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
Palomino (grape) In France, it is referred to as Listán, and in South Africa as Fransdruif or White French. It is also found in Australia and California where it is also used mainly to produce fortified wines. The grape was once thought to be the Golden Chasselas, a grape grown in California. The wine-must has tendency to oxidise quickly, a characteristic that can be ignored when used for sherry production. In December 2006 Spanish researchers, using DNA techniques, discovered that the Mission grape of California and Latin America, cultivated by the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries throughout the New World, is in fact