The history of wine goes back over 5000 years to the ancient Middle East. However, we will try to be brief. Wine was most likely discovered by accident when grapes were stored for too long in earthen jars (amphorae). Some wild yeast fell into the mix and *voila* there was wine. One legend says that an ancient king kept a private stash of wine for himself in a jar marked "POISON." One day, an unhappy concubine, wishing to commit suicide drank from the jar, and instead of dropping dead, she felt lighthearted and rejuvenated. The king could not keep the secret any longer and he decreed that grapes would be allowed to ferment. Ever since that day men and women have been enjoying wine together.
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"Don't drink that! It's mine... uhhh, I mean poison."
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"Make wine, not war!"
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The Phoenicians heard the news of the new beverage and, once they had mastered the seas, spread the joys and knowledge of winemaking around the Mediterranean. The Greeks then tried their hand at the winemaking game. The Romans ousted the Greeks and took some vines back to Italy. Winemaking flourished throughout the Roman Empire. It was so popular in fact, that a cult dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine, inspired late nights and wild orgies. Extraordinary hangovers ensued until the fall of Rome. Luckily however, Christian monks were on the scene to take note of it all.
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The wine we have today owes much of its quality to the Christian monks of the Frankish Kingdom. The monks studied the vines and the grapes to learn which grapes grew better in the different regions of the empire. Having very little else to do but drink, they wrote down very explicit instructions on how to make wine and how to match the proper grapes with the proper climates. Charlemagne, who ruled the Kingdom at the turn of the 9th century, took this knowledge and oversaw the establishment of vineyards from southern France to northern Germany. Charlemagne even had his very own vineyard, which still exists today under the name Guy-Charlemagne.
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"Hallelujah! It's a gift from the Lord!"
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"Crikey! It's a long, cold voyage."
"It's a good thing we have plenty of wine!"
"Cheers, mate!"
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The vines and the wines grew better and better and more and more people started imbibing the fermented juice of grapes. Queen Elizabeth I of Great Britain became the undisputed naval power and built a considerable merchant-marine fleet, bringing wines from Portugal and Spain north to Britain. This wine was fortified with brandy to help preserve it from bacteria during the long, cold voyage. It then was supposed to be diluted upon arrival in England. However, the Brits liked the kick of the new, brandy-infused beverage and within a short time fortified wines such as Port, from Portugal, Sherry from Spain, and Madeira from a Portuguese island by the same name were regular imports to damp and dreary England.
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The British and their unusual tastes are also responsible for the invention of Champagne, about 350 years ago. During this period, fizzy alcoholic beverages were all the rage in London, but storing them was nearly impossible. Across England bottles with too much fizz were exploding and making a huge mess. The winemakers of the Champagne region of France eventually perfected the technique of creating safe, effervescent wines. Legend credits the blind Benedictine monk, Dom Perignon, with the technique of making the wines sparkle by adding sugar after the wines had fully fermented. This gave the yeast left in the wine a little more food and in exchange the yeast left behind tiny bubbles. The drawback was a sediment of dead yeast cells left at the bottom of the bottle. Thankfully, the widow Clicquot, from the house of Clicquot-Ponsardin, came up with a method for removing this sediment. There was much rejoicing.
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"Clean-up on aisle twelve!"
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"Viva la France!"
"Pass the wine!"
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By the time the American Revolution was under way France was known as the greatest wine producing nation in the world. However, shortly after the American Revolution came the French Revolution and many of the vineyards were taken from the church and the nobles and given to the common people. This was good for democracy, but bad for wine. Most of the common people did not know how to produce wine, nor did any of them have enough land to grow the necessary grapes. To add to the decline of French wine, the Americans started shipping vines from America, to Europe, and back again. Unfortunately, the American vines held a deadly secret!
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American vines contained a destructive louse, which infected the European vines and destroyed almost all of the vineyards in France and the surrounding countries. Wine production was devastated. The benefit to all of this tragedy was that French winemakers left their homeland and brought their skills and techniques to other countries from Chile, to Argentina, and even to South Africa. Devestation in France meant that winemaking was now a global industry.
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"Procede with caution. Suspect is considered ugly and extremely hungry!"
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Meanwhile in America, wine was struggling to find a home...
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Early settlers to America were delighted to find the landscape covered with grapevines. Unfortunately these grapes were unlike anything they had ever seen in Europe. As a result, the wine they made tasted nothing like the wine of Europe. Whiskey and hard cider became the favored drinks of the country until the turn of the 19th century when Americans finally tamed the wild grapes. These grapes found favorable conditions in the Ohio River Valley, of all places. By 1859 Ohio was the wine capital of the country, responsible for nearly 40 percent of the national output.
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The Gold Rush of 1849 brought many settlers to California, who were surprised to find that Spanish missionaries had been planting European grapes in California for over a hundred years. The old vines and the new settlers were a perfect mix. The wine industry expanded rapidly. A few years later, when the railroads crossed the country, Californian wine hit the Eastern seaboard. Wine was a hit all over the country.
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"I came for gold, but I'll stay for the wine!"
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"Extra! Extra! Bathtub gin recipes, page nine!"
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Just when the American wine industry was gathering speed, so too was the Prohibition Movement. Vineyards were uprooted, equipment was abandoned, and the people didn't have even a drop of liquor to drown their sorrows. A few creative growers and producers managed to stay in business by supplying the country with cooking wine and wine-based health tonics. Other producers found their niche making Kosher wines, which were also still legal for religious purposes. Needless to say, there was a huge interest in Jewish religion and many drinking clubs posed as "synagogues" for the time.
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After the repeal of Prohibition, the wine industry started to rebuild itself. The public preferred fortified desert wines to dry table wines and virtually no wine of quality was being produced. The American people were also drinking less than one gallon of wine per person per year, which may seem like a lot, but compared to the French who were drinking 40 gallons, it was just a drop in the bucket.
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"I get all my bubbly from the Bacchus Wine Cellar."
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At the end of the 1940s, the wine industry was still not doing well, with the exception of sweet Kosher wine and California jug wines. However, when John F. Kennedy became president and brought his wife Jacqueline in front of the public eye, things started to look up. Jackie loved all things French, from clothing to wine. French wine, and especially French Champagne sales boomed across the country. Then a british super-spy by the name of James bond came along in the 1960s. James had expensive taste in cars, women, and wine. By 1970, under these and several other influences, the average American was drinking well over a gallon of wine a year.
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Today Americans are drinking over two gallons of wine per person, every year. We get this wine from all over the world. From France and Italy we get our roots, but we import wine from Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Germany, Austria, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Lebanon, and Greece as well. Stop by and let us take you on a tour of the world as you learn about the wines we have to offer. We hope to see you at the cellar soon.
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| 1635 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20007 | 202.337.2003 | info@bwcellar.com
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