Santa Margherita

Though it was probably easy for prehistoric man to appreciate and enjoy the edible fruit of the vine, the discovery that the juice of this fruit, left forgotten in some simple container, could change and take on a different taste was almost certainly an accident. Moreover, this strange drink had a pleasant, inebriating effect on those who drank it. In the past, for this reason, fermented grape juice was often used in religious ceremonies: in the absence of scientific ideas, the changes caused by alcohol were regarded as being in some way “magical” and linked to the gods.
But when did people “get drunk” for the first time? Various archaeological finds show that the climbing plant Vitis Vinifera was already growing wild 300,000 years ago. The first signs of vines cultivated by human beings appear around seven to eight thousand years B.C. in Asia, the cradle of vinegrowing, especially in the regions of Georgia and Armenia on the far side of the Caucasus. From there the culture of the vine spread east through Asia into China. Only later did it spread to the west, reaching Europe thanks to the Greeks some time between the 7th and 8th centuries before Christ.
The Romans then carried on the tradition, taking vines and wine everywhere. The Imperial legions which moved around mainland Europe were actually obliged to plant salads (reflected in the word 'romana' for a type of salad) and vines in their camps. With the Romans wine enjoyed a real boom, as trade developed and people started to study viticulture. Pliny the Elder wrote the first “wine guide” and his Natural History (Naturalis Historia) listed 80 prime viticultural areas and 185 wines. It is clear that the idea of terroir or special local areas is of ancient origin.
Meanwhile the Gauls learned about of the properties of vines and wine. They invented wooden barrels, which revolutionized the world of wine, and developed a more frost-resistant variety of vine, thus giving rise to the vineyards of Burgundy.
At the end of the third century A.D., peoples of Germanic stock swept away the Romans, along with their culture, habits and ideals, including their dietary tastes. Fruit and vegetables were replaced by meat, banquets became more “barbarian” and beer and mead, the traditional fermented drinks of northern Europe, took the place of wine.
These centuries and those that followed were unstable times for Europe. Vine-growing was abandoned and it is only thanks to Christian monks that wines continued to be made. For the Christian religion wine was a vital element in the Mass, which is why a vineyard was to be found next to every church and ecclesiastical cellars always held stocks of the important beverage. Wine “picked up” again in the 11th century, during the reign of Charlemagne, hand in hand with the beginning of a social and economic upturn in Europe. Threafter, wine consumption continued to grow, eventually becoming very widespread in feudal society: the poorest classes drank “to forget” while those who were wealthy made drinking a vice with its own refinements.
The era of the Communes and the period of of the Renaissance that followed, with its Dukedoms and various Signories, led to wine spreading yet further throughout Europe. Later, English, Portuguese and Dutch traders made the wines produced  in specific areas – such as Bordeaux, Port, Madeira, Sherry, Marsala and Champagne – gain great popularity.
Also, from the 16th century onwards, there was a further expansion of wine production on the various continents; in subsequent periods, European colonization spread gradually to Chile and Argentina (16th century), North America (16th-18th century), South Africa (17th century), Australia (end of the 18th century) and even to New Zealand (20th century).
In the 17th century, other drinks that were alternatives to wine appeared on the market: coffee from Arabia and the Middle East, chocolate from the Americas, tea from China, as well as beer, gin, brandy and other spirits. The advent in many areas of “quality” production and the use of glass bottles and corks were of great impotance in helping wine overcome a potential crisis.
In the meantime, viticulture and enology developed, with techniques of grape-growing and winemaking becoming ever more sophisticated; wine lost some of its secrets and became ever more reliable. At the beginning of the 19th century, Chaptal introduced the concept of enriching wine with sugar in order to obtain a higher level of alcohol, but the real leap forward was made by Louis Pasteur, who discovered the role of yeasts and the danger of oxygen. Still largely unknown, however, were those enemies of the vine that ravaged the vineyards at the end of the 19th century. First to appear, around 1850, was powdery mildew (oidium) - a fungus that attacks the vines - which vinegrowers managed to defeat with sulphur, although this took around ten years. Similar problems were had with peronospora (downy mildew), a fungus that had come over from America and which was combatted by the use of “Bordeaux mixture” (copper sulphate and slaked lime). But the most devastating disease was phylloxera, a deadly parasite which was eventually defeated by grafting the desired grape varieties onto American rootstocks, which were immune.
Phylloxera revolutionized European winemaking by changing the geography of vineyards. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a rush to plant large numbers of vines to meet market needs, making wine with grapes from any part of Italy. This meant that the wine arriving on Italian tables was often of poor quality.
The end of the '60s saw the introduction of regulations in the form of the application of Controlled Appellations (Denominazioni di Origine Controllata). To be historically accurate, the first Italian “denomination of origin” may be dated back to 1716, when Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany regulated the production areas and methods of some of the wines of the area (Carmignano in particular). Another example that pre-dated the indications to be found in the D.O.C. regulations was that of the formula for Chianti (Sangiovese, Canaiolo Nero and Malvasia Toscana), proposed by Baron Bettino Ricasoli in the middle of the 19th century, which remained unaltered for a century and a half.
What has undergone a substantial change, though, are consumers' tastes; today they demand a more sophisticated product. In years to come there will probably be more labelling of wines by grape variety - so-called “international wines”, produced all over the world – whose challenge Italy could face up to by focusing on its great heritage of indigenous grape varieties.