Wine

• 1. Introduction

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  Wine is an alcoholic drink made from fermented grape juice, and its story begins not in France or Italy but in the South Caucasus, where traces of it have been found dating to around 6000 BCE near present-day Tbilisi, Georgia. That is roughly eight thousand years ago, long before the pyramids, long before the alphabet. The earliest known winery, dated to around 4100 BCE, stands at Areni-1 in Armenia. What drove this ancient impulse to crush grapes and wait? What made wine spread across the entire ancient world and then into new continents? And why, thousands of years later, does a single bottle from a place called Romanée-Conti sell for thousands of pounds? The answers lie in the soil, the vine, the religious impulse, and the complicated relationship between pleasure and danger that has followed wine from its very first sip.

• 2. The Vine Goes Global

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  The Phoenicians were probably the first great agents of wine's spread around the Mediterranean, carrying the culture of the vine outward from around 1000 BCE. The wines of Byblos traveled with them, prized enough that their reputation survived well into Roman times. The Greeks followed from around 600 BCE, and industrialized Greek wine production eventually reached across the Italian peninsula and into what is now southern France. Ancient Rome then expanded those trade networks further, particularly in Gaul around the period of the Gallic Wars.

  Medieval monks became the next great custodians of the vine. Monasteries accumulated vineyard land over centuries and established growing sites in many of the regions still celebrated today. Bordeaux stood apart from this religious economy as a purely commercial operation. It served the Duchy of Aquitaine and, through that political connection, found its way into British hands and markets between the 12th and 15th centuries.

  The New World opened a second chapter in wine's global expansion. Colonists planted vines to celebrate the Eucharist as well as for trade. Vineyards appeared in Mexico by 1530, in Peru by the 1550s, and in Chile shortly afterward. Dutch East India Company trade led to vines being planted in South Africa in 1655. Jesuit missionaries cultivated grapes in California in the 1670s, with later plantings in Los Angeles in the 1820s and in Napa and Sonoma in the 1850s. Arthur Phillip brought vines to Australia in 1788, and by the 1850s viticulture was practiced widely there. The missionary Samuel Marsden introduced vines to New Zealand in 1819.

  Then came near-catastrophe. In the latter half of the 19th century, an aphid called phylloxera, brought over from America, began feeding on vine roots across Europe and killing the plants. Almost every vine on the continent had to be replaced, grafted onto American rootstock that is naturally resistant to the pest. That practice continues today in most regions, with the exception of a small number of phylloxera-free areas such as South Australia.

• 3. What Goes Into the Glass

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  Most wine is made from one or more varieties of a single European species, Vitis vinifera, which includes grapes such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The color of the wine depends on how long the juice stays in contact with the grape skins. Red grapes with long skin contact produce red wine; short contact yields rosé. White grapes fermented with extended skin contact produce orange wine, sometimes called amber wine, which is deliberately astringent. White grapes with minimal skin contact, limited to between four and 24 hours when used at all, produce white wine.

  Sparkling wines undergo a secondary fermentation that creates carbon dioxide, which stays dissolved under pressure in the sealed container. Two main methods achieve this. The traditional method is used for Champagne, Cava, and more expensive sparkling wines. The Charmat method is used for Prosecco, Asti, and less expensive bottles. A transfer method yields results between the two, and direct addition of carbon dioxide is used in the cheapest versions.

  The concept of terroir shapes what ends up in the bottle. Terroir encompasses the elevation and slope of the vineyard, the type and chemistry of the soil, and the climatic and seasonal conditions a vine experiences. Wine grapes grow mainly between 30 and 50 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. The world's southernmost vineyard sits in Sarmiento, Argentina, near the 46th parallel south. The northernmost wine region is the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada, reaching up to the 50th parallel north.

  Inside the winery, fermentation typically takes place in containers made of stainless steel, wood, or concrete. Yeast naturally present on grape skins is capable of driving fermentation, but most producers use a specific chosen strain for the predictable flavors it produces. Some wines also undergo a secondary malolactic fermentation, in which bacteria convert the harsher malic acid into softer lactic acid. A standard wine bottle holds 75 centiliters, though bottles range from 18.7 centiliters to 18 liters. Sparkling wine bottles must be thick enough to withstand the pressure behind the cork, which can reach up to 6 atm.

• 4. Religion, Art, and Memory

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  Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine, is attested from around 1200 BCE, with a distinct character emerging by the eighth century BCE. Festivals in his name took place across Greece and Asia Minor at harvest and at the release of wine. In the Roman pantheon he became Bacchus, and in 186 BCE the Roman Senate moved to forbid rites in his honor with the decree Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus. He appears on many Roman sarcophagi, apparently representing deliverance from worldly concerns.

  Wine sits at the center of Jewish law and tradition as well. The Kiddush blessing is recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat. During the Passover Seder, it is a Rabbinic obligation for adults to drink four cups of wine. Wine was also present at the Last Supper, where Jesus used it as a metaphor for his blood, a moment that became the foundation of the Eucharist and drove monks throughout the Middle Ages to grow grapes and produce wine. Under most interpretations of Islamic law, wine is forbidden; the Qur'an portrays it as both an abomination and, in the form of rivers of wine, a reward in paradise, while the Hadith consistently condemns it.

  In the arts, wine connoisseurship took shape in the late Middle Ages and flourished into the Renaissance. Comparisons between wines were written in verse, with works such as Battle of the Wines by Henri d'Andeli. Biblical scenes featuring wine were popular with painters; later poets invoked Bacchus as a figure of desire, as in Giovanni Pontano's Parthenopeus, written around 1450, where Bacchus appears as "the nurse of love." In northern Europe, wine carried a moral warning, most visibly in Allegory of Gluttony and Lust by Hieronymus Bosch.

  By the 17th century that moralizing perspective deepened. Wine negatively shapes several Shakespeare characters, including Cassio in Othello and the Duke of Clarence in Richard III. John Milton's works also carry multiple negative references to wine. Two centuries later, Manet's 1882 painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère placed Champagne bottles at the center of a crowded music hall, using wine to evoke both pleasure and social unease. Lord Byron's Don Juan, which critics note recalls the classical carpe diem philosophy of Theognis and Horace, weaves wine through its pages. Ernest Christopher Dowson's 1899 poem Villanelle of the Poet's Road and William Butler Yeats's 1910 poem A Drinking Song both join that hedonistic tradition to a somber awareness of mortality. The 2004 film Sideways made wine its central subject and demonstrably shifted sales patterns in the United States.

• 5. Classification and Fraud

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  European wines are typically classified by the region they come from, places like Bordeaux, Rioja, and Chianti, each carrying specific rules about grape varieties, yields, and how the wine must be made. Since 2009, the European Union has organized these under two designations: protected geographical indication and protected designation of origin. National systems nest inside these broader categories, including Germany's Landwein and Qualitätswein, Italy's Denominazione di origine controllata, and France's Appellation d'origine contrôlée. France's Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité, established in 1947, oversees administration of the French system and was the first in the world to create comprehensive restrictions covering grape varieties, maximum yields, alcoholic strength, and vinification techniques.

  New World countries, by contrast, have generally kept classifications loose, tied mainly to geographical areas such as the American Viticultural Area and Australian Wine Geographical Indications systems. Australia also relies on wine competitions and the influential publication Langton's Classification of Australian Wine. Some producers have created voluntary schemes that signal stricter standards than the law requires, such as Appellation Marlborough Wine in New Zealand and Meritage in the United States.

  Where classification creates value, fraud follows. Wine fraud dates to ancient Greece and can take several forms: blending with a cheaper wine, adding undisclosed additives, or relabeling to pass off an ordinary bottle as a prestigious one. Legal frameworks and appellation systems have reduced fraud since the late 19th century, but the rising value of fine wines since the 1970s has driven a corresponding increase in relabeling fraud. Burgundy's 2016 Romanée-Conti reached £3,250 per bottle, illustrating why high-value bottles attract criminal attention.

• 6. Drinking, Storing, and the Market

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  Tasting wine involves assessing its appearance, its smell, and its flavors on the palate. On the nose, tasters draw comparisons ranging from pineapple and asparagus to compost heaps and leather, all genuine descriptors used in professional evaluation. Legs or tears, the lines that form on a glass after swirling, indicate high alcohol or sweetness. Red wines are served at what was historically called room temperature, now better described as the temperature of a cool room, while whites and sparkling wines are served chilled. Alcohol begins to evaporate noticeably above 20 degrees Celsius, and the carbon dioxide in sparkling wines releases too quickly at around 18 degrees Celsius.

  Storage matters enormously for wines intended to improve with age. The ideal temperature is 12-13 degrees Celsius with a humidity of 65-70 percent. Lower humidity or temperature swings can dry out a cork, allowing oxygen into the bottle and degrading the wine through oxidation. Bottles sealed with corks are typically stored on their sides to keep the cork moist, while screwcap bottles do not require this.

  Global wine consumption was falling in the early 2010s, largely because French and Italian drinkers were consuming considerably less. That trend has since reversed, driven by younger Americans and Chinese drinkers. The 2024 global market was estimated at 515.1 billion US dollars, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 7.1 percent between 2025 and 2030. France remains the world's largest producer by value, accounting for 33.3 percent of export market share despite producing 48 million hectoliters in 2023. Research by Pesticide Action Network has found that European wines contain substantial amounts of PFAS, including TFA, raising questions about long-term health consequences that the growing market has not yet fully reckoned with.