The Earliest Wine

The Earliest Wine
Perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 years ago was discovered that when fruit (or grain, milk or rice) was fermented, the results tasted good, made one happy – or both.

The bible mentions wine consumption in both the Old and the New Testaments.

With all alcohol’s benefits and hazards, it was a universal feature of early civilizations.

At least one legend claims that wine was discovered accidently, by a neglected member of a Persian king’s harem. She attempted to end her loneliness by ending her life drinking from a jar marked “Poison.”

It contained grapes that had fermented. She left so much better drinking the liquid that she gave a cup of it to the king, who named it “the delightful poison” and welcomed her back into active harem life.

Early people all over the world fermented anything that would ferment: honey, grapes, grain, dates, rice, sugarcane, milk, palms, peppers, berries, sesame deeds pomegranates.

Almost all of the world’s wines (the ones made from grapes, that is) can be traced to a single Eurasia grape species, Vitus vinifera.

Gapes were being cultivated as early as 6,000 B.C in the Middles East and Asia.

The Egyptians, Phoenicians and Chinese were all tending their vines at about the same time.

It is believed that the ancient Greeks got their viticulture knowledge from Egyptians, and began to make wine about 2,000 B.C.

Historians continue to debates the exact date origin of the term wine, but there is wide agreement that the Hittite characters that spell wee-on are probably the first recorded word for win, which derived from the Latin vinum and is further traced to the ancient Greek oinos.

Indeed, the Greek term oinos logo (“wine logic”) is the origin of the modern word for the study of wine: enology (the US spelling) or oenology (the British spelling).
The Earliest Wine