The History of Wine

Wine was probably discovered by accident somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, the agriculturally generous expanse of river valleys extending from the Nile to the Persian Gulf. Although archaeologists have traced the origins of wine grapes (Vitis vinifera) back tens of thousands of years, the first evidence of wine having actually been made from grapes comes from a clay pot found in Persia (now Iran) dating from around 10,000 years B.C.
Early civilisations in the region owed their existence to the rich soils, and it is here that the wine grape first thrived. Separate waves of the great, ancient, seafaring cultures of the ancient world - the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, then the Romans - took the vine and the secrets of winemaking on their travels along the shores of the Mediterranean and Europe.
The grapevine was introduced to southern Gaul (France) long before the Romans arrived. The Romans, however, taught their sophisticated cultivation methods to the native Gauls and introduced hardier varieties to the northern regions.
During the time of the Crusades, the European Christian soldiers brought back new strains of Vitis vinifera to Europe. During this period the two most important regions of France, Bordeaux and Burgundy, further developed their reputations for producing quality wines.
In 1152 Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine (whose lands included most of southwest France), and her dowry included the vineyard areas of Bordeaux and neighbouring Gascony. The light-red wine of these regions gained favour in England, where it became known as Claret, and by 1350 the port of Bordeaux was shipping out the equivalent of a million cases of wine per year.
By the closing years of the 17th century, France was becoming recognized as being the greatest of the wine-producing nations. In 1663, Samuel Pepys wrote in his famous diary about tasting the wines of Ho Bryan (today's Haut-Brion).
However, the French Revolution in 1789 had a negative impact on wine production in Burgundy. The vineyards there were seized from the Church and the noblemen, and were given instead to the people - few of whom were given enough acreage to produce their own wine.
At the end of the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson wrote enthusiastically of the quality of French wine in correspondence to friends and encouraged the planting of European wine grapes in the New World. These early attempts at wine cultivation in the American colonies were largely unsuccessful, and the transplanting back and forth of European and native American vines inadvertently brought a destructive vine louse to Europe. The result was the phylloxera blight of the late 1800s, which destroyed most of the vineyards in Europe. This disaster, however, was not without its benefits - the devastated vineyards inspired new cultivation techniques and a redistribution across Europe of wine-making expertise.
Missionaries were responsible for the first vines planted in New Zealand, back in 1819. The Australians were quicker off the mark - the first bunches of grapes were picked in the Governor's garden in 1791, grown from vines transplanted from South Africa's Cape three years earlier.
By then, the South Africans had had a head start of almost 150 years; the Cape Province's first vineyard was planted in 1655 by its first governor, Jan van Riebeeck. Initially, the wines produced were of pretty low quality and were intended for domestic consumption. However, during the 20th century, improvements in transport techniques and a growing appetite for wine resulted in a growing demand for the wines of the New World, particularly in the UK.