Alcoholic Beverages

Table wine.

Wine is an alcoholic beverage produced from the fermentation of grapes, the fruit of the vine (including Vitis vinifera).

In Europe, according to the legal definition, wine is the product obtained exclusively by alcoholic fermentation, in whole or in part, fresh grapes, crushed or not, or grape.

The transformation of grapes into wine is called the winemaking. The study of wine is the wine (from the Greek oenos, “wine”, and logos, “science”).

It is generally agreed that the wine has existed for several millennia. In the present state of knowledge, one of the first certified wine was discovered in Iran, north of the mountains of the Zagros. It André Tchernia, archaeologist and one of the best wines of antiquity, who reports:

“The remains of a yellowish residue deposited on the wall of a Neolithic jar old 7 000 years ago, found at Hajji Firuz Tepe, Iran, would have been a mixture of tartaric acid and resin. That would be at the same time, wine and winemaking process of the oldest documented”

This technique was to mix the resin thérébinthe wine to prevent it from sour. Philippe Marinval, a research fellow at the Center of Anthropology Toulouse, there is evidence that the men of the Neolithic drank wine.

King Solomon was celebrated, but it is certainly the Greeks who contributed to the development of viticulture in the Mediterranean. They have long been trade in all Mediterranean countries. They are the ones who imported the first wines in France coming through the port of Marseilles. At that time, the wine was composed of grape must in fermentation with the addition of sea water for its conservation in transportation, adding the arrival of the fresh water to remove the taste of salt.

In the ancient Egyptians, we know that winemaking was very organized. Osiris in Egypt, Dionysos in Greece, Bacchus in Roman times, Gilgamesh Babylonian represent wine or his quest in mythology. The wine symbolizes the blood of Christ in the Christian religion. The wine has changed enormously during the previous millennia. The Romans had very spicy wines they lay in the water Wednesday they do not correspond at all to current tastes.

The culture of the vine was introduced in Gaul by Greek Phocaea. Max Rives, chargé de mission at the INRA, verified on-site Massalia the first counter phocéen built six centuries before our era:

“I saw during the excavations of the area of the Exchange, in Marseille, the seeds of grape marc from them and thrown into wine amphora, floating in the back of the Old Port where these amphorae-serving garbage foundations of a street.
The Greeks had obviously imported varieties in their country, ignoring the vines had spontaneous preceded by a few dozen centuries.”

Under the settlement Roman vineyard gaulois developed around the two cities: Beziers and Narbonne. The city of Béziers has not forgotten the title of “wine capital” of the nineteenth century. For almost twenty years to regain its position, it changed its methods, favoring a viticulture quality mass production.

In the ^nineteenth century, the wine is considered an energy drink, for example, a mower to drink 6 to 8 liters per day. The wine was a part of his remuneration, at a time when water n It was not really drinking