Wine is probably the first type of hard drink to have come into existence. Archaeological evidence suggests that wine making began in the middle-east over 10,000 years ago, and gradually spread westward to the mediterranean countries and finally into Europe. The ancient Egyptian wall paintings reveal that the art of wine making was known to them long before the Westerners took to it.
Wine was common in everyday life of the early Greeks and Romans. It also played an important role in their religious ceremonies. The God of wine was called Bacchus by the Romans and Dionysus by the Greeks.
Wine can be made from a wide range of fruits and vegetables, but the real wine is made from grapes. Grape juice contains water, sugar, fruit acids and many trace elements. The outer grape skin has millions of tiny living organisms, primarily yeasts, including a number of moulds and bacteria, too.
The grapes are allowed to ripen until they attain suitable sugar content (18% or more) and acidity. When these grapes are crushed, yeasts come into contact with the juice. This brings about the process of fermentation by which grape juice changes into alcohol and carbon dioxide. During fermentation, grape juice loses its sugar and turns into wine. This wine has 10 to 14% alcohol content. The rest of wine consists of water containing traces of acids, sugar and other substances which give the wine its colour and flavour.
Another type of hard drink, beer, is known to have been made by the Egyptians and Babylonians at least 6000 years ago and there is evidence that barley, from which it is made, was cultivated in Britain and northern Europe, some 5000 years ago. Europeans knew how to produce a fermented drink from barley. Beer is usually made from barley hops, yeast and sugar by the process of fermentation.
Pure brandy is made by the distillation of wine made from grape juice. The wine is heated and the alcohol that evaporates out of it is condensed and collected. Apart from alcohol, other substances are also given off during distillation. Some are poisonous substances and are removed.
Different types of whisky are made from grains such as barley, rye and corn. Rum is made from molasses, syrup obtained from cane sugar. Gin is made from grain or molasses flavoured with juniper berries.
Major wine-producing areas of the world include France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and California in the USA.