Fruit Wines

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Recently I met a man who makes fruit wine, meaning wine made from fruit other than vinifera grapes, which are the grapes grown specifically to make wine. I m not at all certain how fermented grape juice gained the title of wine but today we are going to talk about fruit wine. The history of turning fruit into wine is a long one. The part of the world that includes the Black and Caspian Seas along with the northern parts of what is today Iraq and Iran, is where scientists think fruit was first domesticated and along with that, where the first wine was made. Ancient pottery discovered with traces of tartaric acid, a common wine residue, are a dead give away that in about 8500 BC places like Turkey were already producing wine. Here we sit over 10,000 years later and domestic fruits and berries of all sorts are being grown throughout the planet. The fruit wine industry, although just less than four percent of the overall production of wine, has become more sophisticated and is growing annually. The cider business is an excellent example of how stylish and urbane an old fashion beverage can become. Many of the berry wines from Oregon and the northeast of the U.S. are quite tasty, so why not give them a chance this summer? And thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.