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thePeorian.com
If there’s one thing to take
away from this book it is this:
Until Louis Pasteur discovered
that yeast aids fermentation and
bacteria causes spoilage, the vast
majority of wine throughout the
ages would have tasted god aw-
ful unless it was very, very fresh.
Most often this wine would’ve
tasted like vinegar, which is the
end result of the natural fermen-
tation process.
So for roughly 7,800 years,
people the world over fortified
themselves with a liquid that
usually tasted downright nasty.
Sure, they tried all kinds of things
–
adding sugar and spices and
basically anything they could
think of – but when it came down
to it, they drank a lot of, well,
vinegar.
While today we naturally link
food with wine that is a relatively
modern contrivance. The first
restaurants were created specifi-
cally for wine tasting but then
expanded to include food. The
truth of the matter is for centu-
ries, people young and old drank
wine day in and day out, from
sun up to well-past sundown.
And it wasn’t just because of the
righteous buzz they got from the
vinegary fortifier. It was because
drinking wine was safer than
drinking water, which could very
well be contaminated. If they
did drink water, they would add
a good measure of wine to it in
order to help make it safer (again,
this is before people knew about
bacteria and its effects).
Over the centuries, winemak-
ers struggled to find ways to
improve their wines and make
them last longer.
Thankfully, scientists like
Pasteur and Emile Peynaud
helped pave the way by giving
them greater control of their wine
which enables them to create
high-quality wines all around the
world. This is a rollicking look at
the history (and science) behind
winemaking and how it has been
reinvented over the centuries and
well worth the time of any wine
lover.
“
INVENTING WINE: A NEW HISTORY
OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST
ANCIENT PLEASURES”
By Paul Lukacs
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