Wine: The Food with Two Faces

Abstract

Throughout recorded history, the wines produced from Vitis vinifera have been glorified and praised. Writers, as early as the 3rd millennium B.C., have commented upon wine’s positive attributes and uses. Characteristics of generic and varietal wines have been examined and their dietary, medical, and social roles have been discussed extensively in all kinds of ancient literature. Wine has been called, among other things, “a chemical symphony,” “bottled poetry,” and “captured sunshine” (Becker 1979; De Luca 1979). But throughout that recorded history, those same wines have been denounced and vilified; and there is also a vast body of literature which comments upon wine’s negative attributes. Oenophobes have likened it to “the destroyer of homes,” “the opener of graves,” and “the quencher of hopes” (Turnball 1950).

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