How To Store Wine In Animal Skins
When y'all think of modernistic wine storage, visions ascend of swanky custom home cellars and stainless steel wine cabinets calibrated to perfection and bustling pleasantly to keep bottles absurd for the next big dinner. Merely have you ever thought of why vino is stored in bottles in the first identify?
Before electricity or fifty-fifty the invention of the corkscrew, our founding fathers in winemaking worked tirelessly to explore available resources for storage efficiency and maximum return on investment. Priorities accept changed—the Romans, for example, were often more interested in quantity and alcohol levels than nuances or bouquets—however the goal to keep wine rubber and secure remained e'er at the top of the list.
From Greece to ancient Georgia, the vino-fueled innovations of our ancestors provide an indispensable look into the origins of wine storage as we know it. Though their storage solutions existed long before technologies that could stabilize temperature, humidity and vibration, many of their common-sense practices still apply to how nosotros shop vino today.
Wineskins: The original wine glasses
The earliest wine enthusiasts toted receptacles made out of fauna skins or bladders for accessible wine storage. Due to their organic materials, these wineskins did not stand up the examination of fourth dimension, withal references are fabricated throughout history.
The Bible cautions against new vino in an one-time wineskin, Shakespeare's Falstaff rocks 1 in Henry Iv and a wineskin played a central role in Odysseus' outsmarting of the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer's Odyssey. Portable, durable and downright fashionable, wineskins served equally user-friendly hipflasks for our earliest forms of mobile sipping.
Kvevri: Keeping it cool since 6000 BC
To produce and store wine in large quantities, egg-shaped dirt earthenware were the original choice. Kvevri (likewise spelled qvevri) originated in Georgia as some of the oldest winemaking pottery on the planet.
These massive pots were lined with beeswax and used in every step of the winemaking process, from grape crushing and fermentation to long-term storage. Once filled and capped with wooden stoppers, the kvevri were buried underground to allow the earth provide natural regulation. This burial ensured a cool, stable temperature to protect the freshness of their beloved vino, thus completing rule number one for proper wine storage.
Amphorae: Helping wine aggrandize its empire
Amphorae were large clay vessels originating in the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Tall and slender with a consistent size, amphorae ushered in an era of standardized wine quantities and international merchandise. Need to ship a few hundred gallons to your neighbors in Spain? No problemo, thanks to the ingenuity of ancient engineers who designed large handles atop each clay amphora.
The containers were strung upwards like batches of grapes and hauled en masse aboard ships, making the international vino trade safer and more reliable. An amphorae's narrow shape as well allowed easier burial when cooler temperatures were called for, as was common practice with their kvevri cousins.
Oak barrels: Now with a purpose
Flash forward to the age of Roman expansion, when the Gauls introduced the Celt's invention of the wooden barrel. This crucial discovery chop-chop resulted in barrels surpassing amphorae as the preferred vino storage method and condign widespread past the third century Advertizing. Oak copse were ubiquitous throughout Europe at the time, leading it to become the obvious choice for barrel construction.
Interestingly, oak was largely chosen based on this availability too as the relative ease with which the wood bends, not for its trademark characteristics we know today. Oak'south convenience predated whatsoever deliberate intent to imbue budding vino with oak'southward magical properties, thus making our modern vino-aging tactics a happy blow.
Glass: A sleek transformation
Although the invention of glass didn't come around until 3000 BC, in 100 BC the Romans were the first to accept a molten lump of glass, prop information technology forth the end of a hollow pole, and blow it into a chimera that could be formed into bottles. Frail, delicate and horrible at traveling, these drinking glass bottles were mostly decorative and not a prime number selection for utilitarian storage.
But in the 17th century coal-called-for furnaces came most and brought an end to glass equally a purely decorative function. These furnaces allowed blazing hot temperatures for thicker, darker glass that had never before been achieved, making glass bottles a viable option for commercial wine. The growing trend of aging wine prompted longer, sleeker bottles that could be stored on their sides to avert spoilage and catch sediment.
Cork: A finishing touch
While before amphorae were topped with organic matter (think reeds, grass, woods or wet clay), the introduction of the cork was another game changer in vino storage history. Although medicinal bottles were the showtime don cork hats, it was Englishman Robert Hooke who devised the use of cork for sealing wine bottles.
When glassblowing became re-perfected and glass bottles stepped on the scene equally a viable method of storing and aging wine, cork became a preferred stopper allowing wine's ever-and so-slight connected contact with the outside world. With that finishing impact, wine's development from a mega-batch of grapes in an underground pot to the sleek bottles aging in your wine cellar was officially complete.
Should you find yourself agonized for that clay pot aged-hole-and-corner taste, a handful of winemakers today are exploring traditional methods and making wine the kvevri way. Any your tastes may be, mod methods offering the full range of options for the wine-storage experience—and if history'south any indicator, at that place may be even more to come.
What's your favorite wine storage method? Do you prefer the archetype cork and drinking glass bottle, or seek out greener solutions?
About the author: Liz Demakos is a New York native and drinkable enthusiast, serving as managing editor for CRAFT by Under My Host, editor and author for Mutineer Mag, and Wine Riot content and events specialist for Second Drinking glass. She currently lives, works, and imbibes in San Francisco.
Source: http://blog.iwawine.com/2014/06/the-history-of-wine-storage/
Posted by: tracydeftern.blogspot.com
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