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Old world
The Old world wine producing countries are concentrated in Europe: France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria. Wine is believed to have been produced first about seven milleniums BC where now lies the Middle East and especially on a large band of land from Egypt, Israel, Mesopotamia (Syriah and Irak now) to the north of the Persian Gulf, in Northern Iran where what is believed to be wine jars dated from the Neolithic period (8500-4000 BC) were found. It then spread to Greece where winemakers initiated the European viticulture and to southern Italy during the Greek colonization process. France and Spain started to import wine jars from Italy and Greece and then vines from the same countries by 600 BC. Viticulture (culture of vine) and winemaking then spread out to the rest of the European continent. The Old World countries have been producing quality wine for centuries under restricting rules (amongst them: area of production, permitted grape varieties, type of grape growing, yield, type of winemaking) That said some winemakers in France, Spain and Italy have dropped the idea of making wines under those rules in the last 40 years and managed to make some of the best wines in the world outside of them, proving that sometimes some rules can be broken for the better. Despite some winemaking changes across the world, the Old world (including the “out-of-law” winemakers) is still very much attached to the idea that a wine must reflect the origins (soil, climate) of where and how the fruits were grown.
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