According to Wikipedia, Wine, whose Latin name is Vita vinifera, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes. Grapes ferment without the addition of sugar, acids, enzymes, water or other nutrients as yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Wine grapes have thick skins, are small, sweet, and contain seeds. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wines.
Nowadays, especially here in Singapore, wine is everyone’s most favourite elegant and healthy beverage. But while it makes people happy, there are probably a few cool facts about this alcoholic drink that people nearly know. Based from the facts gathered from several wine shops in Singapore, below are some facts about wine that will make you look at your glass of wine quite differently:
Way back in the Ancient times, dinner hosts in Greece would always make the first wine sip to prove to guests that the drinks were not poisoned.
As far as the then discovered documents and records are concerned, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, included wine in almost all of his prescriptions regardless of what ailed his patients.
Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon founded many processes and principles in producing Champagne which is considered one of the world’s greatest sparkling wines; most of which are still in use these days.
The Speyer wine bottle was originally discovered in 1867 in what is now known as the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, near the town of Speyer. It is also known as the oldest subsisting and unopened bottle of wine in the world, dating between 325 and 350 AD.
The world’s top 10 wine producing nations (in ascending order) are Italy, France, Spain, United States, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Chile, and Portugal.
The most expensive bottle of wine was sold at an auction for £192,000. That’s about $304,500.
The wreckage of the famous Titanic cruise is considered one of the most ancient wine cellars.
Wine testers always swirl their glass to let the wine release all of its powerful aromas. More often than not, these testers only fill one third of the wine glass so as to allow aromas to accumulate and to avoid wine spilling come swirling time.
Taste-testing wine is best performed when the wine is held in the mouth for a moment or two and then either swallowed or spitted out. A great wine tends to have a long aftertaste contrary to an ordinary wine with a short aftertaste.
Wines best taste on the right temperature. An ideal serving temperature of wine should be 7-10 degrees Celsius for white wines and 10-15 degrees Celsius for red wines.
Most wine glasses have a gentle curved rim at the top in order to actually preserve the aroma in the glass. A finer rim and a thinner glass contain aromas better. On the flip side, a flaring, trumpet-shaped wine glass fritters the aromas away.
Wines are best kept on the side to keep them in contact with the cork, thereby preventing the cork from drying, shrinking, and letting air in. After all, wine bottles arrangement in stores is made in such a way for a reason.
Wine glasses have stems that people should hold all the time when drinking wine so as not to heat the wine with the hand.
The heavier the food is the heaver the wine should be. Also, red wine is best served on red meat meals while white wine is great for white meat and fish. Sweet wines are meanwhile perfect for desserts.
Red wines tend to lose colour when stored longer while white wines contrarily gain colour in the long run. In fact, most white wines become golden or brown-yellow eventually.
The amount of nutrients and benefits you can obtain from drinking a glass of red wine is the same as the amount of nutrients and benefits you can obtain from drinking 20 glasses of apple juice or seven glasses of orange juice.
Drinking wine regularly has been proven to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, gum, and Alzheimer’s disease.
So the next time you make a stop at a wine shop in Singapore, you may look at it a little differently and in fact, you might appreciate wine drinking more – but make sure you drink moderately.
