English Wine Making and it

 Wine Making and It’s Journey Through Time

“Back of the wine is the vintner, and back through the years his skill, and back of it all are the

vines in the sun and the rain....and the Master’s will”(Palmer 12). Wine weaves in with human

history from it’s very beginnings, as few, if any other products do; wine alone is charged with

sacramental meaning, and with healing powers; indeed with a life of it’s own. However, there

would be no wine were it not for the “...farmer and artist, drudge and dreamer, hedonist and

scientist, alchemist and accountant – the wine maker, who is all these things, and has been since

before the Middle Ages” (Johnson 7). The primary concerns of the Renaissance winemaker were

the understanding and appreciation of that which his product came: grapes; the method of

blending art and science to produce two infallible processes: the vine growing process and the

wine making process; and the awareness of the history of his trade, “For one cannot know where

he is going if he does not know where he has been”.

The Wine-Grape Vine is a member of a family of climbing woody plants with relations all over