(1497)  Sun 0 Jan 96  4:01
By: David Rice
To: Ken Young
Re: special rights case
St:
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To: Ken Young
sub: special rights case

KY> It is wine- non-alchoholic wine.

Infopedia 1995:

WINE, alcoholic beverage produced by fermenting the
juice of grapes ( see Fermentation ). Today, as
throughout history, wine is produced in temperate
zones worldwide. The best grapes for wine are a
product of thin, flinty soil. Traditionally, grapes
have been grown in vineyards bordering on rivers,
which early in the history of the industry, in such
regions as the Rhine, Rhone, and Loire valleys of
Europe, provided convenient transport.

HISTORY. The production, use, and enjoyment of wine
dates from at least the beginnings of recorded
history. Perhaps the earliest vineyards were
cultivated in the Caucasus between 6000 and 4000 BCE,
and wine was known by 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia, where it
supplanted beer as the principal alcoholic beverage.
Wine was used for sacramental purposes in Egypt no
later than the start of the 3rd millennium BCE,
although evidence indicates that it was not produced
there for general consumption for another 2000 years.
In one of the earliest recorded references to wine as
a natural adjunct to gastronomy, the 5th-century BCE
Greek historian Herodotus described the diet of
Egyptian priests as "bread made for them out of sacred
grain, and a plentiful supply of goose-meat and beef,
with wine in addition." It remained for the ancient
Greeks to develop viticulture, or the cultivation of
grapes, on a commercial scale and to market their
wines abroad. Thick and viscous, these wines had to be
considerably diluted with water before they could be
drunk.

The wines of the Greeks, much in demand throughout the
ancient world, were fermented in vats coated with
resin, thereby deriving a turpentinelike quality
perhaps similar to that of the best-known modern Greek
wine, retsina. After fermentation, they were filtered
into animal skins for domestic consumption or into
clay amphorae (storage vessels) for export. Neither
type of container was airtight, and the wines
consequently kept poorly. Various regional formulas
were developed in attempts to arrest spoilage; one
such recipe called for the introduction into the wine
of a well-aged mixture of herbs, spices, and condensed
seawater. However unappetizing ancient Greek wines
might seem to present-day palates, they were much
beloved by the Greeks themselves, who worshiped the
wine God Dionysius and who left in their art and
literature ample evidence of the important part wine
played in their life and ritual.

The Romans also loved wine. As the Roman Empire
expanded, vineyards were planted wherever the soil and
climate were favorable--- in Spain, Gaul, Sicily,
Etruria, Illyria, and North Africa. Before long,
domestic production of wine in Gaul so far outstripped
that of Italy that the Roman Senate passed legislation
designed to restrict wine production in the colonies.
The laws appear to have had little effect; by the late
1st century CE, vineyards were so extensively
cultivated that cereal production dwindled, prompting
the emperor Domitian to decree that half the
provincial vineyard acreage be replanted with other
crops. Both the production and the quality of wine
declined steadily in Europe during the early Middle
Ages. The relatively little that was produced was
consumed locally, and because wine was needed for
Christian sacraments, it was for the most part the
produce of ecclesiastical foundations. Not until the
12th century did the great wine-growing districts
begin to recover.

North Americans are relative latecomers to wine
connoisseurship but tend today to take a far less
parochial view of the subject than Europeans, who
customarily restrict their interest to local products.
Viticulture, too, is relatively new to the continent;
Franciscan missionaries planted the first large-scale
vineyards in California only 200 years ago, and these
had to be reestablished almost from scratch after the
repeal of Prohibition. None-the-less, California table
wines now compete with the fine wines of Europe. Other
states, including New York and Washington, have
developed growing wine industries, producing good
quality wine. Today, about 70 percent of the U.S. wine
market is made up of American wine. A malign
by-product of the California vine yards in the 19th
century threatened the extinction of European wines.
The plant louse Phylloxera vitifoliae, carried to
Europe on California rootstocks, caused a pandemic,
devastating some 1 million ha (2.5 million acres) of
vineyards in France alone. Ultimately, the tide was
turned when Europe's vineyards were replanted entirely
with Phylloxera- resistant rootstocks native to the
eastern U.S., onto which vines of the European wine
grape, Vitas vinefera, were grafted.


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