The Demystified Vine

Here are some wine facts to increase your knowledge and understanding of wine!
Fun Wine Facts are found below.

The three major types of wines are: table wine (8-15% alcohol), sparkling wine (8-12%), fortified wine (17-22%).

Fermentation is the process by which a grape juice turns into wine. The formula is:
Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + Carbon Dioxide.

Fine wines of the world only come from certain areas because of the right soil, favorable weather conditions, history, and culture.

Top ten producers of wine in the world:

• France
• Italy
• United States
• Spain
• Argentina
• Germany
• South Africa
• Australia
• Chile
• Portugal

One bottle of wine is comprised of 86% water.

The planting of vineyards for making wine began more than 8,000 years ago.

A single bottle of wine is made from 600-800 grapes.

The Latin word for vine is “vitis” and wine is “vinum”.

It takes about 3 years for a newly-planted vine to produce grapes that would be merely suitable for winemaking.

Tannin is a natural compound that comes out of the skins, stems, and pips of grapes, and is what gives your mouth that dry feeling when you have a sip of wine. Some tannin structure comes from the wood that the wine might have been aged in.

The world has sold more than $100 billion of wine. Wow.

Aging wines change their colour. White wines gain colour and typically develop deeper hues, whereas red wines lose their colour.

A vine’s flowers are hermaphrodite, and the flowering bunches are known as inflorescence. (See photo below.)

A cordon is also known as the vine’s trunk and arms.

Welschriesling, Laski Rizling, and Olasz Rizling are not related to the Riesling variety.

Vines enjoy dire soil conditions; they thrive on few nutrients and good water drainage.

If grapes get too much sun, their skins can burn. This causes bitter flavours in the skins, which are then transported into the final wine product.

Shatter is the term given to a vine’s flowers that were never fertilized and are destined to die. No berries for wine? How undevine!

The term integration refers to a state where acid, tannin, alcohol, and flavour characteristics are so closely intertwined that a taster cannot distinguish the components individually. This is an optimal situation in wine; a beautiful dance of all of the wine’s factors!

FUN WINE FACTS

A “cork tease” is someone who always talks about opening a bottle of wine, but never does!

Apparently, only the Book of Jonah from the Old Testament has no reference to the vine or wine.

Early Roman women were not allowed to drink wine. Any husband who found his wife consuming alcohol was free to kill her. Divorce on these grounds was last recorded in Rome in 194 B.C.

Did you know that there are people who are afraid of wine? They are called oenophobics.

One standard glass of red or white wine is about 110 calories. Sweeter wines, of course, will have more sugar and thus, a higher calorie content.

There really is a proper way to hold your wine glass! Always hold a glass by its stem. This will avoid your body heat raising the temperature of your wine, and eliminating the possibility of ruining that lovely liquid!