WINE HAS BEEN AROUND A LOOOOOONG TIME…

We thought you would enjoy some funny facts related to wine, where it came from, what people thought of those who made it, and some of the myths that were created to support the rituals and beliefs of those involved in abiding these spirits.  Enjoy!

In ancient Egypt, the ability to store wine until maturity was considered alchemy and was the privilege of only the pharaohs.

 Archaeologists found grape pips (seeds), usually considered evidence of winemaking, dating from 8000 B.C. in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The oldest pips of cultivated vines were found in (then Soviet) Georgia from 7000-5000 B.C.

One of the most quoted legends about the discovery of wine is the story of Jamsheed a semi-mythical Persian king (who may have been Noah). A woman of his harem tried to take her life with fermented grapes, which were thought to be poisonous. Wine was discovered when she found herself rejuvenated and lively.

The standard wine container of the ancient world was the amphora (something which can be carried by two), a clay vase with two handles. It was invented by the Canaanites, who introduced it into Egypt before the fifteenth century B.C. Their forebears, the Phoenicians, spread its use throughout the Mediterranean.

Plato argued that the minimum drinking age should be 18, and then wine in moderation may be tasted until 31. When a man reaches 40, he may drink as much as he wants to cure the “crabbedness of old age.”

The man who most profoundly affected the history of wine was the prophet Mohammed. Within ten years of his death in A.D. 632, wine was largely banned from Arabia and from every country that heeded him.

Thucydides wrote that the people of the Mediterranean began to “emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the soil and the vine.”

The first known illustration of wine drinking is found on a 5,000-year-old Sumerian panel known as the Standard of Ur.

1. Hippocrates, widely considered the father of medicine, includes wine in almost every one of his recorded remedies. He used it for cooling fevers, as a diuretic, as a general antiseptic, and to help convalescence.^b

We hope you have found these tidbits as interesting as we do!