What is the origin of wine

Wine is a beverage made from fresh grapes or grape juice that has been fully or partially fermented and has an alcohol content between 7 and 22 degrees. So, what is the origin of wine?

Ancient records vary on the origin of wine. It was born about 10,000 years ago, and has been so far back in history that it cannot be recorded. As we all know, wine is the product of natural fermentation. In the grape berries after ripening fell to the ground, the skin rupture, oozing juice and the air soon after the contact of yeast, the sense of wine was produced. Our distant ancestors would surely have tasted this product of nature, and so it was that the first people in the world tasted wine. Bowls made of animal skins or rough wood were used to sip the naturally fermented juice of wild grapes, probably as early as the Paleolithic period. Once this became a habit, our alert and resourceful ancestors used a variety of methods to mimic nature's biological instincts to make wine. By the Neolithic period, people were cultivating their own grapes and making their own wine. Therefore, from the point of view of modern science, the origin of wine has gone through a process of transition from natural wine to artificial wine.

The story of Noah's drunkenness is told in the eighth and ninth chapters of Genesis: Noah was a man who was one of the countless descendants of Adam and Eve, and was a very devout believer in God, and he became the originator of the people who came after him. When God realized that there was evil and greed in the world, he decided to send a great flood on earth to get rid of all the sinful beings. Noah followed the Lord's will and chose a pair of male and female of each of all the plants (the plant he chose was the grape) and animal species on the earth, and took his 3 sons (Sem, Coham Coham, and Japhet Japhet), and boarded a homemade wooden boat, the famous Noah's Ark. After 150 days of flooding, in the seventh month and 17 days, the ark was stranded on Mount Ararat (eastern Turkey, the border area between Armenia*** and the country and Iran). Thereafter, Noah began to cultivate the land and planted his first grape plants, and later set about making wine. One day, he was alone in his tent, drinking alone and drunk. After his son Khan found Noah lying naked and drunk on the ground, he called for Sim and Japhet, and the latter two took their robes and went backwards into the tent to cover their father with their backs, without looking at his naked body. When Noah sobered up, he cursed Khan and asked God to make Khan's son, Canaan I, a slave of the Gafet family. He himself was drunk and immoral, but he took it out on his son, and what's more, he punished his grandson as a slave. Drinking without virtue, it seems, is the same in ancient and modern times.

Although the Bible does not mention whether Noah brought wine on board, from the fact that he cultivated grapes to make wine as soon as he stepped off the boat, it seems to be inferred that the first important thing on his mind, besides thanking God, was to grow grapes to make wine. Of course, Noah's winemaking is a Hebrew myth, not a fact.

As for the origin of wine, according to historical records, 10,000 years ago in the Neolithic era near the Black Sea in Transcaucasia, that is, now Anatolia (Aratolia) (ancient Asia Minor), Georgia and Armenia, have found a large number of accumulated grape seeds, indicating that grapes were not only used to eat, but also used to squeeze the juice of the brewery. Therefore, there are many different opinions about the origin of wine. Some say it came from Greece, while others say it was in Egypt. But the historical evidence is mostly recognized from 10,000 years ago from Asia Minor and Egypt, before reaching Greece and its islands, spread to Crete, Greece, and then to Sicily, Italy, France, Provence, Libya, North Africa, and the coastal areas of Spain in Europe. At the same time, the cultivation technique moved from Northern Europe by the Danube to Central Europe, Germany and other regions, and thus enjoyed a reputation for quite a long time, which led us to define it today as a traditional appellation.

Usually, the wines produced in these regions are subject to strict regulations. In contrast, the appellations of the New World, that is to say, with the travels of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers of the 16th century, vineyards were established in the countries of Central and South America that they reached. Soon the techniques of viticulture were popularized in the United States, Canada and the west coast of South America, while the first vineyards in South Africa began only in the late 17th century, and it was South African varieties that were initially introduced in Australia and New Zealand. There are also a large majority of historians who believe that winemaking originated in ancient Persia, now Iran, in 6000 BC. The earliest cultivation of grapes began about 7,000 years ago in the former Soviet Union in the South Caucasus, Central Asia, Syria, Iraq and other regions. Later, with the ancient wars, migrants spread to other regions. First to Egypt, then to Greece.

In or from Egyptian tombs found in a large number of remains, relics. In the Nile Valley, from the excavation of the burial complex, archaeologists found a bottom small round, belly round, upper neck mouth large liquid earthen pots burial items, after examination, which is used by the ancient Egyptians to load wine or oil clay pots; especially in relief, clearly depicted the ancient Egyptians cultivation, harvesting grapes, vinification steps and drinking wine, which so far has been more than 5000 years of history. In addition, the Egyptian ancient kingdom era produced wine pots, also engraved with the word Ilp (Egyptian language, that is, the meaning of wine). Western scholars believe that this is the beginning of the human grape and wine industry. Hugh Johnson, a famous writer on the subject of wine, wrote a book on the subject. Johnson (Hugh Johnson) has described: Ancient Egypt has a very good wine tasting experts, they are like the twentieth century Sherry (Sherry) wine producers or Bordeaux wine brokers wine, can confidently and professionally identify the quality of wine.

For Greece, the first country in Europe to start growing grapes and making wine, some seafarers brought back grapes and winemaking techniques from the Nile Delta. Wine was not only the cornerstone of their sparkling culture, but also an indispensable part of their daily life. The Greek epic poems of Homer (Iliad and Odyssey) contain many descriptions of wine, and wine is often depicted as black in the Iliad. And his understanding of the substance of life is expressed as an idyllic vineyard covered with black grapes. According to evidence, the Aegean Basin of ancient Greece had a very developed agriculture, and people mainly planted wheat, barley, olive and grapes. Most of the grape berries were used to make wine, and the rest was dried. Almost every Greek was in the habit of drinking wine. Wine was made in a special shaped earthenware jar for storage and trade transportation. The large number of containers excavated along the Mediterranean coastline illustrates the scale and routes of the wine trade at that time, showing that wine was one of the most important trade goods at that time. In the period of the Mycenaens (1600-1100 BC), Greek winegrowing was already flourishing, and the wine trade reached Egypt, Syria, the Black Sea region, Sicily and southern Italy.

Wine was not only a traded good, but also part of Greek religious rituals, and before 700 AD, the Greeks would hold wine celebrations to show their worship of the mythical god of wine. Worship of the god Dionysos, who was associated with wine and intoxication, and viticulture were prevalent throughout Greece. The god Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and one of the most important and complex Greek gods.

He was the son of the god Zeus and the goddess Semele under bizarre circumstances. The god Dionysus meant merrymaking, games and great festivals in Greece, for he loved to be in the midst of the bustle of the priestesses with his wine. The Greeks considered him to be a protector from the time of some great festival. A Neo-Athenian Borghese vase from the first century A.D. is engraved with a scene of Dionysus drunkenly supported by Satyrs, a god of the forests, with a cup falling to the ground.

And Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, was the Roman symbol of grapes and wine, of debauchery and licentiousness. He is similar to the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, but plays a minor role in Roman doctrine and is worshipped by a small number of initiates in particular. During the mystical festival of Bacchus, the faithful danced the Bacchae with such fervor that the Roman Senate had to intervene to quell the chaos. The birth of the god Bacchus is recorded in an ancient bas-relief in the Vatican Museums: after Bacchus was taken out of the womb of the goddess Shimla, the god Jupiter placed the young Bacchus in his lap for three months. Little Bacchus descended from the lap of the father god after a full month. At this time, the god of animal husbandry, Hermes (Hermes), stood aside, holding a shirt, ready to deliver the young god. Afterwards, the three Parques goddesses, who control life, death and fate, prayed for the newborn baby. Seventeenth-century Italian famous painter Caravaggio (Canavaggio, 1573-1610) with his A ruthless real @ expression, created a number of Parques image.

In the sixth century BC, the Greeks introduced grapes to Gaul (now France) through the port of Marseille, and passed on the techniques of viticulture and winemaking to the Gauls. But at that time, grape and wine production in Gaul was not important. After the Romans learned the techniques of viticulture and winemaking from the Greeks, they fully promoted wine in the Italian Peninsula, and it soon reached Rome and spread all over Europe through the hands of the Romans. In the first century A.D. when the vines throughout the Rhone Valley; the second century when the vines throughout Burgundy (Burgundy) and Bordeaux (Bordeaux); the third century has been included in the Loire Valley (Loire Valley); and finally appeared in the fourth century in the Champagne (Champagne) and the Moselle Valley (Moselle Valley). The Gauls, who originally loved barley beer (cervoise) and mead (hydromel), quickly fell in love with wine and became outstanding winegrowers. Their wines became so popular in Rome that the Roman Emperor Domitian ordered half of the vines in Gaul to be uprooted in order to ensure that the native Roman winegrowers would be able to produce their own wines.

Wine was an integral part of Roman culture, and contributed greatly to the economy of the Roman Empire. As the power of the Roman Empire slowly expanded, grapes and wine and quickly spread to eastern France, Spain, southern England, Germany, the Rhine Valley and the Danube east of the region. During this period, some countries imposed a ban on the cultivation of grapes, but wine was still very popular on the continent. Later the Roman Empire saw a decline in agriculture, and vineyards followed. The ancient Romans loved wine, and some historians attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to the excessive drinking of the ancient Romans and the degeneration of the human race.

At the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine (Constantine) officially recognized ____ the need for wine in mass ceremonies, which fueled the planting of vines. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, the Christian ____ houses in the breakaway Western Roman Empire (France, northern Italy and parts of Germany) documented in detail the harvesting of grapes and the process of making wine. These meticulous records helped to cultivate grape varieties that were best suited for planting in specific farming areas. The development of wine in the Middle Ages was attributed to Christ ____ because in the Bible, wine was considered to be the blood of God, Christ ____ wine was regarded as the holy blood, and it was even recognized as an indispensable prop in important ceremonies, as well as a product of luxury and pleasure. Wine is mentioned 521 times in the Bible.

Jesus said at the Last Supper that bread is my flesh and wine is my blood, and there is almost always a similar scene on many medieval paintings full of religious colors - drinking wine. As with many other art forms such as music, painting, and literature, it was the Church and the monks who first perfected the art of winemaking. Churchmen made grape growing and wine making their work. And it was with the missionaries that wine eventually spread throughout the world.

The power of the Holy Roman Emperor CC Charlemagne, who ruled the Carolingian dynasty of the Western Roman Empire (Frankish Kingdom) from 768 to 814 AD, also influenced the development of wine thereafter. The great emperor foresaw a vision of vineyards from the south of France to the north of Germany, and the famous Burgundy appellation of Corton-Charlemagne's top vineyards (Grandcru Corton-Charlemagne) was once his property. The wines of the Burgundy region of France are arguably the best example of traditional French wine. But few people know that its source turned out to be the Church of Cistercians (Cistercians).

The story of the Cistercian monks, who were arguably the winemaking experts of the Middle Ages, originates in 1112. The story begins in 1112 with a man named Bernard Dufontaine. Bernard de Fontaine (Bernard de Fontaine) ascetic monk led 304 followers from Cluny (Cluny) abbey defected to Burgundy's wine-producing region of Cordeaux province, located in the north of Beaune (Beaune), the territory of the Citeaux (Citeaux), a newly built small monasteries, founded the Cistercian Order. The Cistercians' precepts were brutal, with an average life expectancy of 28 years for each monk, and their precepts consisted mainly of requiring the monks to break stones in abandoned vineyards and to taste the soil with their tongues. After Bernard's death, the Cistercians expanded their power to make wine in the communes of the province of Corto, and in turn to more than 400 monasteries throughout Europe.

The Cistercian monks were obsessed with the study and improvement of grape varieties. Lalou Bize-Leroy, the preeminent Burgundy producer of the twentieth century, believed that the Cistercian monks could identify the soil by tasting it, and in fact it was these monks who pioneered the concept of cru, that is to say, that the same soil could produce grapes of the same flavor and style. In fact, it was these monks who first developed the concept of cru, the idea that the same soil could produce grapes with the same flavor and style. The Cistercian monks were the source of the spirituality of traditional European winemaking. Around the thirteenth century, as the Cistercians prospered, the wines of the Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe gained a growing reputation. The bishops of Avignon in the fourteenth century were particularly partial to Burgundy, and the boozy Duke Philip of Burgundy was the celebrated publicist of his wines: at a Catholic synod in Bruges in 1360, the attendees were offered as much as they could drink, and of course the rare wines of Beaune would be able to offer them just the amount they tasted.

Drink less but letter is one of the immortal sayings of wine. But it's true that fine red Burgundy has never been developed on a large scale since then; its history is more a matter of Pinot Noir growing in the fine soils of the Cordeaux provinces showing its qualities to the best of its ability. Produced in small batches from small casks, it was the hallmark of their game. Especially after the French revolution in 1789, the vineyards of Burgundy were reduced to nothing as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries and the liquidation of the noble estates of the old system.

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the best wines in Europe were thought to be produced in these monasteries, with sixteenth-century tapestries depicting the process of winemaking, and the red wines produced in Burgundy were considered the finest of the best. During this period, viticulture and winemaking techniques were introduced in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and the Americas.

By the time Columbus discovered the New World, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers and missionaries brought European grape varieties to South America in the sixteenth century, planting them in Mexico, the California peninsula and Arizona. Later, the British tried to viticulture technology into the Atlantic coast of the Americas, unfortunately, the climate of the east coast of the Americas is not suitable for cultivation of grapes, despite repeated efforts, but due to phylloxera, downy mildew and powdery mildew infestation, as well as the impact of the climatic conditions of the region, so that the grapes here to carry cultivation failed. By the middle of the nineteenth century, grafting techniques were used to plant European grape varieties on American grape plants, utilizing the immunity of American grapes to phylloxera. Since then, the wine industry in the Americas and the United States has gradually developed, and now there is wine production in both North and South America, with famous wine regions such as Argentina, California and Mexico.

After the Middle Ages, wine was regarded as a source of pleasure and a symbol of happiness. During the Renaissance, many masterpieces were created.

Around the 17th and 18th centuries, France began to dominate the entire wine kingdom, and the wines of the two regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy have always been the two pillars, representing two different types of premium wines: the solidity of Bordeaux and the elegance of Burgundy, and have become the basic criterion for winemaking. However, these two regions, with their limited production, were not able to satisfy the world's needs. Therefore, in the 1960s and 1970s after the Second World War, some wineries and winemakers began to look for suitable soil and similar climate to grow quality grape varieties, and to develop and improve winemaking techniques, so that the wine business in the whole world flourished. The United States and Australia, in particular, have adopted modern technology and market development techniques to create the colorful and diverse world of wine that exists today. In terms of global division, there are basically two types of wines: the New World and the Old World. The New World represents wines that have been developed from Europe, such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and other emerging countries. The Old World represents European countries with more than 100 years of winemaking history, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

In contrast, Europe has a much longer tradition of growing grapes, and most of the viticulture and winemaking technologies were born in Europe. In addition, the fundamental difference between the New World and the Old World is that New World wines tend to be produced industrially, while Old World wines tend to be made by hand. Handmade wine is the result of a craftsman's labor, whereas an industrial product is the product of a process, a standardized product that is copied in large quantities.

By far, wine production is still the largest in Europe, with Italy as the world's first. Every year, a large number of wines are exported to France, Germany and the United States, and the export volume is the world's first.