“Feast on wine or fast on water,
And your honour shall stand sure;
God Almighty’s son and daughter,
He the valiant, she the pure.
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind intentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.(from) A Song of Right and Wrong G.K. Chesterton
Basic Information
Wine is an alcoholic drink made from fermented fruit juice - usually from the juice of grapes on an industrial scale, although smaller producers often use berries instead. Wines made from apples are likely to be called cider instead. Other substances referred to as wine are sometimes made from grain based substances - such as barley wine and rice wine - although these are an uncomfortable fit to the category.
Wines are usually subdivided by source (both the fruit used and the geographical area) and by colour (red, white or pink in the case of grape wines). The quality of wine production often varies from year to year, and many varieties improve in storage anyway so the year of production is also important. Historically, much wine was consumed relatively young and was often spiced, blended and/or sweetened to adjust the flavour. Good wine - especially wine that keeps and travels well - traditionally commanded a premium and has been an important trade item and luxury good since the earliest days of wine.
Humans have been making wine for a long time - not quite as long as beer, given that we only have evidence of it as far back as about 6000BC, but still time enough for it to have accquired a great deal of significance in many cultures.
A large part of this significance is religious - wine was an important part of many ancient religions, frequently being sacrificed in the form of libations and some cultures even went as far as to have a specific god of wine (such as Bacchus/Dionysius the Greco-Roman deity of wine and revellry). Obviously wine also plays an important part in the Christian Eucharist and a less central, but still significant one in Judaism in which it has connotations of sanctity1 and rejoicing2.
There is often a (sometimes artificial) barrier drawn between wine drinking cultures and beer drinking ones - usually between the Mediterranean and Northern European. This is mainly a Greco-Roman idea - since they were great wine drinkers and tended not to partake of the far more Germanic beer … although the Celts and Egyptians were also beer drinkers which tends to undermine the theory a bit. In later European culture wines were generally a higher priced (and therefore higher status) drink, leading to a class divide between drinkers which, to some extent at least, persists to this day in nations where wine is imported rather than produced.
Fortification of wine with alcoholic spirits is often used to produce stronger drinks such as port, sherry and madiera.
Wine is also frequently used in cooking and can be used as a topical disinfectant in medicine. Wine that has spoilt by oxidation produces vinegar, which has many uses of its own.
