Random Events that Wine Changed World and Altered History (17 items)

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  (#10) The Ottoman Empire Began to Crumble Thanks to a Love of Wine

  Süleyman the Magnificent pushed the Ottman Empire to be massive, up to the point where they even had Somalia under their rule. However, his predecessor Selim II preferred getting drunk to expanding his empire, and his favorite drink was wine. In fact, the only time when he tried to really take over anything was when he sought out Cyprus, the maker of his favorite wines. However, Cyprus was having none of that and fought back, killing 90% of his navy and 30,000 sailors. While he was doing all this, the rest of the empire began to call into disrepair, and thus was the beginning of the fall. 
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  (#17) American Wine Agriculture Boomed Because of a Contest in Paris

  The international wine community didn't take the US very seriously until The Judgment of Paris in 1976. In this competition, some tiny unknown vintners from Napa, California, put their wines in a blind taste test alongside powerhouse French wineries. Everyone laughed at the Californians, until they won, in both the red and white categories! After that, not only Napa wines (now a household name) but American wines generally took the spotlight, creating the thriving and lucrative industry we have today. So, if you ever have a Napa Cab you like, you can thank the French for that. (By the way, they're still mad.)
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  (#6) Cleopatra Used Wine to Win a Bet (But She Probably Cheated)

  Wine was always one of this fabled beauty's ploys for greatness. She used drinking to get to know Julius Caesar, and she allegedly had wild drunken parties with her guests. But her most notable use of alcohol was to win over Marc Antony and form one of the most famous romances in history.

  The story goes like this: Cleopatra made a bet with Antony over whether she could spend a small fortune in a single meal. She was determined to impress him and so at dinner time, she brought forth one of the largest pearls then known. She dropped it into a glass of wine, then drank the concoction down. He was, needless to say, impressed. The catch is that she might have made the cocktail using red wine vinegar, in order to dissolve the pearl, instead of plain wine.
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  (#13) Wine Helped Beethoven Create His Music - and Then Promptly Killed Him

  This famous deaf musician lived a fairly short but very productive life. In his time, he wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, one opera, five piano concertos, and many chamber works. And he did it all while tipping back a glass or two of wine. That's right, this drink that has been shown to make you more creative helped inspire Beethoven to create some of the most beautiful and memorable music known today. However, it's also what killed him. At age 56, he died with a slew of health problems plaguing him. Autopsies did show that one of these contributing factors was severe liver cirrhosis, brought on most likely by the sheer volume of wine he was drinking near the end of his life. 
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  (#4) Wine Encouraged Cross-Continental Trading

  By around 900 BC, the Romans really had this whole wine thing down to a science. They were growing grapes, making different varieties of wine, and storing it in amphora. The obvious next step was to start trading it. Some of the very first cross-continent trading was with wine, and that trade developed and grew until it became the booming industry we see today. From there blossomed political alliances, the trading of information and techniques, and of course, even more varieties of wine.
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  (#12) Everyone Drank Wine as They Signed the Constitution

  Most Americans know that the Constitution was signed in 1787, but most don't know that the place was overflowing with wine. You see, most of our founding fathers were huge wine lovers, to the point where, during the convention, Franklin had people follow him around to make sure he didn't go into any taverns and get drunk! But when the time came to sign, it went from a mellow affair to a real party. And the wine served? Not surprisingly, Franklin's favorite, Madeira. There's actually still a wine festival every year to celebrate the role wine played in this famous signing. 

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