History of wine | Ancient Greece
Production spread to other sites in Greater Iran and Greek Macedonia by BC. The Greek site is notable for the recovery at the site of the remnants of crushed grapes.
History of wine | Prehistory
During the 2nd century BC, Zhang Qian's exploration of the Western Regions (modern Xinjiang) reached the Hellenistic successor states of Alexander's empire: Dayuan, Bactria, and the Indo-Greek Kingdom. These had brought viticulture into Central Asia and trade permitted the first wine produced from "V. vinifera" grapes to be introduced to China.
History of wine | Ancient China
The earliest evidence of wine was found in what is now China, where jars from Jiahu which date to about 7000 BC were discovered. This early rice wine was produced by fermenting rice, honey, and fruit. What later developed into Chinese civilization grew up along the more northerly Yellow River and fermented a kind of huangjiu from millet. The Zhou attached great importance to alcohol and ascribed the loss of the mandate of Heaven by the earlier Xia and Shang as largely due to their dissolute and alcoholic emperors. An edict ascribed to BC makes it clear that the use of alcohol in moderation was believed to be prescribed by heaven.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient China
Lebanon is among the oldest sites of wine production in the world. The Israelite Hosea (780–725 BC) is said to have urged his followers to return to Yahweh so that "they will blossom as the vine, [and] their fragrance will be like the wine of Lebanon". The Phoenicians of its coastal strip were instrumental in spreading wine and viticulture throughout the Mediterranean in ancient times. However, in the Arabian peninsula, wine was traded by Aramaic merchants, as the climate was not well-suited to the growing of vines. Many other types of fermented drinks, however, were produced in the 5th and 6th centuries, including date and honey wines.
History of wine | Medieval Middle East
The press Cato describes was known as a lever or beam press which was built on an elevated platform that contained and shallow basin that would slope and narrow to a run off point where the freed juice would exit. The press would consist of a large horizontal beam held up by two upright fixtures in the front and on upright fixture in the front. The grapes were placed under the beam with pressure was applied by a windlass that was affixed by rope to the front of the beam and a user winding down that end. Rope would also be used wound around the "cake" of the pressed grape skins to help keep it in place.
History of the wine press | Ancient Greece and Rome
The earliest evidence of deliberate winemaking is from excavation at sites like Areni-1 winery in what is now the Vayots Dzor Province of Armenia. This site, dating back to around 4000 BC included a trough that measured about 3 by 3 1/2 feet and included a drain that went into a 2 feet long vat that could contain about 14-15 gallons (52-57 liters) of wine. The carbon dating of these sites (and earlier sites at Çatalhöyük and Neolithic B sites in Jordan) are based on left over grape pips (seeds) and while they provide solid evidence of wine making, they don't necessarily provide evidence of how the wine was made and if the modern concept of pressing (i.e.
History of the wine press | Early history
The earliest known traces of wine are from ancient China ( BC), Georgia ( BC), Iran (Persia) ( BC), and Sicily ( BC). Wine reached the Balkans by 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects.. In 2017 the research led by Dr. Patrick E. McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia acknowledged Georgia as the birthplace of wine. The earliest archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence for grape wine and viniculture, dating to 6000–5800 BC was found on the territory of modern Georgia.
Wine | History
There is archaeological evidence to suggest that the Celts first cultivated the grape vine, "Vitis vinifera", in Gaul. Grape pips have been found throughout France, pre-dating Greek and Roman cultural influences, with some examples found near Lake Geneva being over 12,000 years old. A major turning-point in the wine history of Gaul came with the founding of Massalia in the 6th century BC by Greek immigrants from Phocae in Asia Minor. By the 2nd century BC, Massalia (by then known as Massilia) came under Roman influence as a vital port on the trade route linking Rome to Roman settlements at Saguntum (near what is now modern Valencia in Spain).
History of French wine | Early history
Both archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that the earliest production of wine elsewhere was relatively later, likely having taken place in the Southern Caucasus (which encompasses Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan), or the West Asian region between Eastern Turkey, and northern Iran.
Wine | History
Its first mentions with wine comes from Ancient Greece, where, in the parties called bacchanalia , dedicated to the god Bacchus by the vintage of this drink, was offered the sacrifice of the goat, with which it would be made the wineskin that would conserve the wine. New Wine into Old Wineskins is a parable of Jesus. It is found at , and ..
Wineskin | History
The Roman belief that wine was a daily necessity made the drink "democratic" and ubiquitous: wine was available to slaves, peasants, women and aristocrats alike. To ensure the steady supply of wine to Roman soldiers and colonists, viticulture and wine production spread to every part of the empire. The Romans diluted their wine before drinking. Wine was also used for religious purposes, in the pouring of libations to deities. Though beer was drunk in Ancient Rome, it was replaced in popularity by wine. Tacitus wrote disparagingly of the beer brewed by the Germanic peoples of his day. Thracians were also known to consume beer made from rye, even since the 5th century BC, as the ancient Greek logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos says.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Rome
For as long as wine has been made, it has been manipulated, adulterated, and counterfeited. In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder complained about the abundance of fraudulent Roman wine which was so great that even the nobility could not be assured that the wine they were pouring on their table was genuine. For the poor and middle class of Rome, local bar establishments seemed to have an unlimited supply of the prestigious Falernian wine for unusually low prices. During the Middle Ages, wines from questionable origins were often passed off as wines from more prestigious regions. In London, local authorities established laws for tavern owners prohibiting French, Spanish, and German wines from being cellared together so as to prevent the potential for mixing the wines or falsely representing them to the consumer.
Wine fraud | History
Wine in ancient Egypt was predominantly red. Due to its resemblance to blood, much superstition surrounded wine-drinking in Egyptian culture. "Shedeh", the most precious drink in ancient Egypt, is now known to have been a red wine and not fermented from pomegranates as previously thought. Plutarch's "Moralia" relates that, prior to Psammetichus I, the pharaohs did not drink wine nor offer it to the gods "thinking it to be the blood of those who had once battled against the gods and from whom, when they had fallen and had become commingled with the earth, they believed vines to have sprung".
History of wine | Ancient Egypt
Pliny relates that, after the ascension of Augustus, Setinum became the imperial wine because it did not cause him indigestion. When the Western Roman Empire fell during the 5th century, Europe entered a period of invasions and social turmoil, with the Roman Catholic Church as the only stable social structure. Through the Church, grape growing and winemaking technology, essential for the Mass, were preserved. Over the course of the later Empire, wine production gradually shifted to the east as Roman infrastructure and influence in the western regions gradually diminished. Production in Asia Minor, the Aegean and the Near East flourished through Late Antiquity and the Byzantine era.
History of wine | Roman Empire
Evidence of ancient viticulture is provided by cuneiform sources (ancient writing on clay tablets), plant remains, historical geography, and archaeological excavations. The remnants of ancient wine jars have been used to determine the culture of wine consumption and cultivated grape species. In addition to winemaking, grapes have been grown for the production of raisins. The earliest act of cultivation appears to have been the favoring of hermaphroditic members of the "Vitis vinifera" species over the barren male vines and the female vines, which were dependent on a nearby male for pollination. With the ability to pollinate itself, over time the hermaphroditic vines were able to sire offspring that were consistently hermaphroditic.
Viticulture | History
With the increased market competition since the 1980s, estates became more selective in the "assemblage" stage, making greater parts of the production disposed to be either sold off in bulk, or blended into second (or third) wine.
Second wine | History
Some merchants would take dried raisins grown from other species of grapevines and make wine that they passed off as being from a more prestigious provenance such as the more well known wines from France or Italy.
Wine fraud | History
While the art of wine making reached the Hellenic peninsula by about 2000 BC, the first alcoholic beverage to obtain widespread popularity in what is now Greece was mead, a fermented beverage made from honey and water. However, by 1700 BC, wine making was commonplace. During the next thousand years wine drinking assumed the same function so commonly found around the world: It was incorporated into religious rituals. It became important in hospitality, used for medicinal purposes, and became an integral part of daily meals. As a beverage, it was drunk in many ways: warm and chilled, pure and mixed with water, plain and spiced.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Greece
Instead, it was much more common for Roman estates to have large tanks or trough where grapes were tread upon by feet or paddles.
History of the wine press | Ancient Greece and Rome
This was considered to be the reason why drunkenness "drives men out of their senses and crazes them, inasmuch as they are then filled with the blood of their forebears". Residue from five clay amphoras in Tutankhamun's tomb, however, have been shown to be that of white wine, so it was at least available to the Egyptians through trade if not produced domestically.
Egyptian wine | History
One medieval application of wine was the use of snake-stones (banded agate resembling the figural rings on a snake) dissolved in wine as a remedy for snake bites, which shows an early understanding of the effects of alcohol on the central nervous system in such situations.
History of wine | Medieval Europe
The earliest evidence of grape vine cultivation and winemaking dates back 8,000 years. The history of viticulture is closely related to the history of wine, with evidence that humans cultivated wild grapes to make wine as far back as the Neolithic period. Evidence suggests that some of the earliest domestication of "Vitis vinifera" occurred in the area of the modern countries Georgia and Armenia. The oldest-known winery was discovered in the "Areni-1" cave in Vayots Dzor, Armenia. Dated to BC, the site contained a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups. Archaeologists also found "V. vinifera" seeds and vines. Commenting on the importance of the find, McGovern said, "The fact that winemaking was already so well developed in 4000 BC suggests that the technology probably goes back much earlier." There is also evidence of grape domestication in the Near East in the early Bronze Age, around 3200 BC.
Viticulture | History
Recent archaeological research has pushed back the date of the known origin of wine making in Persia far beyond that which writers earlier in the 20th century had envisaged. Excavations at the Godin Tepe site in the Zagros mountains (Badler, 1995; McGovern and Michel, 1995; McGovern, 2003), have revealed pottery vessels dating from c. 3100–2900 BC containing tartaric acid, almost certainly indicating the former presence of wine. Even earlier evidence was found at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe, also in the Zagros mountains. Here, McGovern et al. (1996) used chemical analyses of the residue of a Neolithic jar dating from as early as 5400–5000 BC to indicate high levels of tartaric acid, again suggesting that the fluid contained therein had been made from grapes.
Persian wine | History
The Roman Empire had an immense impact on the development of viticulture and oenology. Wine was an integral part of the Roman diet and winemaking became a precise business. Virtually all of the major wine-producing regions of Western Europe today were established during the Roman Imperial era. During the Roman Empire, social norms began to shift as the production of alcohol increased. Further evidence suggests that widespread drunkenness and true alcoholism among the Romans began in the first century BC and reached its height in the first century AD. Viniculture expanded so much that by AD the emperor Domitian was forced to pass the first wine laws on record, banning the planting of any new vineyards in Italy and uprooting half of the vineyards in the provinces in order to increase the production of the necessary but less profitable grain.
History of wine | Roman Empire
The exact origins of winemaking (and, thus, of pressing grapes) are not known, but most archaeologists believe that it originated somewhere in the Transcaucasia between the Black and Caspian Seas in the land that now includes the modern countries of Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran. There are stories in the Imeretin Valley (in what is now Krasnodar Krai, Russia) dating to between 7000-5000 BC of early winemaking using hollowed out logs that they would fill with grapes, tread with their feet and then scoop the juice and crushed grape remains into jars to ferment. In the 17th century, French traveller Sir Jean Chardin described a similar practice still in use thousands of years later in Georgia.
History of the wine press | Early history
Under this system, many areas of France were enthusiastically and efficiently planted with little cost to the land owner; such as the Poitou region near La Rochelle. The modern day Loire Valley wine of Quarts de Chaume derives its name from the use of this practice back in the 15th century when the Abbey of Ronceray d'Angers owned a large portion of uncultivated land (chaume) which it contracted out to growers in exchange for a fourth (quart) of the wine produced on the land. In the Middle Ages, transportation of heavy wooden barrels of wine over land was a costly and risky proposition.
History of French wine | Middle Ages through the Age of Enlightenment
Unlike the traditions in Europe and the Middle East, China abandoned the production of grape wine before the advent of writing and, under the Han, abandoned beer in favor of huangjiu and other forms of rice wine. These naturally fermented to a strength of about 20% ABV; they were usually consumed warmed and frequently flavored with additives as part of traditional Chinese medicine. They considered it spiritual food and extensive documentary evidence attests to the important role it played in religious life. "In ancient times people always drank when holding a memorial ceremony, offering sacrifices to gods or their ancestors, pledging resolution before going into battle, celebrating victory, before feuding and official executions, for taking an oath of allegiance, while attending the ceremonies of birth, marriage, reunions, departures, death, and festival banquets." Marco Polo's 14th century record indicates grain and rice wine were drunk daily and were one of the treasury's biggest sources of income.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient China
The cultivation of the domesticated grape began 6,000–8,000 years ago in the Near East. Yeast, one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes, leading to the discovery of alcoholic drinks such as wine. The earliest archeological evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia. The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC. By the 9th century AD the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine.
Grape | History
Out of more than two hundred ceramic pots discovered at the sites, seven were specifically used for grape wine. Remnants of grape seeds were also discovered. If grape wine consumption was once present in Bronze Age China, however, it was replaced by consumption of a range of alcoholic beverages made from sorghum, millet, rice, and fruits such as lychee or Asian plum. In the 130s and 120s BC, a Chinese imperial envoy of the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) named Zhang Qian opened diplomatic relations with several Central Asian kingdoms, some of which produced grape wine. By the end of the second century BC, Han envoys had brought grape seeds from the wine-loving kingdom of Dayuan (Ferghana in modern Uzbekistan) back to China and had them planted on imperial lands near the capital Chang'an (near modern-day Xi'an in Shaanxi province).
Wine in China | History
The history of the wine press and of pressing is nearly as old as the history of wine itself with the remains of wine presses providing some of the longest-serving evidence of organised viticulture and winemaking in the ancient world. The earliest wine press was probably the human foot or hand, crushing and squeezing grapes into a bag or container where the contents would ferment. The pressure applied by these manual means was limited and these early wines were probably pale in colour and body, and eventually ancient winemakers sought out alternative means of pressing their wine. By at least the 18th dynasty, the ancient Egyptians were employing a "sack press" made of cloth that was squeezed with the aid of a giant tourniquet.
History of the wine press | Introduction
It creates a very perfumed, deep colored and tannic wine.
Freisa | History
Regarding the first wines of India, historians believe that these early plantings were used mostly for table grapes or grape juice rather than the production of an alcoholic beverage. During the Vedic period of the 2nd and 1st millennia, the Aryan tribes of the region were known for their indulgence in intoxicating drink and it seems probable that wine was a current beverage. The religious text of the "Vedas" mentions at least one alcoholic drink that may have been wine related -"sura" which seems to have been a type of rice wine that was fermented with honey. The first known mention of grape-based wines was in the late 4th century BC writings of Chanakya who was the chief minister of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya.
Indian wine | History
In the history of wine, Katzenelnbogen is famous for the first documentation of Riesling grapes in the world: this was in 1435, when the storage inventory of Count John IV of Katzenelnbogen, a member of the Holy Roman high nobility, lists the purchase of vines of "Rieslingen".
Katzenelnbogen | History of wine
The winery had attached a building for the production of olive oil. He also planted many olive trees, which most of them are still in perfect conditions with more than 100 years of age. They are represented on a flanking olive way access of about 200 meters. Other treasures were preserved until today like a diary written in ink by its founder, which was written in every day since he bought the land of how to plant the vines, how he began to build the house, the cellar, the first wines were made and stood out in his notes that the Cabernet was the king of his cellar.
Viña Varela Zarranz | History
The oldest-known winery was discovered in the "Areni-1" cave in Vayots Dzor, Armenia. Dated to BC, the site contained a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups. Archaeologists also found "V. vinifera" seeds and vines. Commenting on the importance of the find, McGovern said, "The fact that winemaking was already so well developed in 4000 BC suggests that the technology probably goes back much earlier." The seeds were from "Vitis vinifera", a grape still used to make wine. The cave remains date to about 4000 BC. This is 900 years before the earliest comparable wine remains, found in Egyptian tombs.
History of wine | Armenia: Areni-1 winery
The names of wine-producing regions have been used for thousands of years to identify and qualify specific wines, including the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. In those days, the wines from Cyprus, Falerno and Bética were renowned. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey mentions the wines from Lemnos, Samos, Pédalos and Itaca. However, it was only towards the end of the 19th century that the use of geographic names was first regulated by law to prevent fraud. In 1883 the Convenio de la Unión de Paris on intellectual property was signed. In 1947 the "Oficina Internacional de la Viña y el Vino" stated that a wine could not have a DO unless it had a long tradition and an acknowledged reputation.
Montilla-Moriles | History
Pliny cautioned that such 'first-growth' wines not be smoked in a "fumarium" like lesser vintages. Pliny and others also named "vinum Hadrianum" as one of the most rated wines, along with Praetutian from Ancona on the Adriatic, Mamertine from Messina in Sicily, Rhaetic from Verona, and a few others. Wine, perhaps mixed with herbs and minerals, was assumed to serve medicinal purposes. During Roman times, the upper classes might dissolve pearls in wine for better health. Cleopatra created her own legend by promising Antony she would "drink the value of a province" in one cup of wine, after which she drank an expensive pearl with a cup of the beverage.
History of wine | Roman Empire
Natural fermentation precedes human history. Since ancient times, humans have exploited the fermentation process. The earliest archaeological evidence of fermentation is 13,000-year-old residues of a beer, with the consistency of gruel, found in a cave near Haifa in Israel. Another early alcoholic drink, made from fruit, rice, and honey, dates from 7000-6600 BC, in the Neolithic Chinese village of Jiahu, and winemaking dates from ca. 6000 BC, in Georgia, in the Caucasus area. Seven-thousand-year-old jars containing the remains of wine, now on display at the University of Pennsylvania, were excavated in the Zagros Mountains in Iran. There is strong evidence that people were fermenting alcoholic drinks in Babylon ca.
Fermentation in food processing | History and prehistory
Wines not made from grapes involve fermentation of additional crops including, rice wine and other fruit wines such as plum, cherry, pomegranate, currant and elderberry. Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of wine is from ancient China (7000 BC), Georgia (6000 BC), Iran (5000 BC), and Sicily (4000 BC). New World wine has some connection to alcoholic beverages made by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but is mainly connected to later Viking area of Vinland and Spanish traditions in New Spain. Later, as Old World wine further developed viticulture techniques, Europe would encompass three of the largest wine-producing regions.
Wine | Introduction
The earliest archaeological evidence of wine production yet found has been at sites in Georgia ( BCE) and Iran ( BCE). Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 3000 BCE, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale. The invention of beer (and bread) has been argued to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and build civilization. Tea likely originated in Yunnan, China during the Shang Dynasty (1500 BCE–1046 BCE) as a medicinal drink.
Drink | Biology
In Ancient Rome, wine was normally mixed with water immediately before drinking, since the fermentation was not controlled and the alcohol grade was high. Wine was sometimes adjusted and "improved" by its makers: instructions survive for making white wine from red and vice versa, as well as for rescuing wine that is turning to vinegar. Those instructions as well as detailed descriptions of Roman viticulture date back to 160 BC in the first known text written in Latin prose. Wine was also variously flavored. For example, there was "passum", a strong and sweet raisin wine, for which the earliest known recipe is of Carthaginian origin; "mulsum", a freshly made mixture of wine and honey (called a pyment today); and conditum, a mixture of wine, honey and spices made in advance and matured.
Ancient Roman cuisine | Alcoholic drinks
Bacchus, the god of wine - for the Greeks, Dionysus - is the patron deity of agriculture and the theater. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the aulos and to bring an end to care and worry. The Romans would hold dinner parties where wine was served to the guest all day along with a three course feast. Scholars have discussed Dionysus' relationship to the "cult of the souls" and his ability to preside over communication between the living and the dead.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Rome
The ability to metabolize alcohol likely predates humanity with primates eating fermenting fruit. The oldest verifiable brewery has been found in a prehistoric burial site in a cave near Haifa in modern-day Israel. Researchers have found residue of 13,000-year-old beer that they think might have been used for ritual feasts to honor the dead. The traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcohol were found in stone mortars carved into the cave floor. As early as 7000 BC, chemical analysis of jars from the neolithic village Jiahu in the Henan province of northern China revealed traces of a mixed fermented beverage. According to a study published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" in December 2004, chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and rice was being produced in 7000–6650 BC.
History of alcoholic drinks | Archaeological record
Consumers now demanded cheap "jug wine" (so-called dago red) and sweet, fortified (high alcohol) wine. Before Prohibition dry table wines outsold sweet wines by three to one, but after the ratio was more than reversed. In 1935, 81% of California's production was sweet wines. The reputation of the state's wines suffered accordingly. During the 1970s a system was established to identify appellations of origins, using the term American Viticultural Areas (AVA). An AVA guarantees that a minimum of 85% of the wine in the bottle comes from grapes grown in that AVA. The use of individual vineyard names guarantees that 95% of any wine using a vineyard name must be made from grapes grown in that vineyard, and from within a recognized AVA.
History of American wine | Prohibition
The earliest known evidence of winemaking at a relatively large scale, if not evidence of actual wineries, has been found in the Middle East. In 2011 a team of archaeologists discovered a 6000 year old wine press in a cave in the Areni region of Armenia, and identified the site as a small winery. Previously, in the northern Zagros Mountains in Iran, jars over 7000 years old were discovered to contain tartaric acid crystals (a chemical marker of wine), providing evidence of winemaking in that region. Archaeological excavations in the southern Georgian region of Kvemo Kartli uncovered evidence of wine-making equipment (containers called "qvevri") dating back 8000 years.
Winery | Ancient history
The cave remains date to about 4000 BC – 900 years before the earliest comparable wine remains, found in Egyptian tombs. Archaeologist Gregory Areshian of UCLA says, "The site gives us a new insight into the earliest phase of horticulture—how they grew the first orchards and vineyards." Gregory Areshian, co-director of the excavation and assistant director of the University of California Los Angeles's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology stated that "It's the oldest proven case of documented and dedicated wine production, stretching back the horizons of this important development by thousands of years,"
Armenian wine | History
The wine made from these rudimentary pressing wasn't held in high esteem by the Greeks, often tainted with impurities and having a short shelf life. Much more prized was the wine produced from "free run" juice that was released by the grapes under their own weight before any treading or pressing. This wine was believed to be the most pure and was often used for medicinal purposes. In the 2nd century BC, Cato the Elder wrote a vivid and detailed account of the workings of early Roman wine presses and how to build a press room in his work "De Agri Cultura".
History of the wine press | Ancient Greece and Rome
Other orders, such as the Carthusians, the Templars, and the Carmelites, are also notable both historically and in modern times as wine producers. The Benedictines owned vineyards in Champagne (Dom Perignon was a Benedictine monk), Burgundy, and Bordeaux in France, and in the Rheingau and Franconia in Germany. In 1435 Count John IV of Katzenelnbogen, a wealthy member of the Holy Roman high nobility near Frankfurt, was the first to plant Riesling, the most important German grape. The nearby winemaking monks made it into an industry, producing enough wine to ship all over Europe for secular use. In Portugal, a country with one of the oldest wine traditions, the first appellation system in the world was created.
History of wine | Medieval Europe
The evidence for winemaking consisted of six jars that were embedded in the floor of what archeologists suspect was a kitchen area in a mudbrick building that was inhabited some time between 5400–5000 BC. Inside was yellowish deposits that chemical analysis showed contained residue of tartaric acid and calcium tartrate. Additionally, analysis found deposit of resin, identified as from the terebinth tree ("Pistacia terebinthus") that grew wild in the area. It is possible that the resin was used as a preservative, in a manner similar to the Greek wine Retsina still being produced today, suggesting that winemaking in Hajji Firuz Tepe was deliberately taking place over 7,000 years ago.
Hajji Firuz Tepe | Evidence for winemaking
The origins of wine-making in Greece go back 6,500 years and evidence suggesting wine production confirm that Greece is home to the second oldest known grape wine remnants discovered in the world and the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes. As Greek civilization spread through the Mediterranean, wine culture followed. The Ancient Greeks introduced vines such as Vitis vinifera and made wine in their numerous colonies in Italy, Sicily, southern France, and Spain. In 1937, a Wine Institute was established by the Ministry of Agriculture. During the 1960s, retsina suddenly became the national beverage. With rapidly growing tourism, retsina became associated worldwide with Greece and Greek wine.
Greek wine | History
Their name for beer was "brutos", or "brytos". The Romans called their brew "cerevisia", from the Celtic word for it. Beer was apparently enjoyed by some Roman legionaries. For instance, among the Vindolanda tablets (from Vindolanda in Roman Britain, dated c. 97-103 AD), the cavalry decurion Masculus wrote a letter to prefect Flavius Cerialis inquiring about the exact instructions for his men for the following day. This included a polite request for beer to be sent to the garrison (which had entirely consumed its previous stock of beer).
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Rome
Long before there were domesticated grapes, wild grapes grew in the area around Deidesheim. Witnessing this are remains of vines from some 4,500,000 years ago found about north of Deidesheim near. It is said to be certain, however, that wine was being made in Central Europe no earlier than the beginning of the Christian Era. Whether it was being done at Deidesheim at this time is a matter of speculation: Finds of wine amphorae and a barrel-shaped glass jug from Roman times near Deidesheim and Ruppertsberg do indeed suggest that wine was being enjoyed at this time. Unambiguous evidence of any winegrowing right near Deidesheim in Roman times, however, is lacking.
Deidesheim | Winegrowing history
Historians think it was shortly after the discovery of wine itself, the alcoholic product of fermented grape juice, that cultures realized its value as a trade commodity. Although wild grapes of the genus "Vitis" could be found throughout the known world and all could be fermented, it took some degree of knowledge and skill to turn these grapes into palatable wine. This knowledge was passed along the trading routes that emerged from the Caucasus and Zagros Mountains down through Mesopotamia and to the Mediterranean, eventually reaching Phoenicia. Specific varieties of grapevines of the "V. vinifera" species were identified as especially favorable for winemaking, cuttings of which were spread via these trade routes.
Phoenicians and wine | Early history in wine trading
The winery, which is over six-thousand years old, contains a wine press, fermentation vats, jars, and cups. Archaeologists also found grape seeds and vines of the species "Vitis vinifera". Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the importance of the find, said, "The fact that winemaking was already so well developed in 4000 BC suggests that the technology probably goes back much earlier."
Areni | Copper Age excavations
Archaeological evidence establishes viticulture in Burgundy as early as the second century AD, although the Celts may have been growing vines in the region previous to the Roman conquest of Gaul in 51 BC. Greek traders, for whom viticulture had been practiced since the late Neolithic period, had founded Massalía in about 600 BC, and traded extensively up the Rhône valley, where the Romans first arrived in the second century BC. The earliest recorded praise of the wines of Burgundy was written in 591 by Gregory of Tours, who compared it to the Roman wine Falernian. Monks and monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church have had an important influence on the history of Burgundy wine.
Burgundy wine | History
Spanish wine was in Bordeaux before the region produced its own. French historian Roger Dion has suggested that the balisca vine (common in Spain's northern provinces, particularly Rioja) was brought from Rioja to plant the first Roman vineyards of Bordeaux. Spanish wines were frequently traded in Rome. The poet Martial described a highly regarded wine known as "ceretanum" from Ceret (modern-day Jerez de la Frontera). Wine historian Hugh Johnson believes this wine was an early ancestor of sherry. Spanish wines penetrated more extensively than Italian wines into the Roman Empire, with amphoras from Spain discovered in Aquitaine, Brittany, the Loire Valley, Normandy, Britain and the German frontier.
Ancient Rome and wine | Hispania
In early wine history, the amphora was the vessel of choice for the storage and transportation of wine. Due to the perishable nature of wood material it is difficult to trace the usage of barrels in history. The Greek historian Herodotus noted that ancient Mesopotamians used barrels made of palm wood to transport wine along the Euphrates. Palm is a difficult material to bend and fashion into barrels, however, and wine merchants in different regions experimented with different wood styles to find a better wood source. The use of oak has been prevalent in winemaking for at least two millennia, first coming into widespread use during the time of the Roman Empire.
Oak (wine) | History
One specific recipe, Conditum Paradoxum, is for a mixture of wine, honey, pepper, laurel, dates, mastic, and saffron, cooked and stored for later use. Another recipe called for the addition of seawater, pitch and rosin to the wine. A Greek traveler reported that the beverage was apparently an acquired taste. Sour wine mixed with water and herbs ("posca") was a popular drink for the lower classes and a staple part of the Roman soldier's ration. Beer ("cerevisia") was known but considered vulgar, and was associated with barbarians.
Ancient Roman cuisine | Alcoholic drinks
The history of French wine, spans a period of at least 2600 years dating to the founding of Massalia in the 6th century BC by Phocaeans with the possibility that viticulture existed much earlier. The Romans did much to spread viticulture across the land they knew as Gaul, encouraging the planting of vines in areas that would become the well known wine regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne, Languedoc, Loire Valley and the Rhone. Over the course of its history, the French wine industry would be influenced and driven by the commercial interests of the lucrative English market and Dutch traders.
History of French wine | Introduction
Aimé Guibert has since featured in the documentary film "Mondovino", stating that "wine is dead".
Mas de Daumas Gassac | History
Wines made from produce besides grapes are usually named after the product from which they are produced (for example, rice wine, pomegranate wine, apple wine and elderberry wine) and are generically called fruit wine. The term "wine" can also refer to starch-fermented or fortified drinks having higher alcohol content, such as barley wine, huangjiu, or sake. Wine has a rich history dating back thousands of years, with the earliest production so far discovered having occurred BC in Georgia. It had reached the Balkans by BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece and Rome.
Drink | Wine
Wine was regarded to be cold and dry, and so to this warm ingredients like sugar, ginger and cinnamon were added into wine, creating "hypocras".
Hippocras | History
Many of these actions came in response to declining domestic consumption and slumping sales that followed through the close of the 20th century. Heading into the 21st century, some parts of French wine industry have thrived while others have been faced with a crisis of confidence.
History of French wine | To the modern day
Palm wine played an important social role in many African societies. Thin, gruel-like, alcoholic beverages have existed in traditional societies all across the African continent, created through the fermentation of sorghum, millet, bananas, or in modern times, maize or cassava.
History of alcoholic drinks | Ancient Sub-Saharan Africa
It was also during the late first century BC/early first century AD that viticulture started to spread to other areas of Gaul — beyond areas where the olive and fig would grow, where a suitable variety was found to be the "biturica", the ancestor of cabernet varieties. The high demand for wine and the cost of transport from Rome or Massilia were likely motivators for this spread. Archaeological evidence dating to the reign of Augustus suggests that large numbers of amphorae were being produced near Bézier in the Narbonensis and in the Gaillac region of Southwest France. In both these areas, the presence of the evergreen holm oak, "Quercus ilex", which also grows in the familiar Mediterranean climate served as a benchmark indicating an area where the climate was warm enough to ensure a reliable harvest each year.
History of French wine | Early history
The site and its content has been noted in "The Huffington Post", "Business Insider", "Reader's Digest", and "The Washington Post".
Wine Folly | History
The second and third pressings were subsequently of lower quality and alcohol content. Common folk usually had to settle for a cheap white or rosé from a second or even third pressing, meaning that it could be consumed in quite generous amounts without leading to heavy intoxication. For the poorest (or the most pious), watered-down vinegar (similar to Ancient Roman "posca") would often be the only available choice. The aging of high quality red wine required specialized knowledge as well as expensive storage and equipment, and resulted in an even more expensive end product. Judging from the advice given in many medieval documents on how to salvage wine that bore signs of going bad, preservation must have been a widespread problem.
Medieval cuisine | Wine
Wine historian, Hugh Johnson, speculates that this was an arranged affair between the Bordeaux chateaux, the privateers and the London auction houses to get around the war time politics of the period. In 1725, the spread of vineyards throughout Bordeaux was so vast that it was divided into specific areas so that the consumer could tell exactly where each wine was from. The collection of districts was known as the "Vignoble de Bordeaux", and bottles were labeled with both the region and the area from which they originated. During this period, Nicolas-Alexandre, marquis de Ségur rose to prominence as the "Prince of Vignes" due to his ownership of some of Bordeaux's most prestigious estates and Pierre de Rauzan laid the foundation for Château Rauzan-Ségla, Château Rauzan-Gassies, Château Pichon Longueville Baron, and Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande.
History of Bordeaux wine | Second golden era
In the late 1990s, the laboratory and collaborators analyzed the extraordinarily well-preserved organic residues inside the largest known Iron Age drinking-set, excavated inside the burial chamber of the Midas Tumulus at Gordion in Turkey, ca. 740-700 B.C. The reconstruction of the "funerary feast"–which paired a mixed or extreme fermented beverage of grapes, barley and honey, viz. wine, beer and mead ("Midas Touch," see below) with a spicy, barbecued lamb and lentil stew–is the first time that an ancient meal has been re-created based solely on the chemical evidence. The gala re-creation of the feast was at the Penn Museum in 2000; other dinners have been held in California, Michigan, and Washington, D.C.
Patrick Edward McGovern | Modern re-creations of ancient beverages
For instance, the predecessor of Modern English "wine" had been borrowed into early Germanic from the Latin "vinum".
History of English | Proto-English
Vino cotto production is documented as being produced in the 3rd century BC by the Picenes and again from the 16th century AD. The Roman patricians, the emperors and the popes were reputed to savour this drink at the end of their lavish banquets, although the sources are vague between the various forms of cooked wine.
Vino cotto | History
There were many attempts to create a sparkling wine from the grape but its naturally high alcohol levels prevented it from being much of a success.
Rkatsiteli | History
The first trace of wine that has been found dates to 7500 years ago, in present-day Iran but the results of archaeological excavations have not been able to determine from which time wine began to be produced. Epigraphy tells us about the presence of wine in the Middle East: it was produced in the "High Country" (the mountain borders between Anatolia and Armenia) and then imported into Mesopotamia especially from the 3rd millennium BC. The tablets of Hattusa describes wine with the term "wiyana" in the Hittite language, in Sumerian, and "karânu" in Akkadian. It could be red (), light (or maybe white: ), good wine (), honeyed () new (), or sour ().
White wine | Antiquity
The Romans also created a precursor to today's appellation systems, as certain regions gained reputations for their fine wines. The most famous was the white Falernian from the Latian–Campanian border, principally because of its high (~15%) alcohol content. The Romans recognized three appellations: Caucinian Falernian from the highest slopes, Faustian Falernian from the center (named for its one-time owner Faustus Cornelius Sulla, son of the dictator), and generic Falernian from the lower slopes and plain. The esteemed vintages grew in value as they aged, and each region produced different varieties as well: dry, sweet, and light. Other famous wines were the sweet Alban from the Alban Hills and the Caecuban beloved by Horace and extirpated by Nero.
History of wine | Roman Empire
She took her discovery to the king, who became so enamored with this new "wine" beverage that he not only accepted the girl back into his harem but also decreed that all grapes grown in Persepolis would be devoted to winemaking. While most wine historians view this story as pure legend, there is archaeological evidence that wine was known and extensively traded by the early Persian kings.
Jamshid | Legend of the discovery of wine
Groups of grape pits dated to 8000 BCE show early evidence of juice production; although it is thought that the grapes may have been alternatively used to produce wine. One of the first regularly produced juices was lemonade, appearing in 16th-century Italy, as an import, after its conception in the Middle East. Orange juice originated in the 17th century. In the 18th century, James Lind linked citrus fruits to the prevention of scurvy, which, a century later, led to the implementation of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1867, requiring all Ocean-bound British ships to carry citrus-based juice on board. In 1869, a dentist by the name Thomas B.
Juice | History
Alcohol was brewed as early as 7,000 to 6,650 BCE in northern China. The earliest evidence of winemaking was dated at 6,000 to 5,800 BCE in Georgia in the South Caucasus. Beer was likely brewed from barley as early as the 6th century BCE (600–500 BCE) in Egypt. Pliny the Elder wrote about the "golden age" of winemaking in Rome, the 2nd century BCE (200–100 BCE), when vineyards were planted.
Alcohol (drug) | History
During the 14th century, the Italian wine writer Pietro Crescenzi wrote of wine being produced in central Italy from the "Livatica" grape, today believed to be Aleatico. In Elba, there is a long history of producing dessert wines from Aleatico. During his exile on Elba, the Aleatico wines of the island became a favorite drink of Napoleon. He was reported to have said that they were his only consolation during this time.
Aleatico | History
Food and wine are inseparable from Spanish culture, historically bound to the social, economic, literary and even mystical fabric of society over thousands of years, so it is perhaps not surprising that attempts to regulate and normalise activities related to them have proven highly elusive. It was not until the seventeenth century, when legislative authorities became sufficiently interested in issues such as public health, public order and economic regulation, that laws begin to be formulated with regard to wine, initially prohibiting, later encouraging and ultimately regulating its production, commercialisation and consumption. Food regulation waited even longer, until Spain's entry into the EU and signing up to the Common Agricultural Policy during the latter part of the twentieth century.
Denominación de origen | History
In order to make a profit, bakers created a wide variety of what were known as "fantasy" breads, made with better quality flours and with different grains; the price of these breads ranged from 80 centimes to a franc per kilo. The consumption of wine by Parisians increased during the Second Empire, while the quality decreased. It was unusual for women to drink; but, for both the workers and the middle and upper classes, wine was part of the daily meal. The number of "debits de boissons", bars where wine was sold, doubled. Ordinary wine was produced by mixing several different wines of different qualities from different places in a cask and shaking it.
Paris during the Second Empire | Bread and wine