Grape evidence for a dominant position of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago in Georgia. The oldest known winery was found in Armenia, dating to around 4000 BC. By the 9th century AD the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record the cultivation of purple grapes, and history attests to the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans growing purple grapes
Muscat (grape) plantings are used for table grapes and raisins, rather than for wine production. Likewise, in Chile, most of the Moscatel in that country is used to produce the distilled drink "pisco". In South Africa, Muscat of Alexandria is known as ""Hanepoot"" and was the fourth-most widely planted white wine grape variety in the country until the early 2000s. While some of the plantings were used for wine production, particularly for fortified wine, many plantings were used for the production of grape concentrate and raisins. In California, there is still more plantings of Muscat of Alexandria than any other Muscat variety,