11th October: Roman New Wine Festival

In ancient Rome today was the Meditrina - a festival celebrating new wine. So here are 10 facts you may not know about wine.

1. Even though the Romans liked their wine enough to have a wine festival, women at that time were not allowed to touch it. If a man caught his wife drinking wine it was grounds for divorce - he would even be legally allowed to kill her.
2. The custom of bumping glasses together before you drink originated in ancient Rome. Bumping glasses made the drink spill from one glass to the other, so it was a way of making sure your host was not trying to poison you.
3. One bottle of wine contains about 1.27kg of Grapes.
4. European wines are named after their geographic locations (e.g., Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot and Bordeaux) while non-European wines (e.g., Pinot Noir and Merlot) are named after different grape varieties.
5. Plato argued that the minimum drinking age should be 18; wine in should be drunk in moderation until 31. When a man reaches 40, he may drink as much as he wants to cure the “crabbedness of old age.”
6. In the Old Testament of the Bible, wine is mentioned in every book except the book of Jonah.
7. The world’s oldest bottle of wine dates to A.D. 325 and was found near the town of Speyer, Germany, inside one of two Roman sarcophaguses. It is on display at the town’s Historisches Museum der Pfalz.
8. A fear or intense hatred of wine is called oenophobia.
9. Up until the 17th century in England, wine was kept in Goat skins. It was a Catholic polymath and diplomat called Sir Kenelm Digby who came up with the idea of putting it in dark green glass bottles.
10. The Romans discovered that mixing Lead with wine helped preserve it, and also gave it a sweet taste. Chronic lead poisoning has often been cited as one of the causes of the decline of Rome.