Wine and the Birth of Civilisation

Wine’s 8,000-year history traces its evolution from early domestication in the Caucasus to a $500 billion global industry. The Canaanites revolutionized the trade by inventing the amphora, allowing for mass export across the Mediterranean, while the Roman Empire later utilized wine as a tool for imperial expansion and cultural standardization. The 17th-century English development of coal-fired, thick-walled glass bottles and cork stoppers provided the technical foundation for modern storage and aging. France subsequently solidified its dominance through the 1855 Bordeaux classification and the concept of *terroir*, a marketing framework that emphasized regional uniqueness. This Old World hegemony faced a seismic shift during the 1976 Judgement of Paris, where Californian wines outperformed prestigious French vintages in a blind tasting, effectively legitimizing New World production and reshaping the global wine market.