The Mostly Serious History of Wine

Wine is so deeply fascinating.

I love that every bottle of wine is a piece of art

made by an artist

who had to count on the weather.

As much as we might revere a painter

like Caravaggio, for example,

his work is famously hard to drink.

When done, right, wine is also a giving art.

It's an industry where the most learned people

assist folks like me who know almost nothing.

Though, why would anybody devote their lives

to something like that, it's amazing.

So I made a documentary about it, as anyone would.

I made this title sequence in my garage.

Okay. First question, why grapes?

Because they're the best.

You can make wine out of tons of other stuff.

It's just that thanks to sugar content and acidity,

no other fruit can match grapes.

So all of those things mean that you know, if--

if you went to the engineers at MIT

and said, "We want you to design a fruit

that would be perfect for making wine,"

they would come up with a grape.

Grapes are so good for fermentation

that they do most of the work themselves,

which is probably how early people figured out

how to make what we now call wine.

Now, this moment happened long ago,

so long before writing

and we don't know exactly when or where.

But the earliest evidence suggests

that wine was being made as long ago

as 6000 BCE,

in what is now the country of Georgia.

They might only have intended to keep grape juice from spoiling.

But by keeping fermented grape juice away from oxygen,

they made wine which is drinkable

rather than vinegar, which is less so.

The most iconic feature of the Georgian winemaking process

is, well, it's the wine,

but the second most iconic is the kvevri.

The kvevri is a magnificent piece of pottery

made for fermenting wine.

Like people, each has their own character.

To make wine in a kvevri, you just pick your grapes,

smash them a bit, and then plop the whole affair,

pips and all into the kvevri and seal it up for six months.

That's old school.

That's, like, a Republic of Georgia style of making wine

which they still use to this day.

But it helps control temperature

when you have something underground, it can be covered.

But you see the clay pots used above and underground now.

There's a story about

how people will sit

and sit with their kvevris underground

and listen to the-- listen to the wine

and the wine is gonna tell you when it's ready to be consumed.

And then it goes around from person to person

whoever's making that wine, "Let me fill my jug up."

You know, it's--

it's like a communal thing too, which is cool.

You gotta-- you gotta understand

that wine's history is as-- as--

pretty much as-- as-- it's 8000 years old.

I mean, that's, 6000 BC,

we've been making wines as humans.

Okay, but what did it taste like?

Yeah, I think the answer to that question is,

well, terrible is one thing,

but I think it probably was concentrated

and it wasn't filtered or fined.

So it was probably pretty chunky,

you know, and I'm sure it was dense.

And that's why I think it's interesting with all--

with-- with winemaking techniques

that have been adapted throughout time.

Having bubbles remain in it, you know, for sparkling wine,

probably made shitty wine taste better

because it's got bubbles in it, you know.

A lot of mistakes happening, probably.

The situation of-- of finding fruit

and putting it somewhere and forgetting about it.

There's always-- there's been trial and error,

I guess without-- within the history of the world.

And so someone took the trial and they drank it.

Though we can only guess what early wine tasted like,

signs do point to gross.

I don't think anybody would dispute that.

I think you're selling wine short.

Well, at least we can agree

that Neolithic people did not have a strong grasp

of the spread of contaminants,

unlike modern people, who...

No, never mind. Let's go to Egypt.

Grape growing hit Egypt in about 3000 BCE

and the Egyptians immediately decided

that wine was something they should be buried with,

which is just about the worst excuse I ever heard

for not opening the last bottle in the house.

To friendship.

To friendship.

-Cheers. -Oh.

- Oh, that's delightful. - It is.

- Fantastic notes. -I think you're right.

It's hard to count how quickly one bottle goes

-when you've got five. -I know.

Yes, yes, uh, but the memories will last forever.

Yeah.

Well, I thought you'd be more generous

than a three-ounce pour, but, you know.

I mean, like, you know,

we've been drinking her out of house and home.

We don't want to be poor guests,

but she gave us every bottle

except that one over there.

-Oh, I see it. -Yeah.

I mean, I could have another, no lie.

-I mean, I could. -I mean, I could drink

-unlimited wine. -Yeah.

That-- that wine, it's-- it's terrible.

We should totally crack that open, like, right now.

No, no, I think we should leave that alone.

It looks just perfect where it is

right next to my golf clubs

and a picture of me in the first grade.

Well, I mean, like, it looks a little lonely

on your wine rack when there's no other bottles there.

Just a little, you know.

I think it will look better in my glass.

Yeah.

-We're leaving it there. -Oh.

-Oh. -Okay.

Well, my glass looks a little empty.

Last sip.

I took all of mine already, so...

Listen, what's the big deal about that bottle of wine, like?

-Exactly, what's the big deal? -What's the big deal?

What is the big deal?

Come on, Jess, what's the deal with the bottle?

-What's the deal? -What is it?

-Tell us. -I--

I can't have that wine until I'm dead.

Couldn't we just replace it?

No, no, no,

I bought that one for my death.

Around the same time, 3000 BCE,

vines were being cultivated in Greece as well.

Though, wine didn't really hit it big there

until 1000 BCE.

That happened because of the advent

of something called a city.

I think when I think of Greeks, that's what I think of.

It's like this, like, what's painted on the vases,

you know, people laying around with-- being fed grapes

and jugs and cherubs carrying them around.

You know, that's what I think of when I think of the Greeks.

Much like today,

early urbanites discovered that their lives were too busy

to allow them to ferment their own wine.

So they bought it from vintners

and it soon became popular

with all strata of Grecian society,

including and most importantly, sailors

who took it with them all over the Mediterranean and beyond.

Now, while the Greeks caught on a little bit earlier

in terms of spreading wine, we have the Romans to thank.

The Romans were to wine

what we Americans are to cargo shorts.

Like the Greeks, the Romans viewed wine

as being for everyone from all strata of society,

from the lowest of the low to Caesar Augustus himself.

Water at the time was often disgusting,

but mixing a little wine in made it slightly more palatable

and killed off a few nasty things

living in the water as well.

You can just imagine

what city water was like in 1000 BCE.

That's over 2500 years before this,

the Trevi Fountain.

In early Rome, your best bet for drinkable water was wine.

As a result, the Romans took wine with them

everywhere they went,

they planted vineyards all over the place.

And many of those original Roman vineyards

still produce wine to this day.

The only reason we know about a lot of this stuff

is due to the efforts of Pliny the Elder,

a Roman military commander.

Pliny spent his days working faithfully for the empire.

But every minute he had to himself,

he was either studying or writing.

It is said that Pliny ignored his need for sleep

because that time could be used for writing.

He hated walking because he couldn't walk

and write at the same time and that he only made love

if his partner agreed to be scrawled on

like a piece of parchment.

Granted, I made that last part up.