Wine holds a special place in the world.
In every country where it is made, wine plays a role far more important than a mere beverage, albeit an alcoholic one. From the beginnings of history, wine has been the beverage of celebration, of culture, of religion, and of ritual. What is it about wine that makes it so remarkable? From the Bible to Benjamin Franklin, from the cuneiform tablets of ancient Sumer to Hollywood movies, wines have been a part of man’s culture and history.
By the way, just in case you are interested, here is a link to this same lecture in Chinese.
This class is not a history of wine. It is a study of how wine has affected the people who drink it, and how they have returned the favor.
Let’s start with the raw material. After all, this is what stone-age man must have done, ten thousand years ago. The first question is almost too basic.
Why do we make wines from grapes? It would seem that almost any fruit would do. In fact, wine is made from a wide variety of produce, from the fruit wines of Midwest America to the date wines of the Middle East. There is pineapple wine in Hawaii, apple cider throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, and even rice wine in Japan. And while these can be both interesting and delicious, they are but a tiny part of the world for wine. The great wines of literature, the fabulous wines of collectors, and the wines that have captured the imagination of the world are grape wines.
Which begs the obvious question: Why grapes?
"WHY DO WE MAKE WINE FROM GRAPES?"
First of all, grapes are incredibly sweet. If you have never tasted wine grapes on the day of harvest, you have really missed something special. The grapes you buy in the supermarket are generally about 16-18 percent sugar. While they may taste sweet to you, they simply cannot compare to fully ripe wine grapes, which are harvested at about 24% sugar or so. They are so sweet that they can hurt your teeth.
Since the final alcohol level in wine is determined to a large extent by the sugar level of the fruit, this is an important factor. Very few other fruits can reach this level of sugar, and so the wines from these other fruits will have much lower alcohols. Alcohol not only inebriates you, in also plays a key role in preserving the wine.
But grapes are more than just sweet. They also have intense flavors that stand up to fermentation and show themselves proudly in the finished wines. In some ways winemakers are trying to capture the flavor of these fresh grapes with every wine they make. Wine is a way of freezing time—capturing the moment of flavors of a perfectly ripe crop, and preserving them in a way that can be enjoyed for many years into the future.
Again, those table grapes you buy at the supermarket are a mere shadow of real wine grapes. They not used in winemaking because they lack the intensity of flavor that makes good wines. Only the cheapest, least interesting wines in the world are made from such grapes as Thompson Seedless.
Other fruits have intense flavors, but not in combination with the sugar levels that are in grapes.
These flavors are accentuated by the acidity levels in grapes. Acid is critical in food flavors. Foods without acid taste flat, tired, and insipid. The acidity levels in grapes are nearly as high as those in lemon juice—enough to affect the teeth of winemakers everywhere. In fact, dentists in the Napa Valley are used to making special allowances for the their patients who frequently taste (think: rinse and spit, over and over) with scores of wines a day.
The acid gives the wine freshness, vibrancy, and life.
The only fruit that can compare on these parameters is the apple—and apple cider is a delicious drink. It is made in any number of places, and makes beverages that have real character and style. But even the apple falls short of the grape in the final analysis.
Grapes are also the perfect fruit for wine because of their high juice content. A ton of grapes will yield about 165 gallons of juice, which means that the grapes are more than half pure juice. Other fruits fall far short of this. And the grapes are very easy to crush and press. It is quite easy to take a bunch of ripe grapes and crush it by hand, extracting a good percentage of the juice.
Try doing that with an apple. Because apples give up their juice only under great pressure, cider was never an important beverage until the creation of a rudimentary cider press--an extra step in technology, and also in the passage of human history. Nor do apples have the sugar level necessary for the higher alcohol levels of wine. This makes cider much more likely to spoil. In fact, early ciders were often mixed with another luxury of the time, honey, to make more a more stable beverage. Cider may have been important in Northern Europe, but where grapes could grow, wine was the ultimate beverage for early man.
Thus grapes were the perfect package for the raw material of wine. They have intense flavors, high acidity, high sugar, and a high and easily extractable juice content.
In fact, grapes are so perfect for wine that they often begin to ferment on their own. The native yeasts that grow in the vineyard are enough to ferment many kinds of wines. In many regions of the world, these are the only yeasts used to make the commercial wines we drink today.
The First Wine?
This is certainly how early man discovered wine. Perhaps it was in a hollow rock, where the grapes had been left for a day or two. Perhaps in a goatskin as a traveler walked from one area to the next. It certainly also happens on the vine itself, if the conditions are right. Under the right conditions, you can pick grapes that are tiny little sacs of wine.
We are all familiar with the sight of songbirds attacking the ripe fruit of a tree or bush, and then flopping about in a drunken stupor from the alcohol in that fruit. There can be no question that early man must have had the same experience with the fruit of the wild grape vine. Imagine his or her delight in the experience! Not only did the fruit taste divine, but it also made you feel completely different—it gave you an altered state of reality that most peoples of the world described as a communion with God.
In fact, a study a few years ago identified a single mutation in the genes of our ape/ancestors about ten million years ago that allowed us/them to metabolize alcohol much more efficiently. "This change occurred approximately when our ancestors adopted a terrestrial lifestyle and may have been advantageous to primates living where highly fermented fruit is more likely." So is that the first wine? Long before humans.
In the ancient world, there were two kinds of alcoholic beverages, wine and beer. But there is an enormous difference between them. Grain can be stored for long periods of time without spoilage, so beer would have been available year round. It also makes a much lower alcohol beverage. Wine must be picked at the peak of ripeness—a delay of a couple of days can have a noticeable effect on the quality of the wine. Fermentation must follow immediately, for the same reason. And until sophisticated bottling practices were invented, most of the wine and beer would begin to deteriorate over time quite quickly.
Thus beer would have been readily available year-round, while wine became the living, breathing, glorious symbol of the harvest—rich, luscious, and rare. It was, and is, the living celebration of the riches of the harvest.
The Basics of Winemaking
Wine is both a simple and deeply complex beverage. On the face of it, grapes have simple fructose (sugar), a good deal of tartaric and malic acid, and much smaller concentrations of various complex molecules that give flavor and character. The tartaric acid is important to archaeologists, because it occurs only in wine. If tartaric acid residue is found in ancient vessels, then it is very likely the vessel was used for wine.
The relationship between sugar and acid is critical in the wine grape. As the grape ripens, the acid levels drop while the sugar content rises. Winemakers try to pick grapes at that perfect point when the acidity is still lively, but the sugars are high enough to make good wine. If you pick a few days too early, the wine is tart and astringent. Pick too late, and it is heavy, flat and overly alcoholic. But don’t think that we have always made wine the same way—these tastes have changed over the years and over millennia, as we shall see. That's part of what this class is all about.
The harvest date is not the only factor that influences wine flavor and quality. Winemaking is full of variables. The very basic growing conditions of the vine affect everything. Water, sun, soil, and climate all impact the flavor of the grape to a huge degree. Even a distance of a few feet closer or farther away from a large rock will affect the ripening and flavor of grapes on the vine. The easiest way to understand this is to look in your own garden, where a tomato plant up against the fence will get warmer, and riper. While the same plant near the hedge will be shaded and produce less attractive tomatoes.
And there are thousands of types of grapevines, each with its own set of perfect growing conditions, yields, and flavors. The history of wine is full of stories of rare vines, unique growing conditions, and legendary wines.
Once the grapes are picked, they are quickly crushed to capture their fresh flavors. If white wine is being made, the juice is immediately pressed off the skins, and the pure juice is allowed to ferment—the yeast begin to consume the sugar, and it produces alcohol, carbon dioxide, and heat. Virtually all wine grape juice is white, so red wines require the skins of the grapes for their color. Here the grapes are fermented with the skins, and then pressed at a later date, after the wine has picked up color and flavor from the skins.
There are a thousand variations to this process. If the grapes are picked later, they will have a higher sugar content and make a wine that is sweeter, more alcoholic, or both. Ancient winemakers often picked the grapes and then left them to dehydrate in the sun for a few days, to create even richer and sweeter kinds of wines. There are still a few spots in the world where this ancient practice continues to be used today.
Grapes that are picked earlier make a very lively, if austere, kind of wine. These, too, were made in ancient times, and are still made in some parts of the world today. Then, as now, it is likely that most of these wines owe their character to the climate itself. In colder regions where the grapes cannot get ripe, the wines are often austere and thin in style.
Winemakers over the years have added various flavorings to the wine, or stopped the fermentation before it could make the wine completely dry. They have added sugar or honey to help improve the alcoholic strength of the wine, and they have added water to decrease its power. Mr. Chaptal of France is given enormous credit for adding sugar to wines to increase their power—but this was done thousands of years before him in virtually every winemaking region. What he really did was develop a plan to regulate the process, which is now called chaptalization, in his honor.
Cold fermentation temperatures create wines that are lively and fruity. Hot fermentations tend to extract more from the grape, making bigger, heavier wines. While the ancients may have been at the mercy of the elements for their fermentation temperatures, modern winemakers use sophisticated systems to control this to within a single degree. And modern winemakers will debate long and hard about the perfect temperature to make any given wine.
If the fermentation stops before the yeast has consumed all of the sugar, then the wine retains some of its natural sweetness. Often, if the grapes are very ripe, the alcohol level from the fermentation will get so high that it kills the yeast, making a very rich, sweet, and alcoholic wine. Some yeasts have higher alcohol tolerances than others, and in regions where those years thrive, the winemaker has an additional tool at his disposal.
All of these factors, and many more, come into play in every wine that is made. This is one of the reasons wine is so fascinating to connoisseurs. Each wine has its own character, its own style, and its own identity. And this is something we share with the earliest records of wine, which mention the differences between the various wines that are available. It seems there have always been rare wines and wine connoisseurs to treasure them.
Of course, the earliest wines would have been made in a very simple process. The grapes were picked and loaded into a pit in the ground, or perhaps a hollow log. There they were stomped and crushed to release their juice. The juice would then begin to ferment, and the resulting wine would have been drunk immediately, or perhaps stored in underground jars to keep it cool. With such limited storage conditions, it is likely that the wine would oxidize and spoil rather quickly—perhaps in a matter of weeks. But then again, it is also quite likely that it would have been consumed long before it went bad.
Imagine the celebrations that would follow. Winemaking is a communal project, almost by definition. You need many people to pick the grapes, crush them, and work together to press the juice from the skins. From the time of our earliest ancestors, wine must have been a glorious group celebration of the riches of the harvest—a symbol that life is good, and the gods love us.
And now a walk through time:
"The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine."
-Thucydides, Greek Historian, 5th Century BC
And now, a short outline of the history of the world in reverse: food, wine, and technology. How was life different back then?
In my classes at Napa Valley College, I invite the students to join me on a walk back through history. We begin in our classroom, on the edge of the campus, just as dusk is falling. We measure out steps, counting each one as ten years back into the past. And as we walk, we take note of how life would have been different in years gone by.
Only a few steps outside the door, we find our selves in 1950. Television, air travel, and supermarkets all become commonplace, and the TV dinner is the latest rage in American cuisine. In the Napa Valley, there are only six commercial wineries. Today there are more than 600.
1900--Electricity, the internal combustion engine, and a chicken in every pot. We are now ten steps from the classroom door, but it was already a very different world.
1850--The light bulb invented, the steam engine, and the Gold Rush. The great French chef Escoffier is born. It's hard to imagine life as it would have been before electric lights. The scale and role of time each day would have been so different.
1800--The Clipper ship, Lewis and Clark, and the English dessert called “Spotted dick.” Napoleon rose to power, and there were great political revolutions both in America and Europe. The mighty oak tree that shades the parking lot at the college would have been a tiny seedling two hundred years ago.
1750--Catherine the Great, the era of absolute Monarchs. The vast majority of Europeans were still living as peasants.
1700--Louis XIV, the Sun King, who centralized the government and society of France, putting an end to the city-state. He famous declared: "I am the state." Before then, Kings traveled from noble house to noble house, living off the hospitality of their hosts. Louis built his own palace, and if you wanted to see him, he demanded that you visit him.
1600--Galileo, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Drake. The great balance of power between Spain and England. The Spanish Armada was defeated, and England remained independent from the Pope. And Spain was thwarted in its attempt to continue "The Re-Conquest" to Britain. Galileo saw the moons of Jupiter and realized that the Earth was not the center of the universe--science against religion.
1500--Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Copernicus, and Martin Luther. The full Renaissance, with its focus on learning again, on observing, and on reading the original text. The European discovery of the Americas, opening the world to chocolate, tomatoes, coffee, potatoes, and corn. Suleiman I took his army across eastern Europe and laid siege to the city of Vienna. And barely lost.
1400--The age of discovery: DeGama led the Portuguese to India, Ferdinand and Isabella led the reconquest of Spain. Joan of Arc shamed the king of France. And Eastern Rome dissolves in the face of Islam. A burst of energy coming out of the survivors of the Black Death.
1300--The Black Plague kills a third of Europe, showing the evils of urban living. And just possibly creating the climate for the Renaissance. hereditary titles and vocations were no longer the rule, creating social mobility. The church fared no better than others in the Black Death, leading to a suspicion that it was either corrupt or a fraud. And vast amounts of arable land went fallow---but that meant plenty of food.
1200--Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife to the king of France, and then the King of England. England owned half of modern-day France, and it took France a hundred years to win it back. The royal family of England spoke French. Richard the Lion-hearted was really Richard, Couer de Leon. The Magna Carta is signed. Genghis Khan and Marco Polo.
1100--El Cid, Saladin, and the Crusades. Where the Christians learned that great knights could live in luxury and be great scholars as well as warriors. And they brought this back to Europe, along with an appreciation of spices and fruits of the Middle and Far East.
1000--The Norman Invasion--the beginnings of English--but the royal family was French, which is why we have a different word for cattle and beef, pigs and pork. The poor managed the animals and we use their name for the animals. But the rich ate the meat, and we use their French name for the meat., Abelarde and Heloise fall in love—at least she does.
750 --Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire was a German who spoke German and lived in what is now France. They were Franks, from Franken, and they gave this German name to the modern country. Byzantium continued as the most powerful remnant of the Roman Empire for a thousand years after Rome fell. Mohammed launched Islam, which united believers from Rabat to Indonesia, creating a trade network that spanned more than half the globe.
500--Rome is fallen—the Visigoths rule Europe, inhabiting the Roman Villas of a different age, and those in turn become duchies, counties, earldoms, and religious convents and monasteries. Clovis is King of France--the first of the Franken Kings. His name becomes Louis in French.
250—Emperor Aurelian—fighting against the Goths, feeding Rome. Outlaws the planting of new vines because wine is replacing food in the Empire. Constantine gives a new look to the Roman Empire, adopting Christianity as the official religion.
0--Christ, Caesar, and Cleopatra. Some of the greatest stories in history. Cleopatra was a Greek--a descendant of Ptolemy, one of Alexanders' Greek Generals. Julius Caesar invaded Gaul and discovered the use of barrels for storing liquids. And Christ comes, goes, and comes again. Keep walking. We are not even halfway there.
250—Hannibal, a descendant of the Trojans, marches his elephants from North Africa to Rome. Cato orates in the Senate. The Punic wars. Romans vs Greeks—Pyrrhus and Hellenistic period. Ptolemy rules in Egypt. Rome becomes the power in the sea in the middle of the Earth, the Mediterranean. But they adore all things Greek---including the wines.
350-- Alexander the Great marches to India with his Greek troops and defeats the Indian armies and their elephants. His conquests range from Egypt to Delhi. Marches! And back again. Keep walking. We still have a long way to go.
500--The Classical age of Greece, Socrates and Euripides. Darius I rules Persia. This is a time of great religious and philosophical awakening: Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tse, and Socrates are contemporaries. What was in the water? The hanging gardens of Babylon--which may have been an attempt to cultivate hillside or mountain grapes on the plains of Mesopotamia. Carthage prospers in Tunis--the traces of Troy.
750--Ashurnasirpal's founding of Nineveh serves wine to 75,000 people. Shalmeneser rules, and gives his name to a big bottle of wine. And Homer writes the Illiad and the Odyssey. This is the Archaic age of Greece. Rome is founded by two boys raised by wolves. Next door, the more civilized Etruscans will give us the arch and the name of Italy's most famous wine region. .
1000--Abraham and Isaiah, King Solomon. Ancient times indeed. But we still have a lot of walking to do.
1200--The Trojan War: Odysseus and Achilles. Tutankamen, then Ramses rule Egypt. This is now 3200 years before today. And yet wine is so much older. King Tut's tomb included amphorae with the name of the producer, the year of production, and the location of the vineyard on each clay seal: just like a modern wine label.
1500--Thutmoses III unified Egypt again after the defeat of the Hyksos. In Sumer, Hammurabi rules, and creates his first code of laws.
2000--Crete is the dominant player in the Mediterranean trade. Sargon rules. This is as long before Christ as we are after Christ. We are still waking away from the school, now halfway to our destination. By now night has fallen, and my students bring out flashlights to follow the road. The stars are out, the lights are dim and far away. Geese and ducks mutter in the nearby marshes. We have left civilization, and are not back in an older time.
2500--Minoan culture on Crete gives us the stories of the Minotaur and King Midas. Kufu and his friends give us the Great Pyramids of Egypt. This is what many Americans think of as the oldest civilization. It’s not. And it's not near the origins of wine.
3000--Early Bronze age--Unified Egypt, the first hieroglyphs, the first cuneiform writing. "Wine is a lovely drink, but the rich people get to drink all the good stuff." A rough translation of the opinion of a writer 5,000 years ago. How times have changed.
3500--Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia. The Old Kingdom of Egypt, Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro. These are the very first civilizations we have on record. This is the beginning of history, more than 5 thousand years ago. This si when we start to write things down. But this is not the beginning of wine.
4000--Neolithic—the new stone age. This may have been the beginnings of agricultural surplus. And an agricultural surplus would allow people to think about something other than just food and survival. They began to create centers and cities. They organized irrigation and communities. They would have made wine together.
6000--Neolithic—Still the stone age, and we have artifacts that indicate wine being made in the Kargos Mountains. In ancient Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey we have evidence of early winemaking. But wine began long before this.
8000--Grapes are domesticated in the Caucasus, Thrace, and Syria. This tells us our ancestors were agricultural, and growing grapes. We have seen the unique seeds from their selection of vines. Unfortunately, the Syrian site is now covered with water from a dam. It was a small town, some 40 homes on the banks of the Euphrates River. And as archaeologists uncovered their homes, they found clay vessels with traces of tartaric acid. These early people drank wine.
The word wine traces its roots far into antiquity--as one of the few words in our language that can be traced back to our original Indo-European roots: words like lake, father, mother and wine all share roots that old. So old we have no idea who spoke these words or even where.
And now we have reached the banks of the Napa River, a full half-mile from our classroom. The night is quiet, except for the sounds of the river, the birds, and the insects. There is no light. It is very dark, although not as dark as it would have been in the ancient Caucasus. One can almost imagine those days, down here by the river--people living daylight to daylight, and telling stories of the stars because that's all they could see at night.
And one can imagine what role wine would have played in their lives. It must have seemed a gift from the gods.
I…am Dionysis, son of the king of gods
I have come a long way. From Lydia and Phrygia,
The lands of the golden rivers,
Across the sun-baked steppes of Persia,
Through the cities of Bactria,
Smiling Arabia, and all the Anatolian coast,
Where the salt seas beat on the turreted strongholds
Of Greek and Turk. I have set them all dancing:
They have learned to worship me
And know me for what I am:
A god.
And now, I have come to Greece…
Euripides, The Bacchae
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