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Wineries

By the first 100 years A.D., wine was being exported from Italy to Spain, Germany, and France. It wasen't long before these countries ended up developing their own vineyards. Over the next few centries France had become the dominant producer of wines on the world market. Monastaries are known to have been reponsible for establishing several of the most sought after wines in the vineyards of France. Exploration and settlement brought wine to Mexico, Argentina, and South Africa in the 1500's and 1600's. Considered to be the father of the California Wine Industry, Jean-Louis Vignes planted the first European wine vines in northern California. He founded the Buena Vista Winery in 1857, which boasts 1,000 acres of vineyards in both Sonoma and Napa counties, and produces over half a million bottles of wine per year!

Made from fermented grape juice, wine is classified into 3 basic types: Natural, Sparkling, & Fortified. Natural wines may be Red, White, & Rose, and be classified in taste as Dry, Medium, or Sweet. Sparkling wines are given a 2nd fermatation in which added yeast eats up the sugar in the wine and produces carbon dioxide to give the wine a carbonated nature, much like soda pop. Tiny bubbles noticed in sparkling wines are from this natural process, while larger bubbles indicate carbon dioxide was added by machine. Fortified wines, such as Port, Sherry, Marsala, Vermouth, Maderia, Muscat, and Sangria, were made to have a longer shelf life. While there are spirits that are made from wine, the fortification process is created by when alcohol is added to the wine, thus killing the yeast before the fermintation process is completed, which leaves residual sugar. The higher levels of alcohol and sweetness help to preserve the wine longer. Wine is usually aged for several years in wood barrels, allowing the wood to influence the characteristics of the wine from taste, color, depth, complexity, and so on.

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