Wine History

Fermentation is spontaneous in fruits, therefore wine is produced in a natural way as long as yeast transported by air gets in touch with the fruit's juice.

Wine production is not more than the supervision and refining of this process produced there where human beings have lived near cultivated or wild vintages.

During the tertiary era (around 71 millions years ago) a plant named Vitis appeared, this plant spread widely through Asia, Europe and part of North America. The civilizations that discovered the wine were those that had this plant: Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, the civilizations from the Mediterranean basin and almost all of Europe.

A variety of this fruit Vitis Vinifera, produces almost all the wine that is consumed now days, and it’s believed that it had its origin in Transcaucatia (today Georgia and Armenia). The oldest evidence of Vitis Vinifera cultivation goes back around four thousand years before Christ in old Mesopotamia (today Egypt and Syria) and a container found in Iran with a stain of wine was dated back 3500 years before Christ. Viticulture arrived to Europe trough Egypt, Greece and Spain. On Egypt wine was cultivated around 4 000 years before Christ. In all Babylonia, there are old glyphs that point to the viticulture practice too.

In China, four thousand years ago, it was possible to distinguish between the fermentation of wine and the fermentation of rice. Greek and Roman cultures elevated wine to divine levels with their god Dyonysios (Bacco). Between the year 500 and 1600 a.d., Europe became the main production center of the world. Wine was very important for Greek and Roman civilization. Greeks introduced vintage fields and produced wine in their colonies located in the southern part of Italy, later on, the Romans practiced the viticulture (the science of cultivate vintages to produce wine) in the whole empire. The starting point of the viticulture in France is a controversial matter, evidence suggest that Greek conquerors of Massalia (Marseille) where the ones that introduced wine into the country, some others believe that the Celts introduced viticulture previously than the Greeks (even dough there is no evidence of this, other that some Vitis seeds). During the Roman Empire Galia (France) became such an important source of wine production, that laws were created in order to protect the Italian production.

After the crash of the Roman Empire and with the domination of Germanic tribes over the former Roman territories, the wine production diminished and it was converted into an activity, in some cases, only monastic because in any circumstance wine was always necessary for Christian Sacraments. Nevertheless, between the XII and XVI century, wine production spread again; it was the main exportation of France during this period of time, In the XVII century the bottle was developed and the use of cork was practiced again, (the use of cork was forgotten since the Roman era) this made possible to storage wine. Most of today’s best vintages of Bordeaux started their development by their aristocratic owners by the end of the XVII century and the beginning of the XVIII century, that’s when sparkling champagne was produced by the first time. The British developed simultaneously the vintage fields of Valle del Duero in Portugal. During the XVIII century, the modern commercialization of Spanish wine started, together with the success of fine “Andalus wine”, an expansion of the “caldo catalan” (another expression for wine in Catalonia Spain) of high grade was produced.

The production of wine outside of Europe had also begun: Chilenian viticulture goes back to the XVI century, South African to the XVII century, North American to the XVIII century and Australian to the XIX century. From 1863 European viticulture was devastated by an insect called Phylloxera (previously known as Phylloxera vastatrix, now days as Dactylasphaera vitifoliae), that attack the vineyards killing the roots, the plague had its origin in America and it was in America where the solution was found: The grafting over native American roots which are resistant to the Phylloxera, of European varieties of Vitis Vinifera (since 1880 and forward).

During the XIX century viticulture industry was the main way of living in France, at the same time that was a rich source of income due to tax collection.

Wine suffered alterations and became ill, causing serious losses to the wine cultivators and oenologists. Looking for a solution to this problem, the French government commanded Louis Pasteur to look for a solution to this problem leading to the discovery of the fermentation process.
While Pasteur made the investigations in one of the warehouse at Bordeaux, he was ask the reason why all the wines from the same harvest, kept in barrels of the same capacity, will age more or less in a similar way, with the exception of one, that will age in a different way, either faster or slower. Pasteur who already knew the wine behavior, ask to be taken to this strange barrel. As soon as he saw the barrel, he realized what was wrong: the barrel was covered with a layer of paint covering all the pores of the wood, preventing the air to get into the barrel trough the tinny holes existing on the wood barrel. Wine; consider as a living being, needs the oxygen that filters trough the wood.

During the first half of the XX century viticulture and wine production were affected by the war and political conflicts and suffered the laceration of adulteration, fraud and overproduction, The French system of appellation contrôlée "controlled term of origin”, instituted in 1930, it was an efficient answer and very imitated in order to prevent this type of abuses and problems, even with this measures, today the overproduction continues to be an important problem for the entire European Union. The second half of the XX century is important for its technical innovations in the viticulture and viniculture fields, as well as the increasing globalization of wine production, never before in history wine of excellent quality and quantity has been produced.