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Wine has its
own special place in our life. Wine has been used by people since long in
parties and get-togethers. Parties become colorful only when wine flows.
Parties can also be conducted without wine, but then it lacks the charisma
that wine can provide. Wine is brewed through fermentation of fruits
containing sugars.
Some ancient
pottery jars have been found by Archaeologists in Godin Tepe, Iran dating
back to c.3500 to 2900 BC (before the Bronze Age). These jars contained
traces of wine, which has been brought out by chemical analysis of the jars.
Wine must have found this place as a commodity of trade, as this area was
not a grape growing area. The possible source could have been the Silk Road,
which extends from China to the Mediterranean under which Godin Tepe falls.
Various other archaeological findings also supports that wine has been used
as commodity in trade since time immemorial.
In Greek and
Roman times wine growing spread throughout Europe, the trade spread so much
that in 97BC Romans, in order to save their wine industry, ordered the known
world to pull out all vines. One famous name that helped in the spread of
wine was Dom P~rignon (1670AD-1715AD), a monk who was a competent winemaker
and is credited with the discovery of Champagne.
Types and Styles of Wine:
People get
confused and believe that type and style of the wine are same. But type and
style have different meanings in the wine terminology. Wine types are
basically based on various considerations like the alcohol concentration
with in broad limits, on sugar concentration within broad limits, presence
or absence of red color, presence or absence of effervescence and alcohol
concentration. Alcohol content in fortified wines will range from 18 to 22%
and in the table wines it may be up to 15%. On the sugar concentration, dry
wines have less than 10 grams of sugar per liter while sweet wines have more
than 10 grams per liter. Moving to the colors, three colors of wines are
brewed - red, white or ros~. On certain occasions, it is difficult to
ascertain the color of wine.
On the other
hand, wine style is related to the individual grape and winemaking factor.
Individual character, composition of the wine and the process employed to
make the wine comes under the purview of wine style. Some factors that are
considered while noticing the wine style are:
Grape
factors: Variety of grape (Chardonnay, Shiraz etc.), district,
composition at harvest, botrytis infection and cultural activities (hand
picked, trellis type etc.).
The factors
of winemaking: Sugar level after fermentation, acid addition or
reduction, wood maturation (species, origin etc.) phenolics (color), origin
etc.), type of spirit used in fortification and other biological processes (malolactic
fermentation or sherry for growth).
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