Wine - 101 Truths, Myths and Legends by Roddy Button & Mike Oliver

Author:Roddy Button & Mike Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: wine, beer, history, red, white, spain, italy, new zealand, england, germany, amercian, connoisseur, tipple, spirits
ISBN: 9781908752284
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

History

The first mention of wine in the Bible is in the book of Genesis, in Chapter 9 verses 20-22, ‘Noah, a man of the soil, began the planting of vineyards. He drank some of the wine, became drunk and lay naked inside his tent.’

No one really knows when wine was first discovered, but one story is that over 8,000 years ago a woman in the harem of a Persian king tried to commit suicide by consuming fermented grape juice which, at the time, was believed to be poisonous. When she subsequently felt more alive and effervescent than she did before, wine was born!

New Archaeological evidence suggests wine was first produced in the Neolithic Period from around 8,000 BC (over 10,000 years ago) in the Zagros Mountains of Northern Iran, ironic that the birthplace of wine now bans its drinking.

The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt developed a taste for wines as early as 3500 BC, and in 3150 BC the Pharoah King Scorpian I was buried with 700 large jars of wine (45,000 bottles) to take to the after-life.

New Zealand wines, particularly Sauvignon Blanc, are now well-established worldwide. But it was only about 35 years ago that Sauvignon Blanc was first produced in NZ to a superior quality level. Because of its early success, an over-zealous wine producing community went on to over-produce during the 1980s, and often made the mistake of planting varietals that were incompatible with the local terroir. This resulted in the NZ Government paying producers to uproot vines in order to reduce stocks. However, many growers used this grant to re-plant with more successful varietals, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, rather than reduce the amount of wine they produced. Even so, the glut of wine soon disappeared as producers went on to achieve worldwide success in selling their now much sought-after quality wines.

One of the first greatest feasts with wine was held in 870 BC by King Ashurnaspiral II of Assyria to celebrate the building of the new capital Nimrud. It went on for 10 days with 70,000 guests eating 25,000 lambs, 2,000 fattened cows and 10,000 fish. They drank the equivalent of over 600,000 bottles of wine, which is under a bottle each a day - quite abstemious!

To drink wine without diluting it with water was seen as barbaric by the Greeks. They invented all-male drinking and thinking parties called symposiums and even had special men-only wine drinking rooms (Androns) built into their houses. The ratio was usually two to three parts water to one part wine to stop them from getting too inebriated to pontificate. The wine made the water safe and the water kept the wine drinker free from drunkenness.

The Romans took over world wine production and consumption from the Greeks in 145BC. Roman winemakers started by copying the Greeks, with the seawater-flavoured wines of Kos being early favourites. 200 years later Pliny the Elder wrote that there were now 80 different fine wines of note, with 70% grown in Italy.

Cork was first developed as a closure for bottles in the late 17 th century.

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