Eddie Martini's

Wine is one of the oldest drinks known to mankind. Although historians may not be entirely sure that this is how the fermentation of wine started, an overview of the history of wine is full of interesting tidbits.

Made of fermented grape juice, wine is an alcoholic beverage that is both made and drunk in many parts of the world. The history of wine starts over 5000 years ago. It was said to have been discovered when grapes were left for too long in amphorae or earthenware jugs.

These grapes somehow became tainted with wild yeast, which caused the grapes to ferment. Some courageous individual took a drink and realized the fermentation process had produced something that would be come known as wine. There are several different basic types of wine. The most basic breakdown is red wine and white wine. When the grapes that make these varieties of wine are combined, a rose or blush wine can be created. If the wine is allowed to ferment in a way that produces carbon dioxide bubbles, it becomes a sparkling wine.

There are also fortified wines - these wines are also fermented from grapes, but additional amounts of alcohol from other sources are added to the wine to raise its alcohol content. An example of a fortified wine is brandy.

The amount of grapes needed to produce quality wine is another of the many mind boggling wine tidbits known. Generally, it takes four clusters or 300 grapes to produce just one bottle of wine.

Since there are only about 40 clusters of grapes produced on a grapevine per year, this means that each vine is only capable of making 10 bottles of wine. Given this fact, it is pretty amazing that wine is as cheap as we find it.