Random Events that Wine Changed World and Altered History (17 items)

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  (#1) The Need to Store Wine Pushed People to Create Some of the First Storage Devices

  One of the unfortunate things about wine is that if you don't store it right, it doesn't age well and it goes bad. This means that early wine makers either had to drink up awfully fast, or they had to figure out a means of preserving and keeping the wine. In China, dating all the way back to around 7,000 BC, people began making fermented fruit and honey wine, and storing it in earthenware jars. These jars then became pots, amphoras, and eventually the bottles we see today. This storage method could also be used for various foods, meaning people could keep food fresh longer, too.
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  (#2) Wine Determined Whether or Not the Greeks Thought You Were Civilized

  If the ancient Greeks thought you were cool, chances are, you really were. And the best way to get those Greeks to like you? Why, give them wine, of course! You see, the ancient Greeks believed that creating wine was a fine art, so much so that they had a god that was focused on drinking it. If you could create wine, the Greeks would consider you civilized rather than backwards and barbarous, at least according to Thucydides, and many alliances were formed when the Greeks respected other "civilized" societies. In short, the ancient world looked the way it did because the Greeks respected other winemakers. 
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  (#3) The Pharaohs Used Wine to Seem Like Crazy Powerful Gods

  If you were rich and lived in Egypt back around 1,500 BC, then you drank wine. If you weren't, you didn't. It's as simple as that. Pharaohs drank wine and offered it to the gods, and even had wine buried with them from multiple wineries (yes, they had multiple wineries). Given that Egypt was a slave-loving country, the use of wine as a means of status kept the rich on top and the poor on the bottom, where they only drank beer. 
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  (#4) Wine Encouraged Cross-Continental Trading

  By around 900 BC, the Romans really had this whole wine thing down to a science. They were growing grapes, making different varieties of wine, and storing it in amphora. The obvious next step was to start trading it. Some of the very first cross-continent trading was with wine, and that trade developed and grew until it became the booming industry we see today. From there blossomed political alliances, the trading of information and techniques, and of course, even more varieties of wine.
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  (#5) Wine Led to Glass and Glass Led to Basically Everything Else

  Somewhere in all this Greek and Roman winemaking, people started to think that it was high time we found a new way to store wine. We were already using glass to make beads, cups, and little bits of jewelry, but the full range of its use wasn't really explored until the Romans started making glass containers for wine around 100 BC. From there, uses for glass began to pop up everywhere in art and science - and it all began with wanting to store wine better. 
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  (#6) Cleopatra Used Wine to Win a Bet (But She Probably Cheated)

  Wine was always one of this fabled beauty's ploys for greatness. She used drinking to get to know Julius Caesar, and she allegedly had wild drunken parties with her guests. But her most notable use of alcohol was to win over Marc Antony and form one of the most famous romances in history.

  The story goes like this: Cleopatra made a bet with Antony over whether she could spend a small fortune in a single meal. She was determined to impress him and so at dinner time, she brought forth one of the largest pearls then known. She dropped it into a glass of wine, then drank the concoction down. He was, needless to say, impressed. The catch is that she might have made the cocktail using red wine vinegar, in order to dissolve the pearl, instead of plain wine.
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  (#7) Wine Kept Roman Troops Happy and Healthy as They Conquered Most of Europe

  Wine keeps people happy, right? Well, the Romans certainly thought so. In 200 BC, they began to dictate that all soldiers should drink 2-3 liters of wine for their health and morale. It might sound crazy but this wine, called posca, did in fact have medicinal properties! It's full of antioxidants and vitamin C, and because it's very acidic, it kills all the bacteria in the water, keeping the soldiers on their feet! Around this time, with the help of posca, Rome managed to defeat Carthage, who had a pretty solid stranglehold over the Mediterranean, thus strengthening their empire. 
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  (#8) "The Blood of Christ" Became a Religious Staple, Even in Prohibition

  Whether or not you believe Jesus existed, it's hard to deny what his existence in religious lore has meant to the world. According to the Bible, he was also quite fond of wine, as shown by his water into wine miracle. It was also written that, at the Last Supper, he gave his disciples wine and told them it was his blood, shed for them. The moment those words were penned, they became a part of religious ceremonies still used today. When Prohibition in the United States came around, the only wineries that stayed open were those that claimed to make sacramental wine, so we can thank the Lord for that too!
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  (#9) Wine Made the Scots and the French Best Friends - And Snubbed England

  Around 1295, England was getting a little too big for its britches, and it was making people kind of nervous. In particular, France and Scotland were really focusing on trying to keep England from getting any bigger. So, in order to stop them, the two countries formed a treaty called the Auld Alliance. The Scots, however, got an added benefit of having first pick of all the best French wines, leaving England with a lesser selection. So, in its most basic form, the Scots' love of wine is what kept England from becoming a crazy powerhouse, and kept France strong, too. 
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  (#10) The Ottoman Empire Began to Crumble Thanks to a Love of Wine

  Süleyman the Magnificent pushed the Ottman Empire to be massive, up to the point where they even had Somalia under their rule. However, his predecessor Selim II preferred getting drunk to expanding his empire, and his favorite drink was wine. In fact, the only time when he tried to really take over anything was when he sought out Cyprus, the maker of his favorite wines. However, Cyprus was having none of that and fought back, killing 90% of his navy and 30,000 sailors. While he was doing all this, the rest of the empire began to call into disrepair, and thus was the beginning of the fall. 
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  (#11) Magellan Chose Wine Over Water (with Dangerous Consequences)

  Magellan may have been a pretty brilliant explorer, but he was also a huge lover of wine and pretty bad at prioritizing. Case in point: When he set out on his voyage, he spent more money on wine than on either weapons or food. In fact, during his travels, he ran out of water before he ran out of wine! This doomed most of his shipmates and lead to the eventual destruction of most of his travel party. All but one of his ships were lost, and we're willing to bet the one that came back still had extra wine to spare. Who knows what might have happened if Magellan had been more interested in fresh spring water than fortified wines?
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  (#12) Everyone Drank Wine as They Signed the Constitution

  Most Americans know that the Constitution was signed in 1787, but most don't know that the place was overflowing with wine. You see, most of our founding fathers were huge wine lovers, to the point where, during the convention, Franklin had people follow him around to make sure he didn't go into any taverns and get drunk! But when the time came to sign, it went from a mellow affair to a real party. And the wine served? Not surprisingly, Franklin's favorite, Madeira. There's actually still a wine festival every year to celebrate the role wine played in this famous signing. 
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  (#13) Wine Helped Beethoven Create His Music - and Then Promptly Killed Him

  This famous deaf musician lived a fairly short but very productive life. In his time, he wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, one opera, five piano concertos, and many chamber works. And he did it all while tipping back a glass or two of wine. That's right, this drink that has been shown to make you more creative helped inspire Beethoven to create some of the most beautiful and memorable music known today. However, it's also what killed him. At age 56, he died with a slew of health problems plaguing him. Autopsies did show that one of these contributing factors was severe liver cirrhosis, brought on most likely by the sheer volume of wine he was drinking near the end of his life. 
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  (#14) Louis Pasteur Studied How to Prevent Illness Using Wine

  Ever heard of pasteurization? We use it nowadays to make things like milk and juice drinkable, by heating them to remove harmful bacteria and microbes. This has helped us be much healthier as a society, and it all started with Louis Pasteur heating some wine in order to keep the French wine industry from collapsing. We no longer use pasteurization for wine, but the food industry was forever changed, thanks to one man trying to help us get drunk safely. You might recognize his name for another reason too: he used all this knowledge of bacteria to develop vaccines, some of which are still used today.
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  (#15) Rasputin Drank Poisoned Wine, but Survived to Be Horrifically Butchered Instead

  Rasputin was known as a mystic and an amazing lover, particularly by the wife of the Czar at the time. Playing around with the Czar's wife also earned him a lot of enemies, and they set out to kill him. The first thing they tried was poisoning his wine with a dose of poison large enough to kill five men. It could have ended there, but apparently he really, really liked wine, and swallowed it down with no ill effects. From there, it just gets grisly: determined to kill him, his enemies shot him numerous times (with no luck), cut off his penis, wrapped him in a rug, threw him in a river, buried him, dug him up, and eventually burned his remains. 
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  (#16) Churchill Encouraged WWII Troops to Fight for Their Country... and for Wine

  Churchill was such a huge fan of sparkling wine that he claimed to have drunk 42,000 bottles of Champagne in his lifetime! He's also famously known for his encouraging words to his troops during the Second World War. But besides saying "Never was so much owed by so many to so few," he also tried to get his troops excited by reminding them they were fighting for wine. That's right! He's reported as saying “Remember, gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!" before his boys went off to fight the Germans in France. In salute to this, there was a Champagne made in his honor that you can still buy today.
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  (#17) American Wine Agriculture Boomed Because of a Contest in Paris

  The international wine community didn't take the US very seriously until The Judgment of Paris in 1976. In this competition, some tiny unknown vintners from Napa, California, put their wines in a blind taste test alongside powerhouse French wineries. Everyone laughed at the Californians, until they won, in both the red and white categories! After that, not only Napa wines (now a household name) but American wines generally took the spotlight, creating the thriving and lucrative industry we have today. So, if you ever have a Napa Cab you like, you can thank the French for that. (By the way, they're still mad.)

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