What is wine?

That's a broad question... Basically, wine is fermented grape juice (Wine can be done with any fruits, but grapes are really much the Star of the wine world). Meanwhile, it is much more than that; Wine has been a staple for humanity for over 4,000 years, with history tracing back from the current Middle-East (the Shiraz grape is named after a city in current Irak!), and it still create passion and enthusiasm to anyone who enjoy it.

Hundreds of years ago wines were used predominantly as medicines, with many wineries in Europe being owned and managed by Monks to care of the needy (The famous ‘Camino de Santiago’ (Way of St James) pilgrimage to the Northern Spain village hosting the shrine of St James created routes from all over Europe where monasteries settled and started to produce wines (in the current Bordeaux, Burgundy, Loire Valley for example).

Further down in history, wines became the drink of choice for royalty and other influent people, being unreachable to other classes. Marie-Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the revolution, was highly fond of Champagne, and the legend says that the champagne ‘coupe’ was modeled on her bosom…

Wines are now considered as a beverage of pleasure & celebrations, and not reserved to the elites anymore, due to the increase of availability and modern technic. Yet from all the different alcohol beverages, wines is still the one which kept the most mysticism and interests from all.