It is almost certain that viticulture has been originated in the areas around Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Iran) and the Caucasus. Georgia claims to have begun producing wine some 7000 years ago and would therefore be the first country in the world that started producing it. According to the history, the wine grape was discovered by accident by a shepherd who became aware that his sheep became much calmer after eating strange red berries. His interest was aroused and he decided to pick these berries and mix them with his drinking water to give that a more pleasant taste. Apparently at that time a pot of drinking water remained unopened for a long time and when it was finally opened, it turned out that a pleasant drink had been born, wine...
The idea for making wine was born with this and they started experimenting with the plants / grapes to improve the quality. The viticulture soon spreaded out to parts of Asia and Greece and was introduced to the Black and Mediterranean Sea regions with the help of the Phoenicians and Greeks. In the end it was the Romans who brought wine plants to almost every famous wine region in Europe. However, the wines at that time could not be compared with the wines of today and were therefore flavored with all kinds of spices. For preservation, honey or resin was added, among other things. The last-mentioned substance is, by the way, still being added to the Retsina wines from Greece.
Charlemagne was a great wine lover and ensured that during the period that he was in power (9th century) in Western Europe, many monasteries were built. The monks were, after all, the specialists in producing wine, and this way there were good vineyards in all places of his empire. An example of this is one of the most prominent vineyards in Burgundy named after him: Corton Charlemagne.
Because over the years there was a lot of housing construction going on, more and more cities and villages with many people were build and that resulted in a relatively high wine consumption. Around 1500, thanks to the (temporary) warming of the climate in Europe (yes, yes, global warming was already a fact at the time. Without the heavy industry of today ...) we had a record in terms of the number of planted grape plants. . In Germany they had 3 times as many vineyards as today.
From 1600 the English and the Dutch became involved with the international wine trade and started to focus on marketing. For example, they obliged winemakers in the various regions of Europe to produce regional wines. In other words; each wine region was designated its grape varieties according to the quality of the soil on which it thrives best. The nice consequence of this was that the quality of the wines started to improve really well. It actually sounds very logical; produce the type of wine grapes only where they grow best and the wine increases in quality. This principle is still used today; just look at the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée’s and the denominación de origen's.
In the 19th century, something terrible happened in Europe. The oidium, powdery mildew and grape aphid that had come over from America were a real pest for European vineyards. These lice and bacteria, as it were, devoured the roots of the grape plants and so they died en masse. Because people did not have good pesticides at the time, there was a serious risk that wine growing in Europe would disappear totally. By grafting (connecting) European wine plants on the roots of the American variant, this problem has finally been stopped.
From the 20th century onwards, the wines, in particular due to the technology, have made great strides in terms of quality and in many countries official wine legislation has been established with the aim of guaranteeing this quality. Since the 1970s and early 1980s, the sales of "New Wine World" (all wine-producing countries outside Europe and the Mediterranean) wines had also begun to rise in Europe. Countries such as Australia, Chile, South Africa and California produce often beautiful wines. But due the lack of wine legislation in those countries wine is unfortunately on a regular base produced in such a way that you wouldn’t be able to call it “wine” in Europe…
I wish you lots of wine pleasure!
Roel Peters RP-Vinos USA
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