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Wine
Wine is an
alcoholic beverage. The word wine in and of itself is defined as the
produce by the fermentation of the juice of grapes - grapes are
naturally, chemically balanced to normally ferment completely
without requiring extra sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients.
Other fruits such as apples, berries and blackcurrants are sometimes
also fermented. These, however, are referred to as "apple wine" or
"elderberry wine". Non-grape wines are called fruit wine or country
wine. Other products made from starch-based materials, such as
barley wine, rice wine (sake), are more similar to beers. The
English word wine and its equivalents in other languages are
protected by law in many jurisdictions.
The word wine comes from the Old English win, which derives from the
Proto-Germanic *winam, an early borrowing from the Latin vinum,
"wine" or "(grape) vine" — itself derived from the
Proto-Indo-European word *win-o. Branches of Semitic languages have
similar terms for grape/wine (S. Semitic & Arabic weyn, Hebrew yayin,
Akkad. inu, proto-Semitic *wayn-) ; however, the exact relationship
with the Indo-European words for vine is disputed. It is generally
agreed to have been an early wanderwort. Both Hebrew and Arabic have
a separate word for grape - enba/inab which is cognate with fruit in
other semitic languages, e.g. Akkadian inbu, Syriac enbā; and the
choice of translation for the Hebrew yayin as grape may have been as
a result of scholars influenced by the agenda of the temperance
movement.
Top
Wine exporting
countries
The 14 largest export
nations (2005 dates) –
France,
Italy,
Spain,
Australia,
Chile,
the
United States of
America,
Germany,
South Africa,
Portugal,
Romania,
Moldova,
Hungary,
Croatia
and
Argentina.
California
produces about 90% of the wine in the United States.
In 2000,
Great Britain
imported more wine from
Australia
than from
France
for the first time in history.
The leaders in export
volume by market share in 2003 were:
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