Knowledge Bites on Wine Culture and Production

The history of wine and mankind goes back a long way. We have compiled some facts about wine culture and production. Find out where the cradle of wine lies and why the “spritzer” or mulled wine is not a modern invention.

Findings show that people in Georgia were already making wine around 8000 years ago. The grape juice obtained was placed in large clay pots together with the grape skins, seeds and stems - in other words, orange wine, if white grapes were used. There are still a large number of orange wines in Georgia today. These vessels, known today as qvevris, were dug deep into the ground to keep the temperature constant during fermentation.

In Mesopotamia, in modern-day Iraq and Iran, wine was a highly valued trade product and was used in religious practices. Only the wealthy drank wine, while beer was reserved for the common people. A special feature of Mesopotamian winemaking was the addition of date syrup to sweeten the wine. This syrup was often added during fermentation to improve the taste of the wine.

Not only citizens and legionaries drank wine in the Roman Empire, slaves were also allowed to consume wine. Only women were originally banned from drinking wine for a short time in order to prevent licentiousness. Fortunately, this prohibition was lifted.

Wine and water were inseparable for a long time. Anyone who drank wine straight in ancient times was considered a drunkard. For the Greeks, it was customary to serve wine mixed with water, while the Romans determined the mixing ratio themselves by serving both a water jug and a wine jug. In ancient times, wine was a staple food and historians assume that 1-2 liters were drunk per person per day. In the Middle Ages, wine or beer was often drunk with water due to the poor quality of the water. Pure water was not consumed.

Roman wine was probably already reasonably drinkable and quite colorful. There was vinum album (white), vinum fluvum (yellow), vinum sanguineum (blood red) and vinum nigrum (black). To transport the wine, the Romans used wooden barrels from the northwest of the empire, as they were much lighter than amphorae. Wine was already being drunk from wooden barrels in what is now England. The Romans spread viticulture throughout Europe, including France, Spain and Germany. On hot days, the Romans liked to drink their wine ice-cold and warmed themselves with mulled wine on cold nights. Even smoking the wine to give it more weight was common practice among the Romans. They also produced dessert and spiced wines according to their own recipes. Around 50 recipes can be traced: Wine mixed with wormwood was called absinthum, with rose petals rosatum, with violet leaves violatum and with pepper conditum or piperatum. Aniseed, dill, fennel, laurel, mint, pistachio and juniper also found their way into the wines of the ancient world.

The little culprit is only one and a half millimetres in size and yet phylloxera destroyed a large part of the vineyards in Europe in the 1860s. It is assumed that phylloxera was introduced from North America via clothing. More than 70% of the entire European vineyard area was infested. It took three decades before American vines were introduced as resistant rootstocks. The European vines were grafted onto the American ones in order to save wine production. Certain vines are 200 years old, true to their roots, which grew in sandy soils and were not infested, as Phylloxera does not like sandy soils.

With the mechanization of agriculture and the introduction of stainless steel tanks in the 1960s, wine production became more efficient and hygienic. Temperature control during fermentation, modern filtration methods, fining methods and the selective use of cultured yeasts (yeast strains cultivated in laboratories) became more common in winemaking and are now standard. These yeasts have been specifically selected for their properties to reliably and consistently control fermentation and promote certain flavors in the wine. The return to traditional cultivation methods, such as the use of amphorae, wild yeasts or organic or biodynamic viticulture, is becoming more popular again. Back to the roots!