National Wine Day – not to be confused with the holiday National Drink Wine Day – is upon us, celebrated annually in the United States on May 25th. The purpose of this day is very simple. It’s a day to buy wine, appreciate wine and enjoy the history of wine. After all, this alcoholic beverage has been a part of human civilization for at least 8,000 years.
While the history of National Wine Day seems to be obscured by the fog of time (and maybe a little alcohol), scientists do have a pretty good idea when wine started being produced and consumed. They found a winery that produced wine in 4300 BC in the Areni cave in Vayouts Dzor in Armenia. Archaeologists call it a winery because they discovered not only cups and jars for holding wine, but other equipment such as wine presses and fermentation vats that were used in the production of wine. If that’s enough evidence for you to call it a winery, then you might want to know there was also the seeds and vines of Vitis vinifera located on site. Before this site was discovered, the oldest known wine making could only be traced back to about 3100 BC – or about 900 years later than this find – in an Egyptian tomb.
However, after discovering this site, archaeologists believed that wine making probably went back even further than 6,000. In fact, they believe that since the early Armenians had such a grasp of the technology of wine making, then it must go back at least a few hundred more years. What was later discovered though was that winemaking actually goes back 8,000 years. This was confirmed when an 8,000-year-old wine was found in the Caucasus region of Eurasia – in what is now the country of Georgia.
Fun Facts About Wine
- The smell of an older wine is called a bouquet; the smell of a younger wine is the aroma
- Wine only has 1/10th the antioxidants of soy sauce
- The states of California, Florida, and New York lead the U.S in wine consumption
- Wine has been produced in southwestern France since Roman times
- The Romans mixed lead with wine to help preserve it and give it a sweeter taste
- Ice wine (known as Eiswein), made by frozen grapes, was invented by the Germans
- Not all wines improve with age
- More wine grapes are planted than any other crop in the world
- Grapes for dark red wines grow in warmer climates, while white wine grapes grow in cooler ones
- Global warming may change where wine can be grown in the future
One way to learn about National Wine Day is to learn all about the history of wine making. You can research this on the Internet, visit your local library or even head down to your local museum. However, the best ways to celebrate this holiday is with a hands-on approach – by going to where the wine is made in the first place.
The U.S has some truly great wineries, so why not head out to visit one of them on National Wine Day? Some of the best wineries in the world are found in Northern California as well as up and down its Central Coast. The Pacific Northwest has fantastic wineries in Oregon and Washington. The hills outside of Austin, Texas have become quite the place to find new wines, and New York’s upstate Lakes region has a terroir similar to that found in Germany. And there are plenty of new wineries are now found up and down the East Coast.
Other ways to enjoy National Wine Day is to drink wine, make wine ice-cream, make wine slushies, cook with wine or post wine-related memes of the Internet. If you want to promote the holiday using twitter, simply use the hashtag #nationalwineday. Cheers!
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