Wine from Scratch: A History Behind The Bottle

Greetings my wine-guzzling friends. As I mentioned in my first post, I’m starting over with wine and you’re all (all two of you) invited along for the ride. I’ll be exploring wine for the first time, all over again with a new attitude and fresh perspective inspired by my recent trip to Italy, one of the largest and oldest wine producing regions in the world.

It’s my belief that the key to learning about wine is more than just analyzing grapes and comparing flavor profiles. Instead, we need to look deeper into the different regions, cultures, and lifestyles behind the bottle; because in many parts of the world, wine truly is a style of life. Not just a life with style.

For example, in Italy wine is an everyday constant. It’s ingrained in the people and embedded in the culture. This is more apparent right now with harvest than any other time of year, as growers and winemakers work to bring in their grapes just as their families have done for generations before them.

One evening in Italy, my wife and I sat down for a home cooked meal with our tour guide Paolo and his friend Valerio. Valerio is a winemaker. Just like his father before him, and his father before him. He never considered doing anything else. It’s what he knows and loves. He can speak for hours on the subject of Grignolino (a red Italian wine grape variety) and it’s magical ability to cure hangovers!

Our local wine culture doesn’t quite have the history that Italy does, but there are still plenty of opportunities to learn more about wine from the perspective of the people and places that produce it.

My recommendation, before you crack open that next bottle of wine; look at the label and then get online to find out more about the winery that made it and the region the grapes came from. That info alone should provide more talking points around the dinner table than how the wine tastes like blackberries and smells like a cigar box.

For a little more historical perspective on wine lookup A History Of The World In Six Glasses, which explores the significant role that wine along with five other beverages (beer, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) have played in the world's history. Interesting stuff. Cheers!

** Marcus Pape has worked in media and design for over 10 years with an extensive background in all forms of visual communication. As a proclaimed vinophile Marcus hopes to leverage his abilities to inspire interest in wine, recently launching WineCHATr.com – an online resource for the growing wine community, where both popular wine bloggers and businesses come together to connect and share information on wine.