Wine

[Thomas]

Engineer, check out McGovern's quote. He specifically called the Chinese finding a "fermented beverage." The rice mixture included fruit, but no mention of grapes. The Chinese may have also been the first to distill spirits--from rice.

By not mentioning grapes, McGovern must not have been able to discover tartaric acid residue in the Chinese findins--that is how he measures his wine findings. Tartaric in the East, according to him, was found only in grapes.

Without grapes, it ain't wine. The technical reason for that is that grapes are the only fruit to harbor living yeast cells and enough sugar so they can start their own fermentation, without human intervention, and bring the alcohol level to 12%. No other fruit can do that beyond about 8% alcohol.

McGovern believes that even in Mesopotamia, they fermented first without grapes and then somehow discovered that adding grapes helped to make a consistent, probably more stable, product.

The modern word "wine" stems from an ancient Semitic word to describe grapes that fermented into alcohol.

So, when I mentioned McGovern's findings, I was talking about wine as it fits into that definition.




[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 04-02-2005).]