Wine facts for kids
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| red and white wine | |
Wine is a type of alcoholic drink. Most often, when people say "wine," they are talking about a drink made from the juice of grapes. However, sometimes people also call alcoholic drinks made from other fruits, like plums or blackberries, "wine." This article will focus only on wine made from grapes.
Wine is made through a process called fermentation. This is when the sugar in grapes changes into alcohol. This happens thanks to tiny living things called yeast.
Contents
What is Wine?
Wine is a special drink made from grapes. It has been around for a very long time. People enjoy wine in many countries around the world.
How Wine is Made
Wine is made by letting grape juice ferment. The grapes are crushed to get their juice. Then, yeast is added or is already present on the grape skins. This yeast eats the sugar in the juice. As the yeast eats the sugar, it creates alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. This process is called fermentation.
Different Kinds of Wine
There are two main types of wine: red wine and white wine.
- Red wine is made from red grapes. The grape skins are kept with the juice during fermentation. This is how red wine gets its color.
- White wine can be made from either red or white grapes. But, the grape skins are removed before fermentation starts. This means the wine stays a light color.
- Rosé wine is a pink wine. It is made from red grapes, but the skins are only left with the juice for a very short time. This gives the wine a pink color instead of a deep red.
Some wines also have bubbles in them. These are called sparkling wines. Two famous sparkling wines are champagne from France and spumante from Italy.
A Look Back: Wine Through History
People have been making wine for a very long time. They started making it about 5000 years ago! This shows how important wine has been in human history and culture.
Where Wine is Popular
Wine is a very popular drink in many parts of the world. Different countries drink and make different amounts of wine.
Countries That Drink a Lot of Wine
Based on numbers from the year 2000, these countries drank the most wine overall:
However, if you look at how much wine the average person drinks, the list changes. In these countries, people drink the most wine per person:
Countries That Make a Lot of Wine
Many countries around the world produce wine. Using numbers from 2015, these countries made the most wine:
Images for kids
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16th-century wine press
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Bearded satyr, emptying a wine-skin, Arretine ware, Roman, Augustan Period 31 BC–AD 14
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The Areni-1 cave in Armenia is the world's oldest known winery
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Pressing wine after the harvest; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 14th century
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Han dynasty tomb brick showing workers brewing alcohol
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Grape vineyard
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Wine grapes on a vine
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Italian Moscato d'Asti, a DOCG wine
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Judging color is the first step in tasting a wine.
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Château Margaux, a First Growth from the Bordeaux region of France, is highly collectible.
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Grapes fermenting to make wine in Western Australia
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Wine Exports by Country (2014) from Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity
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Reduction of red wine for a sauce by cooking it on a stovetop. It is called a reduction because the heat boils off some of the water, leaving a more concentrated, wine-flavoured sauce.
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All alcohol is prohibited under Islamic law, although there has been a long tradition of drinking wine in some Islamic areas, especially in Iran.
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Assorted wine corks
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Oak wine barrels
See also
In Spanish: Vino para niños
