White wine has been enjoyed for more than 3,000 years Pixabay The Ancient Story of Wine Both France and Italy are renowned for their wine production; some of the finest wines come from the Bordeaux, Burgundy, Piedmont, Sicily, and Emilia-Romagna regions. But these are not where the earth first brought forth wine grapes. Archeological evidence points to an area between the Caucasus and Zagros Mountains in Europe, an area that spans the countries we know today as Azerbaijan, Georgia, northern Iran, and Turkey. Some food historians have quibbled over which came first, wine or beer? When you consider the process, wine must have been the first. Wine production (I’m not specifying good wine) requires no human intervention. (Even apes in the wild seek out past-their-prime fruits.) Grape juice encounters wild yeast and fermentation happens. Beer production is much more complicated. However, the deliberate domestication of wine-producing vines would not have been possible within a nomadic society. The care and production of wine-making grapes and the vinification process require an organized society.