Well, apparently wine grapes compose the world’s biggest fruit crop.
And with that being around for hundreds of years, for sure wine includes many stories, sometimes untold, many theories, never proven, and many of those fun facts no one can verify!
If you love reading random stuff on wine, apart from tasting notes, scroll down for some fun!
Water in your wine
In Ancient Greece, it was very common for people to drink their wine diluted with water. The two reasons include, first, the very high alcohol level in the wine back then, and second, the fact that they didn’t want to get drunk easily. It was believed that in a state between drunkenness and soberness were the big ideas and philosophies born, and that was one of the big purposes of the gatherings. We believe them!
Toast to celebration
Celebrating peace and alliance, you would think, though the real story behind was to make sure that there was no poison in the glasses. The strong and loud crunch would make droplets of wine exchange between the glasses and obviously if you had your conscious clean, you would then be happy to drink your wine! Only love!
Drink to your health
Drinking to one’s health sounds sweet and caring. And how couldn’t it be, when the person who takes that first sip is actually checking that the wine is good and that there’s no poison in it. Dark ages! Let’s consider ourselves more civilised nowadays, yet, in the case of the restaurants, we still keep this tradition and the person who orders the wine usually tastes it in order to check its quality, before sharing it with their associates.
Count the bubbles in your sparkling wine
You can start on 3, or you can just believe me when I’ll tell you there’s approximately 44 million bubbles in a standard 750ml bottle. You might read somewhere else that there’s 15 million bubbles in a glass of Champagne and that will confuse your mathematics. But at the bottom line, you just need to know that we’re talking about a lot of bubbles and that even big scientists got confused on what’s the best way to accurately count these tasty globules. Cheers!
Bubbles again
On the same note, bubbles were observed in wine from the ancient years. In fact, in Greece, there was a connection to the evils or the phases of the moon. Normal! Otherwise, where do these floating things come from?!
Fear of spiders
You could understand this. But fear of wine? Why? Really why? Well, it’s the weird world we’re living in and there is a word to describe this -God, forgive me: Oenophobia.
The so-called “Critter wines”
Around 2006, there was a huge background story on the wine bottles that had started appearing on the market, featuring animals (critters <American slang) on their labels. Sales of such bottles surpassed $600 million and became a big success with the consumers mainly due to the recognisable label! “Could I please have the one with the kangaroo on the label?”
California as a country
Fourth largest in wine production, after France, Spain and Italy. And California is not even a separate country.
Drunk and guilty
In Ancient Rome, the rules forbid the wife to drink. If the husband would find her drunk, he had the right to kill her! Here, sweetie! Have some grape juice!
Fertile soil?
In contrary to most of the other crops, less fertile soils can often give better quality grapes.
Taste of soil
The monks were known for their winemaking expertise along the years, and one of the ways they chose to check the flavours of the wine-to-be was to actually taste the soils. Crunchy and mineral, I assume.
The vintage paradox
Southern Hemisphere wines are always 6 months older than those of the Northern Hemisphere. March-April are the harvest months for down under.
Amen to that!
During the prohibition era, many wineries survived due to their continuous production of wine for religious purposes. A candle for that, from everyone!
Complexity in a cell
Wine is actually considered more complex in organic compounds than blood serum. I’m telling you, living organisation! Love it! Hug it!