Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidence?

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by vtardif »

As far as beer vs cider, I think part of the trouble is that you can't grow good apples from seed. Grafting is a recent invention, relative to domestic barley.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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Cider is shit. But most beer is shit as well. I presume in the past, when beer was less of a booze, and more of a nutrient, there was more of a reason to make/drink it.

But cider?

Really?

Get your shit together and make wine already.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Vijay »

I almost won't touch any alcohol that isn't either cider or a very sweet and fruity wine.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Soap »

Same here. I love wine mixed with icecream, wine mixed with soda, and just wine by itself, but every other form of alcohol I've tried I've either hated (tequila, most beer) or just tolerated enough to drink it down (some craft beers are good). Also, I dont even care for champagne, which surprised me because I figured it would be basically "wine, but even better". Though I've only had champagne a few times so maybe I'm just getting the wrong kinds.

Anyway ,to answer the question at the beginning of the thread, the only real idiosyncracy in my conworld is that in some heavily populated areas of the planet, arctic/subpolar climates are in close proximity to tropical climates, with arable temperate climates existing only much further away. This means that the people of the cold climates are more familiar with pineapples and coconuts than with apples and grapes. This in turn means that since the people of the cold climates cannot produce their own alcohol (this is a world at medieval tech level), they import it from the tropics ,which means they would probably be looking at things like palm wine, pineapple "wine", etc and perhaps even rum.

The people of the temperate climates do indeed have a well-developed wine industry, but as above, they are isolated by geographic barriers from both the tropics and the arctic and therefore their wine is mostly consumed domestically.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by alynnidalar »

I'm curious why the people living in cold climates aren't able to produce alcohol.
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by sam »

Soap wrote:Anyway ,to answer the question at the beginning of the thread, the only real idiosyncracy in my conworld is that in some heavily populated areas of the planet, arctic/subpolar climates are in close proximity to tropical climates, with arable temperate climates existing only much further away. This means that the people of the cold climates are more familiar with pineapples and coconuts than with apples and grapes. This in turn means that since the people of the cold climates cannot produce their own alcohol (this is a world at medieval tech level), they import it from the tropics ,which means they would probably be looking at things like palm wine, pineapple "wine", etc and perhaps even rum.

The people of the temperate climates do indeed have a well-developed wine industry, but as above, they are isolated by geographic barriers from both the tropics and the arctic and therefore their wine is mostly consumed domestically.
The norse made mead. And beer is made from cereal grains. Just how cold are these places?

Also, I believe straight palm wine turns to vinegar after a couple of days. They would probably have to ferment it with other herbs or something to make it hardier.

That said, the fact that wine didn't survive the long sea trip from southern Spain and Portugal to the UK led to a rich tradition of fortified wines. If they're making rum, then they can make fortified pineapple and palm wine (yum).

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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My people are humans, but they depend on animals to a greater extent than any human society on Earth, and consider themselves to be just one of many species of higher animals on their planet. Humans are prey species for many of the other higher animals, and therefore, for their own survival humans have been forced to settle in climates that would be avoided by most humans on Earth, and often humans have reached their highest population densities in the seemingly most inhospitable climates for human growth.
sam wrote:The norse made mead. And beer is made from cereal grains. Just how cold are these places?
The climate and natural environment of Pʷīpʷyama (also called Xema) is similar to Greenland on Earth, meaning that even in summer the weather is cold and windy, and agriculture of the sort that could feed humans directly is impossible. There may be a simple food chain consisting of rabbits feeding on grass, and humans sharing rabbit kills with native white wolves, but humans (and likely also wolves) will derive the vast majority of their nutrition from the sea, which is teeming with life and never far off.

The same people who live in Xema (hereafter "Xemans") also have territory in a much warmer area called Sàfiz, which is across the sea from Xema and therefore is not only spared the worst of the winter cold but also experiences warm weather in the summer without losing the heat to the cooling influence of the sea to their north. Here, agriculture could be possible, but the people even here prefer to practice a hunting/fishing lifestyle, with minor contribution from local fruits and berries. These people simply have never developed agriculture because it has never been advantageous for any subset among them to switch from hunting to farming. Going even further south, the climate is too dry for basic agriculture, and the lack of access to the ocean has kept the Xemans from settling there.
sam wrote:Also, I believe straight palm wine turns to vinegar after a couple of days. They would probably have to ferment it with other herbs or something to make it hardier.
Thanks. That's probably what I'll go with. The Xemans also import the fruits themselves, and for at least pineapples the alcohol production could be done on site in Xema, but I think the process would be too difficult to make this worthwhile, and the first option is probably the better way to go.
sam wrote:That said, the fact that wine didn't survive the long sea trip from southern Spain and Portugal to the UK led to a rich tradition of fortified wines. If they're making rum, then they can make fortified pineapple and palm wine (yum).
That surprises me. Im guessing the modern phenomenon of wine keeping for 100+ years is solely due to our modern ability to keep it in airtight containers?
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Vijay »

alynnidalar wrote:I'm curious why the people living in cold climates aren't able to produce alcohol.
Wait, who said they weren't?

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Pole, the »

Vijay wrote:
alynnidalar wrote:I'm curious why the people living in cold climates aren't able to produce alcohol.
Wait, who said they weren't?
Judging by the Finns I've met, they are very able not only of producing, but also consuming, great amounts of alcohol.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by sam »

Soap wrote:
sam wrote:That said, the fact that wine didn't survive the long sea trip from southern Spain and Portugal to the UK led to a rich tradition of fortified wines. If they're making rum, then they can make fortified pineapple and palm wine (yum).
That surprises me. Im guessing the modern phenomenon of wine keeping for 100+ years is solely due to our modern ability to keep it in airtight containers?
Close. It's actually the added sulfites that help modern wines survive long voyages. Wines that predate that practice could last many years, but in local cellars. They weren't transported long distances.

Also, your world is very interesting. It makes me want to know what kinds of architecture etc they have if they never practiced agriculture the way humans have. Also, can they speak with other higher life forms?

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by alynnidalar »

Vijay wrote:
alynnidalar wrote:I'm curious why the people living in cold climates aren't able to produce alcohol.
Wait, who said they weren't?
Soap did, about a conworld:
Soap wrote:since the people of the cold climates cannot produce their own alcohol (this is a world at medieval tech level)
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Zaarin »

sam wrote:
Soap wrote:
sam wrote:That said, the fact that wine didn't survive the long sea trip from southern Spain and Portugal to the UK led to a rich tradition of fortified wines. If they're making rum, then they can make fortified pineapple and palm wine (yum).
That surprises me. Im guessing the modern phenomenon of wine keeping for 100+ years is solely due to our modern ability to keep it in airtight containers?
Close. It's actually the added sulfites that help modern wines survive long voyages. Wines that predate that practice could last many years, but in local cellars. They weren't transported long distances.

Also, your world is very interesting. It makes me want to know what kinds of architecture etc they have if they never practiced agriculture the way humans have. Also, can they speak with other higher life forms?
Don't grapes naturally contain sulfites? That's partially why they make me sick when I (used to) eat them.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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Pole, the wrote:Cider is shit. But most beer is shit as well. I presume in the past, when beer was less of a booze, and more of a nutrient, there was more of a reason to make/drink it.

But cider?

Really?

Get your shit together and make wine already.
You might not like cider, but other people do, including me, my friends and family. I think that, while it can have a sweet taste like wine, it's distinctive, generally a bit heavier. And I'm no fan of beer personally. Do you also prefer grapes to apples?

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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Soap wrote:Even horses have been found to be attracted to fermented apples that have fallen off of a tree, but I dont know how recently it is that people made the connection between the object and the pleasure it brings.
Yep, pigs too: http://www.pigprogress.net/Home/General ... PP007584W/

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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jmcd wrote:Do you also prefer grapes to apples?
I do, but I also prefer cider to probably most American wines, which taste pretty much nothing like grapes and more like wood.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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jmcd wrote:You might not like cider, but other people do, including me, my friends and family. I think that, while it can have a sweet taste like wine, it's distinctive, generally a bit heavier. And I'm no fan of beer personally. Do you also prefer grapes to apples?
What about turning cider to apple wine?
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

Post by Vijay »

Pole, the wrote:
jmcd wrote:You might not like cider, but other people do, including me, my friends and family. I think that, while it can have a sweet taste like wine, it's distinctive, generally a bit heavier. And I'm no fan of beer personally. Do you also prefer grapes to apples?
What about turning cider to apple wine?
I think I'd be fine with that, but unfortunately for you at least, I'm not sure Americans do that very often.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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sam wrote:
din wrote:
Zaarin wrote:I personally hate alcohol of any kind, but I suspect the modern fashionability of wine over other alcohols like mead comes from the complexity of its flavors. As a drinker of black coffee, that's something I can appreciate.
The taste of mead depends on the type of honey (which depends on the flowers the bees pollinated), and therefore can vary considerably. Also, not all mead is sweet (in fact, it isn't unless you re-add honey). I don't think mead is any less 'interesting' than wine. The production process is almost the same, anyway. The only difference is that wine is infinitely more popular, which has resulted in more varieties being widely available.
Do you think this has to do with viniculture1 being more easily controllable? It's easier to choose which species of grape you're going to plant than choose which flowers your bees will forage from.

Or is it just that grapes can be produced in greater quantities than honey? (Corollary, beer is more popular than cider because barley was being produced in higher quantities than apples?)

1. Or is it viticulture? Grape-growing, not wine-making.
I don't think it's the former. You can get different types of honey, based on the flowers the bees had access to, which results in pretty distinctly different tastes. Unfortunately you'll have to go to a beekeeper or a specialty store in order to find this, because most large-scale commercial honey tastes pretty similar. Similarly, a pretty wide variety of mead can be made by using one type of honey, or mixing different types.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, see if you can find a meadery near you. They're not as rare as they used to be anymore.

As for your second theory: I wouldn't know, but it definitely seems like the more likely reason for wine's greater popularity. Vineyards are probably easier to scale up than honey production.
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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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Pole, the wrote:
jmcd wrote:You might not like cider, but other people do, including me, my friends and family. I think that, while it can have a sweet taste like wine, it's distinctive, generally a bit heavier. And I'm no fan of beer personally. Do you also prefer grapes to apples?
What about turning cider to apple wine?
I'd never heard of apple wine, even less tasted it.

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Re: Is the worldwide popularity of (grape) wine a coincidenc

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sam wrote:
Also, your world is very interesting. It makes me want to know what kinds of architecture etc they have if they never practiced agriculture the way humans have.
Thank you. To be honest, though, architecture is pretty much a blind spot for me, since I have relatively little knowledge in that area and prefer to focus on other things. Are you saying that hunter/gatherer societies tend to spend so much time obtaining food that they dont have time to build elaborate dwellings? Or that they're often nomadic and therefore don't have stable houses at all? I've always pictured the majority of people in my world living in stone houses, including the ones who live in snowbound areas. That may be unrealistic, but I think what's even more unrealistic is my claim that none of these hunter/gatherer societies ever experience food shortages, despite living with primitive technology and having to share their kills with other animals.

I do have a partial explanation for the plentiful food supply, in that humans on planet Teppala are actually rather small creatures, averaging between 18 and 24 inches tall, and weighing about 6-12 kg.* Thus, a given area of land can feed a much larger number of humans on Teppala than on Earth. Most other animals are also smaller, such as wolves, which are about the same size as humans on Teppala.

However, some animals are not smaller, which means both that humans are actively preyed upon by wild animals, and that humans have a very difficult time hunting animals such as rabbits that on Earth would be little threat to them. The most pernicious predator of all is actually a relative of the seagull, which is slightly smaller than an average human but large and strong enough to be able to take down even an armed human adult male with relative ease. They are ambush predators whose first attack is usually to bite off the human's right hand, disabling them and weakening their further resistance.

However, most animals that could kill humans do not tend to do so, since there are other sources of food available. Humans get along with wild animals quite well in general. My avatar could be a photo of an average scene on planet Teppala.

Fish are not generally a threat to humans on Teppala, even though the humans' technology has never progressed beyond spear fishing, and therefore the human cannot fish from the shore. Even so, in areas where fishing is reliable, the human population density can be quite high.

sam wrote: Also, can they speak with other higher life forms?
Definitely yes. At one point, I was actually planning to have language evolve among a species of fish, called the kanuki, and from there be passed down to all land animals that evolved from that fish, with humans just being one of many thousands of species that used spoken language. However, I think this is unrealistic even within the framework of my conworld, since it would make humans so unremarkable that there would be no reason why humans should even succeed, let alone thrive. Another problem is that I had used this setup to explain a cultural prohibition against humans eating meat, saying that it is cruel to eat an animal that can speak and understand human language. But that would mean that predatory animals such as wolves do violate this taboo, since I had never planned to make wolves and other animals survive on a diet of fish. So if there is any "standard animal" language, it will be a very basic one that humans would not consider to be a true language.

Much more interesting to me is that the relationships between humans and each species of animal are highly asymmetrical. For example, there are some species that divide into nations and fight wars against their own species, just like humans, and often these wars cross species lines. For example, dolphins claiming allegiance to the human empire of Dreamland fought against dolphins claiming allegiance to the human empire of Moonshine, and did not expect humans to help them in this war. By contrast, no human has ever been successful in getting a troop of penguins to wage war against any other penguins, even penguins of a different species. The same is true of the crablike inhabitants of Rasula, who communicate with humans by waving their claws in a form of sign language. Lastly, there are species such as hedgehogs whose habitat is entirely confined to within a single human nation (or empire) and, while most of these species are not major players in human wars, when they do get involved they always fight reliably on the same side as the humans they live with rather than attempting to destroy the humans' nations from within.

*(Using inches for height but kg for weight is weird, I know, but it helps with easy math. 18 * 18 * 18 = 5832, which is where I get my figure of 6 kg from.)
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