Among all fruit-based alcoholic beverages, why is wine the only one with the greatest influence?

Written by Wei Shuihua

Header image |pixabay

In the minds of most Chinese people, fruit wine is roughly equivalent to soft drinks. Its drinking value and economic value are completely incomparable to grain wine.

The only exception is wine.
What caused this stigma against fruit wines? And how did wine break through the stigma and take the lead?

No.1

Wine is the most important byproduct of yeast's "domestication" of humans. In order to pursue the excitement brought by alcohol, the earliest people who achieved a surplus of food offered the excess food to yeast to produce this chemical substance that does not provide calories but only stimulates nerves. Grain starch, fructose, lactose...all sugars can be feed for yeast. From gathering and hunting to farming and animal husbandry, yeast has made people greedy for food other than just filling their stomachs, and has also indirectly promoted the development of social structure and productivity.

The food residues that cannot be utilized by yeast become part of the wonderful taste of the wine. This is a symbol of the distinction between different types of wine and is also the most fundamental cornerstone of wine culture around the world.
In essence, under ancient technological conditions, grapes are indeed the most direct and convenient source of sugar.

This juicy berry is easy to cultivate and has a high yield. In addition to water, the main ingredients are glucose and fructose, two monosaccharides that yeast likes best. At the same time, the protein content of grapes is extremely low. Protein that cannot be decomposed and utilized by yeast, but can attract a large amount of bacteria contamination and even form flocculent floating matter, is the enemy of the wine fermentation process.

More importantly, most grapes have yeast on their skins. This is actually an instinct of plants to seek benefits and avoid harm. The white frost on the surface of grapes is a sugar alcohol secreted by plants, which can attract yeast in the air to gather and form colony advantages, thereby avoiding and eliminating bacteria and preventing fragile berries from being contaminated by bacteria before they mature. Humans took advantage of these characteristics of grapes, crushed them, soaked them in the skins, and brewed fine wine, which soon became a common world drink for all mankind. Jesus said at the Last Supper: "Bread is my flesh, and wine is my blood." Putting aside the mystery of religion, this sentence actually proves the personal dietary preferences of the writer of the Bible and the status of wine in the European world at that time.

At the same time, in China, Zhang Qian, Ban Gu and others were working tirelessly to expand the territory of the Han Empire to the west. They introduced various products from the West, including grapes. More than a hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the story of Meng Tuo bribing the eunuch Zhang Rang with a bucket of wine to buy the title of governor of Liangzhou appeared in the history books of the Han Dynasty. At least 2,000 years ago, the winemaking level of the East and the West was basically at the same starting line.

No.2

The biggest difference between fruit wine and grain wine comes from the fermentation raw materials: starch in grains and fructose and glucose in fruits. The chemical structure of fructose and glucose is simple and can be directly used by yeast; the chemical structure of starch is relatively complex and yeast cannot decompose it. It can only be decomposed into monosaccharides before being processed by yeast. A paradox is that fruit planting is often more troublesome than grains, requiring a lot of manpower for fertilization and pest control, but the solids that can be used for wine fermentation are far less than grains. Therefore, in the history of winemaking, humans have been looking for ways to turn starch in grains into monosaccharides that can be used by yeast.

In fact, during the germination process of the plant, the germ itself will secrete saccharifying enzymes and enrich the air with molds that can decompose starch, eventually breaking down the starch into monosaccharides for the germ to absorb.

The East and the West have come up with the idea of ​​artificially activating grains by spraying water to make wine. But the problem is that the properties of activated grains are extremely unstable and they are prone to attracting a large number of bacteria. The taste of the wine brewed each time is different. It is also very likely to become smelly, rotten, or sour due to mold, and even a bunch of "sweet wine" with a sweet taste but very low alcohol content, or sour grain vinegar, will be obtained.
But the Orientals took a different approach and invented something called "koji".

The original meaning of "qu" is wheat that has grown mold and sprouts. The Chinese discovered that after the sprouted wheat was broken and dried into lumps, the mold and yeast flora would be stably preserved in the form of spores. Through repeated attempts, the lumps with the best brewing taste were selected and added to more broken wheat for reproduction and replication.

This may be the earliest process of human domestication of microorganisms. Finally, a large amount of stable mixed clumps of mold, yeast and wheat were produced and put into grain, allowing the mold to decompose starch while the yeast produced alcohol. This is the world-famous bilateral brewing method. The Chinese say "qu is the skeleton of wine", which describes this process of building a framework for fermentation.

As the koji making technology matured, the status of grain wine in the minds of Chinese people, as well as Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese people in the Han cultural circle, has steadily increased, surpassing fruit wine. The poem "fine grape wine in a luminous cup" has never been born again. Instead, there are countless praises for Chinese white wine, yellow wine, Korean soju, and Japanese sake.

But in the West, koji has never been produced. The so-called "single malt whisky" essentially requires the same malt to be brewed in the same environment of the same manufacturer to ensure the taste of the wine.

This stringent restriction on brewing technology has meant that in the pedigree of Western wines, fruit wines have a much larger market share and a deeper research depth than grain wines. This is a "precious legacy" of the backward brewing technology in history. People have been obsessed with fruit wines, and have even brewed many fine wines using fruits other than grapes.

No.3

Why do grapes stand out among many fruits? In addition to being easy to obtain and convenient, acidity is the primary reason. The so-called acidity here does not refer to whether it tastes sour or not, but refers to the fact that the pH value of grapes is usually only around 3. In ancient times when there was no large-scale refrigeration, freezing, and pasteurization technology, a low pH value was similar to salting and candied food, which used osmotic pressure to inhibit the growth of microorganisms to preserve food and drinks.

This is a simple property inhibition. Generally speaking, a pH difference of 1 means a 10-fold difference in hydrogen ion concentration. This is why breweries need to pay more attention to cleanliness than wineries when managing them, because the pH value of beer is usually above 4, so more microorganisms can survive. In the pH range of 3-3.5, except for a few guys like acetic acid bacteria, the number of microorganisms that can survive is much smaller, which makes the transformation of wine into grape vinegar the biggest risk in the brewing process - that's all. Drinks that cannot be preserved naturally cannot spread drinking culture.
Of course, among the many fruits in the West, wine is not the only one with such a low pH value. The answer is of course not. But why haven't they become mainstream? Some have too low acidity, such as lemons, which are so low that yeast can't survive; some have insufficient sugar content, such as plums, which are not enough to provide enough sugar for yeast; some have too low juice yield, such as peaches, apricots, and plums, which have neither very low nor high pH values, and have enough sugar, but because it is difficult to squeeze juice, the output is very limited. Without a guarantee of quantity, there is no scale effect, let alone a culture.

However, in the process of pursuing excellence in grape winemaking, Westerners have become more and more familiar with the laws of fruit fermentation. At the same time, the achievements of natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology have made great progress. With the invention of pasteurization, the maturity of low-temperature refrigeration technology, and the improvement of juice extraction efficiency, more and more fruits have been included in the family of fruit wine. For example, apple wine.

In fact, cider has a long history in the West, especially in some areas with high latitudes where grapes that like heat and hate cold are not adapted: such as Britain, Denmark, Sweden, etc. There are records of apple winemaking in Britain as early as the Norman Conquest. But at that time, it was extremely troublesome to squeeze apple juice. Often, only a few hundred kilograms of apple juice could be produced from a ton of apples: a large amount of pomace was wasted and discarded, which was an unforgivable waste for civilians. Therefore, although apples in Britain were so popular that they could hit Newton on the head, only the royal family and the clergy in the church could really drink cider. In the records of the Sussex Seminary in Britain in 1367 AD, there was a historical record that 3 tons of cider was sold for 55 shillings. During the reign of Henry II, the brewery in Kent was also famous for the production of flavored cider, which was favored by the nobles.

Compared with wine, cider has a lower sugar content, so it is relatively easier to make dry wine with less residual sugar. In addition, apple pulp contains more aromatic alcohols that provide a beautiful aroma, and contains a large amount of gum arabic, which makes wine connoisseurs indulge in its rich and sweet taste. After the first industrial revolution, juice extraction no longer relied on manpower, and more efficient machines replaced this job. At the same time, mechanization also affected the apple planting industry, and the output increased by leaps and bounds. Today, the annual output of cider in the UK exceeds 500,000 tons, and France, where the climate is more suitable for growing grapes, has also exceeded 300,000 tons.

Blueberry wine is another fruit wine that has taken advantage of the times and technology. In fact, making wine from this kind of berries would have been an impossible mission in ancient times. Because blueberries are native to North America, the conditions for their introduction are harsh and they are not suitable for artificial cultivation. At the same time, their ripening period is very short, and it is difficult for Indians to harvest a large number of blueberries with stable quality in the process of collecting them in the wild. In addition, the high latitude of the production area of ​​wild blueberries is not conducive to the improvement of yeast activity. But in 1906, American Kaufman began the breeding of wild blueberries. After more than 30 years of breeding, in 1937 he first commercially cultivated 15 blueberry varieties he had bred. By the end of the 1980s, the blueberry cultivation area in the United States had reached nearly 200,000 hectares, forming a huge blueberry industry that integrates blueberry cultivation, fruit storage and processing, and market sales.

It is natural to make wine. Compared with grapes, blueberries have similar pH and sugar content, and the fruit surface also has a "white frost" that attracts yeast: sugar alcohol substances. Most importantly, it contains much more pectin than grapes. After careful and sophisticated brewing, the taste of today's best blueberry wine is already better than that of wine.

In addition, Australian perry, Belgian cherry and raspberry wine, New Zealand kiwi wine, and Argentine strawberry wine all emerged in this era. They are closely related to the fruit producing areas and the local people's pursuit of the sublimation of fruit flavor.

But in general, the historical background, cultural endorsement and R&D level of other fruit wines cannot be compared with wine. This is the fundamental reason why Chinese people, who have always pursued the "take-it-as-it-is" approach to Western culture, do not understand Western fruit wines other than wine.

No.4

It was not until the 11th century that the Crusades brought back the distillation technology invented by the Arabs, and sprouted barley and oats really came into use in Western society: distillation avoided various impurities in grain wine and obtained grain wine with stable quality.

For fruit wine, distillation also means a bigger revolution: it breaks through the limitation that yeast will no longer work when the alcohol content exceeds 20%, resulting in more powerful liquors.

France, a country rich in wine, was the first country to try to apply distillation technology to wine. The result of distillation was brandy. Although the taste was pungent and hot, people soon discovered that brandy aged in oak barrels for many years acquired a unique smoky flavor, which was a higher-level taste different from ordinary wine.

In the 16th century, the emerging maritime powers Britain and the Netherlands began to colonize the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Because of the long journey, the fresh water stored on the ship would stink and become undrinkable after a long time. The crew found that the distilled high-proof liquor had good antiseptic properties and could be used as a life-saving diuretic. In order to make the distilled liquor easier to drink, the winemakers added a berry similar to blueberries, "juniper berries", during the production process, and combined it with various spices such as orange peel, cardamom, licorice, coriander, etc. This is today's gin.

In the 17th century, as Europeans entered the Americas for development, the Caribbean region became the world's largest and highest-quality sugarcane planting area. In the process of purifying sugarcane to make sucrose crystals, the colonists found that part of the sugarcane juice could not be crystallized and could only become a syrup with high viscosity and a bit of bitterness. This thing was called molasses at the time. Although it tasted bad, molasses, like starch, could be fermented to make wine. The distilled molasses wine is today's rum.

This wave of fruit wine brought about by the great voyages also had a reverse impact on the East: hundreds of years after learning the Chinese way of making "green plum wine", the Japanese discovered that by soaking plums directly in distilled grain wine, they could create a new type of wine drink that had both the heavy feeling of grain wine and the refreshing taste of fruit. Green plum wine was thus born.

Later, the Chinese soaked the leftover bayberries in "stinky liquor" distilled from sour rice wine, and actually "recycled" them into today's bayberry wine.

These world-renowned wines are, in essence, a further step forward in the development of fruit wine. In the map of the fruit wine world, they are all dazzling stars created by technology and the times.

-END-
Is wine delicious? Not bad, it contains alcohol, residual sugar from grape pulp and various aromatic substances from grapes. Most importantly, it has the cultural value of its natural convenience.

But if we re-examine fruit wine from a dynamic perspective, we will find that science and technology are the sharper weapons to satisfy human desire for exploration and enjoyment. Instead of spending time, energy and money on grapes for a little taste value-added, it is better to look at the world view of fruit wine in various forms around the world.