True grapevine, Vitis vinifera

Winemaking is an art dating back thousands of years. Even people in the Stone Age discovered that an intoxicating drink was created through the storage of grapes. The oldest professional wine press to date has been unearthed in Georgia. The oldest wine jug is an impressive 8,000 years old. As no explanation could be found for its effects, wine quickly became something supernatural and has long been closely associated with religion and belief. Wine even had its own god in Greek and Roman mythology. Dionysus or Bacchus is the god of wine, fertility and intoxication.

A tall-growing climbing plant

The grapevine is a perennial woody climbing plant that can live for over a hundred years, usually reaching an age of 30 to 50 years. In the autumn, the leaves turn a beautiful red or yellow colour. In winter, the plant loses its leaves, only to stretch new tendrils towards the sun in spring. Its roots go deep and reach even distant sources of water. The leaves are roughly heart-shaped, the flowers yellow and plain. The grapes develop from them on a panicle with a wide range of colors ranging from green to yellow and red to blue-violet.

As old as grains

The wild plant, or wild vine, is as old as the dinosaurs. Wild grapes have been meandering the earth for over 80 million years. Nomadic peoples of the Stone Age collected the wild form of grapes and enjoyed their sweetness. According to the latest findings, domestication, i.e. the transformation from the wild plant to cultivated plant, probably happened independently for wine grapes and table grapes. Wine grapes for wine production were domesticated after the last ice age in the Caucasus, in a region that today includes Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Table grapes, on the other hand, are eaten as fruit. They were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent region. In roughly the same place and at the same time as cereals, around 11,000 years ago. The grapevine is therefore one of the oldest cultivated plants known.

Today, vines are grown all over the world in temperate and subtropical climates. In warm regions, wine is grown on the plains, while in colder climates so-called vineyards can be found on slopes. Dry, stony southern slopes, which warm up quickly from the sun and retain heat for a long time, are particularly suitable. Use for other agricultural purposes is usually impossible there. These vineyards are traditionally divided into terraces with dry stone walls, creating a characteristic look for the landscape. The dry stone walls also create a special microclimate that provides a habitat for a wide variety of plants, insects and reptiles. There is not much difference in growing techniques between wine grapes and table grapes. Because the sweetness of the grapes is decisive for the quality of the wine, wine grapes are usually harvested a little later in the year. Ice wine is a specialty where the time of year of the harvest is the deciding factor; in France, Germany and Canada, among other countries, the grapes are harvested when frozen and then processed into wine with the aim being to achieve a particularly high sugar content. Today, there are more than 5,000 different grape varieties grown all over the world in warm, temperate climates. Alongside the major wine-growing countries of Spain, France and Italy, China is now one of the world’s most important producers of wine grapes – in terms of the quantity produced, China is number one worldwide. This was not always the case: chinese production has only increased significantly since the 1980’s and has even doubled in the last ten years. 84 percent of the production is made up of table grapes, which are widely consumed as sweet fresh fruit in China.

Is wine good for your health?

Grapes are one of the sweetest fruits in the world. Around 30 percent of their weight consists of sugar. Most of the grapes harvested are processed into wine or sparkling wine. Around 10 percent is marketed as table grapes and around 5 percent as raisins. In addition, brandy can be produced by distilling wine and wine vinegar by lactic acid fermentation. The seeds contain around 15% oil, which is used as grape seed oil in cosmetic products, among other things. Grape components can even be found in baking powder. The tartar produced during wine production develops properties that help in the baking process when combined with baking soda.

The way the wine is made determines what color it ends up being. Rosé is by no means a mixture of red and white wine, but is produced using a special technique. In red wine, the red grapes are crushed and the must and grape skins are fermented together. In rosé wine, the must is separated after a few hours and only the must is fermented. This means that the colourants, which are only present in the skin, have significantly less time to pass into the wine. White wine is pressed after crushing, and here too only the must is fermented. After fermentation, the wine is stored and then bottled.

Wine is said to have certain health benefits. For example, wine is said to have positive effects on the cardiovascular system and protect against life-threatening events such as heart attacks or strokes. However, alcohol is a powerful neurotoxin and cell poison. The negative consequences far outweigh the positive properties. Today, there is no amount of alcohol that is considered harmless to health.

Historic crisis: phylloxera destroys Europe’s vineyards

In the middle of the 19th century, the introduction of steamships brought wild vines and root aphids from America to Europe. As the steamships only needed ten days for a crossing instead of six weeks by sailing ship, root aphids survived the faster voyage. Phylloxera quickly spread through European vineyards and led to one of the most serious crises in viticulture. Almost 70 percent of the wine-growing regions were infested with phylloxera, resulting in massive losses of harvest. After many ineffective control methods, winegrowers and scientists came up with the idea of grafting European vines onto resistant American rootstocks. The roots and the lower part of the vine are thus resistant to phylloxera, while European grape varieties can still be harvested from the upper part of the vine. This effective method enabled viticulture to be resumed in Europe.

Sources

Spektrum, Encyclopedia of Biology: Grapevine

Yang Dong et al. (2023): Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution.Science379,892-901. DOI:10.1126/science.add8655

Society for the History of Wine e.V.: Website

Terra X (ZDF): Wine – A history through the millennia

MDR Wissen: Not true: A glass of wine a day is healthy