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Comment by simonblack | Hacker News Reader

Because if it was made from fermented malt and hops we would call it beer?

Wine is made from fermented grapes by definition.

Same as mead is made from fermented honey, kumiss is made from fermented mares' milk, kvass is made from fermented bread, and cider is made from fermented apples.

Wine made with other produce does exist: You can buy cherry wine and blueberry wine. But the market for them is tiny. They’re seen as a novelty and not taken seriously within the industry. - Being classed as 'novelties', we don't (yet) have standard definitions for those alcoholic drinks made from blueberries, etc. So we tack the word 'wine' on as a temporary fix.

I propose that henceforth cherry wine be defined as "Blush", and blueberry wine be defined as "Blurg".

"Have a glass of blush". "No I prefer to drink blurg".

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"Wine" has been used for alcoholic beverages made from fruits other than grapes (or sometimes flowers, but never apples) since at least 1398 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Sometimes it's just used as a catch-all for unknown brewed drinks.

"Wine" today means grape wine. People ferment other things and call it dandelion wine or mango wine but not just wine (unless they're trying to be obscure and edgy).

OP (and other commenters) is being overly pedantic though, because the article wasn't talking about the name, but why grapes are fermented to make alcoholic drinks more than other fruit. The answer from the article being high sugar, good taste, good availability.

Mead is also called honey wine in German at least, so not exclusively fruit (at least if it's used with a qualifier). That's only in normal speech, though, as the trade name 'wine' is exclusively for grape wine.

Yes, and 110 proof Moutai baijiu is called "wine" in China, if you ask for a translation. I think there are better translations like, "white lightning".

Cider is also sometimes called apple wine.

You can make wine from basically any fruit or plant which have high enough sugar content.

Cider in Japan is often just some kind of soda.

Unless it’s a restaurant run by Aussies, then you unknowingly get drunk, and risk a DUI because you live in the middle of bumfuck no where and driving home is the only option.

> "Wine" has been used for alcoholic beverages made from fruits other than grapes

And "tea" has been used for infusions of plants other than the tea plant. Doesn't mean it isn't confusing.

Yep and in those cases, a qualifier is added, such as blueberry wine. If someone refers to something simply as "wine", I think most of us will expect grape.

It is a classics to inisist on a simplistic definition which ignores all the history and cultural context of a term, and then no-true-scotsman any objection.

Merriam-Webster says:

    Definition of wine

    1a : the alcoholic fermented juice of fresh grapes used as a beverage
     b : wine or a substitute used in Christian communion services
    2 : the alcoholic usually fermented juice of a plant product (such as a fruit) used as a beverage 
      // blackberry wine

> a simplistic definition which ignores all the history and cultural context of a term

I feel the need to point out if you were to not ignore history, then the word "wine" itself having been derived from the very Indo-European word used for grapevine thousands of years ago makes the connection between "wine" and "grapevine" way stronger than any similar connection one could find for beer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy

The meaning of words change over time as culture change and evolve. The meaning of a word is how it is used, and "wine" have been used for ages to refer to cherry wine, dandelion wine, apple wine, etc.

I haven't even heard beer called wine though.

I'm not committing that fallacy as defined because I'm not making "a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on that word's etymology".

> and "wine" have been used for ages to refer to cherry wine, dandelion wine, apple wine, etc.

The possible problem with that argument is that compounds are often not the same thing as the intersection of their components. One famous example from my native language is that "pietní akt" refers to a memorial act for the dead (for example, fallen soldiers), whereas merely "akt" refers to a nude painting or sculpture (as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_(art)). "Pietní akt" is not a subtype of "akt"; it's an idiom/colocation with its own peculiar meaning.

You have to make the argument to the good people of Merriam-Webster then. I'm just the messenger here.

This is a well-known (to those who know it well) book, but I think there is such a wine in reality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelion_Wine

Also, the site http://www.armywormwine.com/ seems to be down, but here is a discussion:

http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/army_worm_wine

(This seems to be wine made from "army worms", not "worm wine" from the army)

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lychee_wine

Don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruno

Cherry wine has been produced in Scandinavia for a long time. It is far from a novelty.

Every organization producing dictionaries includes other fruits as part of the definition for wine. Wine was originally made from all types of fruits, and grapes became the most ubiquitous because of preference for taste. That doesn't make other fruit wines not wine, it just means we most commonly associate the category of fermented fruit drinks with grapes, as that is what has been most commonly available for a very long time.

https://www.thoughtco.com/wine-origins-archaeology-and-histo...

During covid I walked through half of a sommelier prep book, so I reopened it just now and page 1 already covers “Wine - a fermented beverage from the juice of any fruit, usually grapes.”

This is the book if anyone is interested, I found it very accessible.

https://books.google.com/books?id=w_pSDwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

We have muscadine wine in the Southern US.[1] Its made with a native grape like fruit. I do not suggest trying it unless you like extremely sweet wine.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_rotundifolia

Barley wine is a thing. I think the ABV (and yeast used and process of the ingredients) is more an indicator IMO of it being a wine vs something else.

Don't forget Dandelion Wine.

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