Wine is an alcoholic beverage made from fermentation of grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Although fruits other than grapes can also be fermented, the resultant wines are normally named after the fruit from which they are produced (for example, apple wine) and are known as fruit wine (or country wine). Others, such as barley wine and rice wine (e.g. sake), are made from starch-based materials and resemble beer more than wine; ginger wine is fortified with brandy. In these cases, the use of the term "wine" is a reference to the higher alcohol content, rather than the production process. The commercial use of the word "wine" (and its equivalent in other languages) is protected by law in many jurisdictions. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast which consume the sugars found in the grapes and convert them into alcohol. Various varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are used depending on the types of wine produced.
Wine stems from an extended and rich history dating back about 8,000 years and is thought to have originated in present-day Georgia or Iran. Wine is thought to have appeared in Europe about 6,500 years ago in present-day Bulgaria and Greece and was very common in ancient Greece and Rome; the Greek god Dionysos, and his Roman counterpart Liber represented wine. Wine continues to play a role in religious ceremonies, such as Kiddush in Judaism and the Eucharist in Christianity. (Full article...)
“ | I have often wondered what the vintners buy, one half so precious as the goods they sell | ” |
— Omar Khayyam |
Bodegas Vega Sicilia is a Spanish winery located in the Ribera del Duero Denominación de Origen in the north of Spain. In 1848 a Basque landowner, Don Toribio Lecanda, met the bankrupt Marques de Valbuena and bought from him a 2,000 hectare estate, the Pago de la Vega Santa Cecilia y Carrascal, in the western part of what now is the Ribera del Duero wine region. At some stage that was shortened to Vega Sicilia.
For the first 16 years, the land was used for agriculture, until Don Lecanda's son, Don Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, founded the winery in 1864. From one Monsieur Beguerié in Bordeaux he bought 18,000 young vines of Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Malbec, Merlot and Pinot noir. They may have made some wine at that stage, but most of the production went into brandy and ratafia. In due course Don Lecanda y Chaves went bust and the estate passed over to the Herrero family, and another Basque, Domingo Garramiola Txomin, who had trained as a winemaker at the Haro Oenological Centre. At first most of the wine was sold in bulk and – presumably – passed off as Rioja. When the Rioja vineyards had recovered from phylloxera in 1915, Garramiola turned to making estate-bottled wine. Initially this wasn't a commercial venture, but was given away to aristocratic friends and acquaintances of the Herrero family. The quality of these wines was obviously not an issue: the 1917 and 1918 wines won prizes at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, an achievement still celebrated on the labels of all Vega Sicilia's Unico today. (Full article...)
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