The Historic Trace of Wine

If you are holding a glass of wine in your hands now, how about drifting a little into the land of classical age - the roots of wine drinking. It all started in the Middle East. Relate back also to the many paintings in the Ancient Egyptian civilization times wherein you get to see scenes of people carrying jugs of wine. Wine, being well-known in the Old Testament as well as being used as a strong metaphor for life. How influential, don't you think?

Through the evolution and the revolution, wine has land itself in many different parts of the world today. Unlike in the past when only a handful of varieties were available for the wine lovers then, wouldn't you agree that being a wine lover today is so much more privileged? With the new found soils and lands, more styles of wine have been discovered. Some of them were probably not created intentionally through the extensive efforts of design, but rather it was a must given the lack of techniques back then, which slowly but surely brought blessing to some of the wine lovers today.

Take for example fortifying wines. This took off in the 16th and 17th centuries, when people had to "fortify" wine by adding grape brandy to wine in order to ship them without allowing the wine to turn into vinegar. It was done back then because the wine makers realised that by so doing, the brandy actually helped to protect and stabilise the wines throughout the journey. Additionally, it was also noted that by adding brandy before or during the fermentation process, it affects the end product directly. And there you go, we have with us now the many different types of fortified wines to be used as dessert wines or even as a must have in many of our savoury food recipes. Thus, in an ironic way if you would allow yourself to see it in this way, if not for the weak structure of wine that prevents it from withstanding the rigorous journey, the wide varieties of fortified wine might probably never see the light of the world and we would have lost the chance to fall in love with them forever.

P.S The above information has been gathered from:
- "The Joy of Wine" by Jane Hughes
-"recipes4us" under the Marsala Port & Sherry information section