We’re complete wine enthusiasts
here at the Ideal Wine Company; we love everything about the world’s most
sophisticated drink and we like to know as much as we can to ensure that we can
bring you the best and most luxurious wines from all over the world. That’s why
today we want to tell you about the history of winemaking; it’s a practise
that’s been around for centuries, in its earliest forms even millennia, and
it’s grown to become one of the most profitable industry’s the worlds ever
known. Winemaking hasn’t just shaped what we drink, it’s shaped the way we live
and we have a lot to be thankful to it for.
Winemaking in its very earliest
form could be said to date back around 7,000 years, to the earliest forms of
Viticulture (grape growing for the production of wine) in the Neolithic period.
This led to the first ever productions of wines that, although were rudimentary
and not up to today’s standards, were the start of what became a worldwide
industry. The tradition was carried into the earliest of the typically
‘ancient’ civilisations, including most notably Ancient Greece, which refined
the practice and even took it into Italy when the Mycenaean Greeks started to
colonise the peninsula.
This proved to be a blessing for
the early wine making industry as the Romans were particularly fond of the
drink, and brought it with them when they conquered Western Europe. They
planted the first vineyards in many Western European nations under their
thrall, most notably France, which would, in later years, come to dominate the
wine making industry.
Although the end of the Roman era
and the moving in Europe into what many label the ‘Dark Ages’ saw most of
civilised culture lost to the West for a thousand years, the art of wine making
was one of the few remnants of Roman culture that thrived. This has been put
down to the efforts of Catholic Monks, who grew vineyards to produce wine for
the Catholic sacrament, and turned it into an art form for which they were
indeed known throughout the Western World. The Benedictine Monks of France and
Germany were particularly famous for this.
As the Greeks had increasingly
brought the vine to Western Europe, the Western Europeans brought the vine to
the America’s and the rest of the so called ‘new world’ in the global imperial
period. Originally they were often brought by the Catholic Powers so that they
would have wine for the Eucharist, however, the trade increasingly grew until
in the 20th Century, several international powers such as America,
Argentina, Chile and Australia became almost as well known for their wines as
the traditional wine makers of France, Italy and Spain.
At the Ideal Wine Company we
recognise that wine has a long and noble history; it has survived the rise and
fall of empires, it has survived the rise and fall of civilisations. It has
even travelled over the seven seas into every corner of the globe. That’s why
we know that wine will always survive, because it has survived and thrived to
become the world’s most famous drink.
