The history of wine spans thousands of years and is closely intertwined with the history of agriculture, cuisine, civilization and man himself. Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest wine production came from sites in Georgia and Iran, dating from 6000 to 5000 BC. The archaeological evidence becomes clearer, and points to domestication of grapevine, in Early Bronze Age sites of the Near East, Sumer and Egypt from around the third millennium BC.
Evidence of the earliest European wine production has been uncovered at archaeological sites in Macedonia, dated to 6,500 years ago. These same sites also contain remnants of the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes In Egypt, wine became a part of recorded history, playing an important role in ancient ceremonial life. Traces of wine dating from the second and first millennium BC have also been found in China. Wine was common in classical Greece and Rome and many of the major wine producing regions of Western Europe today were established with Phoenician and later Roman plantations. Wine making technology improved considerably during the time of the Roman Empire; many grape varieties and cultivation techniques were known and barrels were developed for storing and shipping wine.
In medieval Europe, following the decline of Rome and therefore of widespread wine production, the Christian Church was a staunch supporter of the wine necessary for celebration of the Catholic Mass. In places such as Germany, beer was banned and considered pagan and barbaric, while wine consumption was viewed as civilized and a sign of conversion.Whereas wine was also forbidden in medieval Islamic cultures, Geber and other Muslim chemists pioneered the distillation of wine for medicinal purposes and its use in Christian libation was widely tolerated. Wine production gradually increased and its consumption became popularized from the 15th century onwards, surviving the devastating Phylloxera louse of the 1870s and eventually establishing growing regions throughout the world.
EARLY HISTORY
Wine residue has been identified by Patrick McGovern's team at the University Museum, Pennsylvania, in ancient pottery jars. Records include ceramic jars from the Neolithic sites at Shulaveri, of present-day Georgia (about 6000 BC), Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of present-day Iran (5400–5000 BC)and from Late Uruk (3500–3100 BC) occupation at the site of Uruk, in Mesopotamia. The identifications are based on the identification of tartaric acid and tartrate salts using a form of infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). These identifications are regarded with caution by some biochemists because of the risk of false positives, particularly where complex mixtures of organic materials, and degradation products, may be present. The identifications have not yet been replicated in other laboratories. Little is actually known of the prehistory of wine. It is plausible that early foragers and farmers made alcoholic beverages from wild fruits, including wild grapes (Vitis silvestris). This would have become easier following the development of pottery vessels in the later Neolithic of the Near East, about 9000 years ago. However, wild grapes are small and sour, and relatively rare at archaeological sites. It is unlikely they could have been the basis of a wine industry. Domesticated grapes were abundant in the Near East from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, starting in 3200 BC. There is also increasingly abundant evidence for wine making in Sumer and Egypt in the third millennium BC. The ancient Chinese made wine from native wild "mountain grapes" like Vitis thunbergii for a time, until they imported domesticated grape seeds from Central Asia in the second century. Grapes were, of course, also an important food. There is scant evidence for earlier domestication of grape, in the form of grape pips from Chalcolithic Tell Shuna in Jordan, but this evidence remains unpublished. Exactly where wine was first made is still unclear. It could have been anywhere in the vast region, stretching from North Africa to Central/South Asia, where wild grapes grow. However, the first large-scale production of wine must have been in the region where grapes were first domesticated, Southern Caucasus and the Near East. Wild grapes grow in Georgia, northern Levant, coastal and southeastern Turkey, northern Iran or Armenia. None of these areas can, as yet, be definitively singled out, despite persistent suggestions that Georgia is the birthplace of wine.
In the year 1000 AD, Leif Ericsson the Lucky sailed from Norway across the North Atlantic Ocean and returned with stories about a new country he named "Vinland" because of the abundance of wild grapes found growing there. It is not know exactly where this was, but historians agree that "Vinland" was one of the Eastern maritime provinces of Canada. Cultivated varieties of grapes have been grown on a large scale in the Old World since the dawn of history. The art of grape growing was said in Greek legend to have been introduced by Dionysus; Bacchus was the god of wine. Throughout history, the grape has been a symbol in art and literature of revelry and joy. Wine grapes mostly grow between the 30th and the 50th degree of latitude, in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Grapes will sometimes grow beyond this range and minor amounts of wine are made in some very unexpected places. The equitorial side of these zones produce wines characterized by warm climate viticulture; the areas near the poles produce cool climate wines. The unique flavor of each wine is the result of multivariate interactions between the geography, climate, cultivar, vineyard management and enology.
Of the many varieties of grapes for the winemaker, only the classification vitis vinifera matters. The genus vitis and the species vinifera are responsible for all the world's great wines. Of course, there are many sub genus that account for all the different kinds of grapes that are used to make wine. Of the many named varieties of wine grapes on earth, perhaps on about 40 have really recognizable flavor and character. Of these a dozen have moved into international circulation and the dozen can be narrowed again to those that have characteristics so definite that they form the basis of a whole international category of wine.
Grapes may be classified as red, blue and white - which are actually pale green in color. Each kind has its own particular character for wine making and as a table grape. Grapes, like fruit trees, require a stable climate in order to provide a dependable growing environment.
