DRINK:10 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT WINE

 

Wine is a very old and complex drink with a long and fascinating history. It will take you years of study 

to really understand its intricacy and become a wine connoisseur. Today, it’s the occasion to sharpen your wine facts!

Still, there are a few facts about wine that everyone can grasp quickly, just in case you find yourself at a posh party and you want to make a good first impression.

Well, let’s go together through the most amazing facts about wine and make you wine smart in less than 5 minutes.

1. Drinking wine can improve your sex life

This is perhaps one of the most amazing and interesting facts about wine. When drunk regularly it can actually help you boost your sex drive. An Italian study showed that women who have 2 glasses of wine daily, enjoy physical pleasure much more intensely than women who don’t drink wine at all. A very good reason to start drinking wine, isn’t it?

2. The world’s biggest red wine consumers are the Chinese but a really small country is rocking first place per capita basis

The Chinese drank their way to a record 155 million 9-litre cases of red wine in 2013, thereby surpassing the French whose consumption decreased by 18 % to 150 million cases. The increasing popularity of red wine in China is largely due to the fact that red is considered to be a lucky color. This symbolic importance combined with the health improving virtues of the drink, encourage Chinese to grab a bottle from the supermarket shelf more and more often.

A nod to our friends at cheers-wines.com growing very rapidly in the Chinese wine market!

Can you guess who the biggest wine consumers in the world are? Well, while Italy is world’s biggest wine producer, Italian are only #4 on our wine consumers list surpassed by France and Portugal.

When it comes to the biggest US wine consumers the leaders are: California, New York followed by Florida.

France still drink more wine (all categories) per capita than the Chinese with 53 liters per capita per year versus 1.9 in China.

But which country drinks the most wine per capita? The Vatican with 74 liters per capita per year which is about 99 bottles of 75cl per year !

3. We have monks to thank for our wine

Monastic orders such as the Cistercians and Benedictines preserved and innovated the art of winemaking during the Middle Ages. It is thanks to their research and indefatigable efforts we have such an elaborate winemaking technology today. One of the world’s most famous Champagnes Dom Pérignon was named after a monk. Dom Pierre Pérignon (1638-1715), an early advocate of organic wine-making, experimented with new methods, successfully improving the winemaking process. His practices and techniques are still used today.

4. Not every wine improves your health

Red wines are known to contain many beneficial antioxidants such as polyphenol and resveratrol that have cardio-protective effects and anti-cancer properties. Grape skin is especially rich in antioxidants. Since red wine is fermented together with its skin, it has more antioxidants than white wine which is processed without its skin. White wine may even slightly increase the risk of contracting cancer, especially of the digestive tract, as some studies show. So, don’t drink more than 1 or 2 glasses of wine per day!

Check out more on our blog post: http://www.wiine.me/wine-thats-makes-beautiful/

5. Wine Names Usually Indicate Location or Grape Varieties

Most European wines are named after their geographical origin. One very famous example would be the Bordeaux wine which is produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Bordeaux wines are made of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and to a much lesser extent Carmenere and Malbec.

Non-European wines almost always have the name of the grape (aka the varietal) on the label – for instance Cabernet Sauvignon from California.

Now you know!

6. The color of the wine tells you about its geographical origin

One of the things that you can tell by looking at the color of the wine, is the region and climate where the grape vine is located. Darker shades of wine, namely the darkest reds and yellow whites come from warm climates. Lighter colors come from cooler climates and taste lighter and less lush.

7. Women get drunk faster from wine because of their water to fat ratio

Women usually tolerate less alcohol than men, but this has nothing to do with their body weight or size. If a woman and a man of the same size and build drank the same amount of wine, the woman would still show a higher blood alcohol concentration (BAC). This is because women have a higher fat content than men and fat does not absorb any alcohol. The intoxicant therefore spreads to less liquid, leading to a higher BAC.

8. Wine was discovered about 6,000 years ago in the Middle East

The earliest remnants of wine were discovered in Iran, dating back to the Neolithic period (8500-4000 B.C.). The oldest evidence of cultivated vines were found in Georgia, dating from 7000-5000 B.C. It is supposed that the drink originally fermented by mistake. Native yeasts accidentally came in contact with grapes stored in containers, turning the sugars in the grapes into alcohol. The art of winemaking was later refined by the Egyptians and spread throughout the Mediterranean by the Greek. The Romans made it popular all over Europe and the Spanish as well as other Europeans took their brew to the New World, Oceania and South Africa.

9. There are folks that are afraid of wine

Yup! Amazingly, there are people around the world who hate wine and there’s even a name for it, it is called “oenophobia”.

10. Wine Doesn’t Make You Fat

While beer makes that unaesthetic beer belly, wine does not affect your waistline at all. In fact recent studies showed that “women who routinely drank moderate amounts of alcohol, totaling about one drink per day, carried almost 10 pounds less body fat than women who did not drink at all”. Experts believe that the calories in alcohol are not metabolized in the same way as calories from carbohydrates, fats or protein. So if you are about to start a diet to lose weight, then you should consider having a glass of wine instead of chocolate pudding for dessert.