Chinese Wine Pitcher: "Jue"

This wine vessel is a reproduction of a vessel produced during the Western Shou Dynasty. Such bronze vessels were a symbol of social status.

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes the sugars in the grapes and converts them into alcohol. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different types of wine. The Chinese initially produced grape wine using wild mountain grapes. In the 2nd century BC, the Han Dynasty came into contact with Hellenistic kingdoms and acquired high quality grapes to produce putao jiu. Rice wine remained the most common wine in China and grape wine was mostly drunk by the royalty.

The history of wine spans thousands of years and is closely intertwined with the history of agriculture, cuisine, civilization and humanity itself. Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest known wine production occurred in Georgia around 8,000 BC, with other notable sites in Iran and Armenia dated 7,000 BC and 6000 BC, respectively.
Source:
http://arts.cultural-china.com/en/30A388A1095.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wine#Ancient_China