- The smell of young wine is called an “aroma” while a more mature wine offers a more subtle "bouquet"
- In ancient Greece, a dinner host would take the first sip of wine to assure guests the wine was not poisoned, hence the phrase "drinking to one's health. "Toasting" started in ancient Rome when the
Romans continued the Greek tradition but started dropping a piece of toasted bread into each wine glass to temper undesirable tastes or excessive acidity.
- A "cork-tease" is someone who constantly talks about the wine he or she will open but never does.
- Since wine tasting is essentially wine smelling, women tend to be better
wine testers because women, particularly of reproductive ages, have a better
sense of smell than men.
- An Italian study argues that women who drink two glasses of wine a day
have better sex than those who don’t drink at all.f
- Red wines are red because fermentation extracts color from the grape skins.
White wines are not fermented with the skins present.
- In the whole of the Biblical Old Testament, only the Book of Jonah has
no reference to the vine or wine.
- Early Roman women were forbidden to drink wine, and a husband who found
his wife drinking was at liberty to kill her. Divorce on the same grounds
was last recorded in Rome in 194 B.C.
- The world’s oldest bottle of wine dates back to A.D. 325 and was
found near the town of Speyer, Germany, inside one of two Roman sarcophaguses.
It is on display at the town's Historisches Museum der Pfalz.
- There is increasing scientific evidence that moderate, regular wine drinking
can reduce the risk of heart
disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke,and gum disease.
- While wine offers certain medical benefits, it may slightly increase the
risk of contracting certain kinds of cancer of the digestive tract, particularly
the esophagus. There is also a slightly increased risk of breast cancer.
- Red wine, typically more than white wine, has antioxidant properties and
contains resveratrol, which seems to be important in the cardio-protective
effects of wine.
- California, New York, and Florida lead the United States in wine consumption.
- California is the fourth-largest wine producer in the world, after France,
Italy, and Spain.
- Wine testers swirl their glass to encourage the wine to release all of
its powerful aromas. Most don’t fill the glass more than a third full
in order to allow aromas to collect and to not spill it during a swirl.
- Most wine is served in a glass that has a gently curved rim at the top
to help contain the aromas in the glass. The thinner the glass and the finer
the rim, the better. A flaring, trumpet-shaped class dissipates the aromas.
- When tasting wine, hold the wine in the mouth for a moment or two and then
either swallow it or, preferably, spit it out, usually into a spittoon. A
really good wine will have a long aftertaste, while an inferior wine will have a short aftertaste.
- Wine grapes rank number one among the world’s fruit crops in terms
of acres planted.
- The Code of Hammurabi (1800 B.C.) includes a law that punishes fraudulent
wine sellers: They were to be drowned in a river.
- Romans discovered that mixing lead with wine not only helped preserve wine,
but also gave it a sweet taste and succulent texture. Chronic lead poisoning
has often been cited as one of the causes of the decline of Rome.
- The Vikings called America Vinland (“wine-land” or “pasture-land”)
for the profusion of native grape vines they found there around A.D. 1000.
- A wine that tastes watery is said to taste “dilute.” It may
have been made from grapes picked during a rainstorm.
- The worst place to store wine is usually in the kitchen because it is typically
too warm to store wine safely. Refrigerators are not satisfactory for storing
wine either. Even at their warmest setting, they’re too cold.
- When wine and food are paired together, they have “synergy” or
a third flavor beyond what either the food or drink offers alone.
- Richer, heavier foods usually go well with richer, heavier wines; lighter
foods demand light wines. Additionally, red wine typically is served with
red meat, white wine with white meat and fish, and sweet wine with desserts.
- It is traditional to first serve lighter wines and then move to heavier
wines throughout a meal. Additionally, white wine should be served before
red, younger wine before older, and dry wine before sweet.
- Serving temperatures should be lower for white (45-50 degrees Fahrenheit)
than for red wines (50-60 degrees Fahrenheit).
- The prohibitionists, or the “drys,” in the early twentieth
century fought to remove any mention of wine from school and college texts,
including Greek and Roman literature. They also sought to remove medicinal
wines from the United States Pharmacopoeia and to prove that Biblical praises
of wine were for unfermented grape juice.
- The vintage year isn’t necessarily the year wine is bottled, because
some wines may not be bottled the same year the grapes are picked. Typically,
a vintage wine is a product of a single year’s harvest. A non-vintage
wine is a blend of wines from two or more years.
- There is a right and wrong way to hold a wine glass. Wine glasses should
always be held by the stem and not the bowl because the heat of the hand
will raise the temperature of the wine.
- Champagne, one of the world’s greatest sparkling wines, is popularly
but erroneously thought to have been invented by the Benedictine monk Dom
Pierre Perignon (1638-1715). Although he did not invent or discover champagne,
he founded many principles and processes in its production that are still
in use today. And he purportedly declared upon drinking the bubbly beverage, “I
am drinking stars.”
- Noble rot, or pourriture noble, is a benign type of grape fungus
that can actually sweeten some types of wine.
- Not all wines improve with time. In fact, a vast majority of wines produced
are ready to drink and do not have much potential for aging. Only a rare
few will last longer than a decade.
- A “dumb” wine refers to the lack of odor in a wine, though
it may develop a pleasing odor in the future. Many Cabernet-Sauvignons, for
example, are considered “dumb.” A “numb” wine, on
the other hand, has no odor and no potential of developing a pleasing odor
in the future.
- European wines are named after their geographic locations (e.g., Chassagne-Montrachet
Morgeot and Bordeaux) while non-European wines (e.g., Pinot Noir and Merlot)
are named after different grape varieties.
- A feminine wine is a wine that is more delicate than most. A masculine
wine refers to a “big” or “full” wine.
- Contrary to traditional belief, smelling the cork reveals little about
the wine. Instead, if a server or sommelier hands you a cork, you should
look for the date and other identifying information (inexpensive wine won’t
have these features). Additionally, look for mold, drying, cracking, or breaks
in the cork.
- A wine that has a musty smell, similar to wet cardboard or mold, may mean
that the bottle is “corked” (the bottle has a contaminated cork).
- In 1988, Italian women started one of the first female organizations devoted
to wine, the Le Donne del Vino. Its goal is to encourage and promote
women’s role in the Italian wine industry.
- Women are more susceptible to the effects of wine than men partly because
they have less of an enzyme in the lining of the stomach that is needed to
metabolize alcohol efficiently.
- Besides churches and monasteries, two other great medieval institutions
derived much of their income from wine: hospitals and universities. The most
famous medieval wine-endowed hospital (now a museum) is the beautiful Hôtel-Dieu
in Beaune, France.
- At the center of Greek social and intellectual life was the symposium,
which literally means, “drinking together.” Indeed, the symposium
reflects Greek fondness for mixing wine and intellectual discussion.
- When Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1922, the wine jars buried
with him were labeled with the year, the name of the winemaker, and comments
such as “very good wine.” The labels were so specific that
they could actually meet modern wine label laws of several countries.
- One ton of grapes makes about 60 cases of wine, or 720 bottles. One bottle
of wine contains about 2.8 pounds of grapes.
- Greece is the only country in the world that has perpetuated up to the
present the ancient tradition of adding a tree resin to wine to give it a
unique sappy taste. Most non-Greeks assert this type of Greek wine or retsina
wine is an acquired taste and should be served very cold.
- Wine for Orthodox Jews must be kosher, meaning it must not be touched at
any point in its process (from picking of the grapes to bottling it) by either
a “Gentile” or non-observant Jew and it must contain only
kosher ingredients.
- The combination of soil type, climate, degree of slope, and exposure to
the sun constitutes the terroir of a vineyard and what makes each
vineyard and each wine unique.
- In the Middle Ages, the greatest and most innovative winemakers of the
day were monastic orders. The Cistercians and Benedictines were particularly
apt winemakers, and they are said to have actually tasted the earth to discover
how the soil changed from place to place. Their findings are still important
today.
- Wineskins were a common way to transport wine in the ancient world. Animal
skins (usually pig) were cleaned and tanned and turned inside out so that
the hairy side was in contact with the wine.
- Traditionally, wine was never stored standing up. Keeping the wine on its
side kept the wine in contact with the cork, thereby preventing the cork
from drying, shrinking, and letting in air. However, wine can be stored vertically
if the bottle has an artificial cork.
- A few vine cuttings from the New World brought to Europe spread a tiny
insect called Phylloxera vastatrix, which feeds on the roots of
vines. The only way to save European grape vines was to graft native American
vines to European rootstocks. Consequently, Pre-Phylloxera wine, strictly
speaking, is one made in the years before Phylloxera reached the vineyards
in the 1860s, though the phrase is also used to mean wine from ungrafted
vines.
- A standard glass of dry red or white wine contains around 110 calories.
Sweeter wine has more calories.
- The substance in wine that tingles the gums is tannin (related to the word “tan”),
which is derived from the skins, pips, and stalks of grapes. It is usually
found only in red wine and is an excellent antioxidant. Visually, it is the
sediment found at the bottom of the bottle.
- Darker shades of wine (the deepest, blackest reds and the most golden whites)
usually come from warm climates and are rich and ripe. Lighter colors, especially
in white wines, come from cooler climates and are lighter and less lush.
- With age, red wines tend to lose color and will eventually end up a sort
of brick red. On the other hand, white wines gain color, becoming golden
and eventually brown-yellow.
- All wines taste like fruit. Only rarely does a wine taste like grapes—for
example, Muscat or Concord wines.
- Red Burgundy is made from the Pinot Noir grape and is so difficult to make
that winemakers all over the world see it as some kind of Holy Grail.
- The Germans invented Eiswein, or wine that is made from frozen
grapes.
- Enologists are wine chemists who analyze samples of wine and advise winemakers.
- The word “champagne” is named after a province in France,
meaning “open country. Due to the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)
law in Europe, sparkling wine made outside the Champagne region of France
can no longer be called “champagne.”
- The Bergerac wine region in southwest France has produced wine since Roman
times.
- The English word “wine” may be rooted in the Semitic yayin (lamentation
and wailing). In Arabic, the word is wain, in Greek it is oinos,
and in the Romance languages it is vin, vino, vina, vinho.
- Grapes are the only fruit that are capable of producing the proper nutrition
for the yeast on its skin and sugar in its juice to ferment naturally.
- Because grapes in the Southern Hemisphere are picked during what is Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a 1999 Australian wine could be six months older than a 1999.
- Wine facilitated contacts between ancient cultures, providing the motive
and means of trade. For example, the Greeks traded wine for precious metals,
and the Romans traded wine for slaves.
- In ancient Egypt, the ability to store wine until maturity was considered
alchemy and was the privilege of only the pharaohs.
- Archaeologists found grape pips (seeds), usually considered evidence of
winemaking, dating from 8000 B.C. in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
The oldest pips of cultivated vines were found in (then Soviet) Georgia from
7000-5000 B.C.
- Winemaking is a significant theme in one of the oldest literary works known,
the Epic of Gilgamesh. The divinity in charge of the wine was the
goddess Siduri, whose depiction suggests a symbolic association between wine
and fertility.
- One of the most quoted legends about the discovery of wine is the story
of Jamsheed a semi-mythical Persian king (who may have been Noah). A woman
of his harem tried to take her life with fermented grapes, which were thought
to be poisonous. Wine was discovered when she found herself rejuvenated and
lively.
- The first known illustration of wine drinking is found on a 5,000-year-old
Sumerian panel known as the Standard of Ur.
- Thucydides wrote that the people of the Mediterranean began to “emerge
from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the oil and the vine.”
- The standard wine container of the ancient world was the amphora (something
which can be carried by two), a clay vase with two handles. It was invented
by the Canaanites, who introduced it into Egypt before the fifteenth century
B.C. Their forebears, the Phoenicians, spread its use throughout the Mediterranean.
- Plato argued that the minimum drinking age should be 18, and then wine
in moderation may be tasted until 31. When a man reaches 40, he may drink
as much as he wants to cure the “crabbedness of old age.”
- Hippocrates, widely considered the father of medicine, includes wine in
almost every one of his recorded remedies. He used it for cooling fevers,
as a diuretic, as a general antiseptic, and to help convalescence.
- Ancient Romans thought seasoning was more important than the primary flavor
of wine and often added fermented fish sauce, garlic, asafetida (onion root),
lead, and absinthe.
- The man who most profoundly affected the history of wine was the prophet
Mohammed. Within ten years of his death in A.D. 632, wine was largely banned
from Arabia and from every country that heeded him.
- A crop of newly planted grape vines takes four to five years to grow before
it can be harvested.
- Red wine represents 55% of restaurant wine sales.
- Bubbles in wine have been observed since ancient Greece and were attributed
to the phases of the moon or to evil spirits.
- Global
warming may redefine wine growing in the future. Even tiny temperature
changes can dramatically change the quality of wine.
- Many consumers and winemakers argue that genetically engineered wine would
not only lead to uniformity but would also compromise the traditional romance
and mystique associated with wine.
- Oenophobia is an intense fear or hatred of wine.
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