Wine

Wine is an alcoholic drink obtained by the fermentation of grapes, the fruit of the wine vine.

The transformation of grapes into wine is called vinification. The study of is oenology. The great variety of wines existing in the world is explained by the differences in terroirs, grape varieties, methods of vinification or types of breeding. Thus they can give red, rosé or white wines, but also wines with a varying residual sugar content (dry or sweet), or a varying effervescence (still or sparkling). Viticulture has colonized a large part of the world and many countries are wine producers.

According to its legal definition in Europe1, it is the product obtained exclusively by alcoholic fermentation, total or partial, of fresh grapes, crushed or not, or of grape must, alcoholic beverages flavored with grapes cannot include this named. Its alcoholic strength may not be less than 8.5% by volume.

History
The Greek peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus, author of a Treatise on Drunkenness in the 3rd century BC. J.-C., spoke of, and as the Valencian doctor Arnaud de Villeneuve did later, concocted a whole series of medicinal wines: in ancient Greece, “we used to mix wine quite differently than nowadays; indeed, one did not pour the water on the wine, but the wine on the water, in order to use a well soaked drink, so that after having drunk some, one was less greedy of what could to stay, and the greater part of it was employed in the game of cottabe. Theophrastus considered that wine was given by Dionysus to men to compensate for old age by taking away its melancholy, and making them feel young again. Plato, in his Laws, is of the same opinion.