rape seeds have been found in prehistoric caves. But the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians were probably the first to produce wine by fermenting grapes.

Winemaking was an established art in Egypt by 3000 BC. Kings grew two sets of vines, for funereal and domestic wines. Chinese legends from that period also speak of wine drinking.

The Greeks credited the god Dionysus with the gift of wine. But it was the Egyptians who spread the art of winemaking throughout the Mediterranean, particularly to southern Italy.

Ancient cultures recognised wine's virtues as a medicine and an antiseptic. A medical prescription based on wine has been found on an Egyptian papyrus. From Homer's time until recently, wine was used to disinfect wounds. Hippocrate prescribed it as a diuretic and to calm a fever.

   and took it to the countries they conquered. Like the Greeks, they produced red, white and amber wines.Some were heated in smokehouses to make them sweet and syrupy; this also imparted a smoky flavour.

Greeks who settled in Marseille around 600 BC taught the Gauls to make wine. Under the Romans, Bordeaux, the Rhone valley and the Iberian peninsula also became well-established wine-producing regions.

In 92 AD the Emperor Domitian, threatened by competition, ordered half the Gallic vines pulled up. When restrictions were lifted in 280 BC, regions such as Burgundy and Alsace started to produce wine.

During the Middle Ages, each monastery produced its own wine for the sacrament and for subsistence. Wine was served at banquets, mixed with spices and honey to temper its youthful harshness, but also blended with herbs, spices (including chile pepper) and animal secretions to create medicines. Some of the most famous French wines, especially in Burgundy, are still produced around former monasteries.

grew with its export to England, Scotland, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

Wine was stored in barrels of all sizes until the 18th century, when the wine bottle took its present form.

After the French Revolution, vineyards that had belonged to the nobility and religious communities were parcelled out to small landowners.

Vines were planted in South Africa, Australia and America during the 19th century. In 1867, the plant disease phylloxera nearly destroyed European vineyards. These were gradually built up again by grafting vines on to disease-resistant rootstock from America.

Until the 20th century, hospitals and private doctors relied on wine to treat all sorts of ailments. White wines were prescribed as diuretics, red Burgundies for dyspepsia, red Bordeaux for stomach disorders, and Champagne for nausea and catarrh. Today wine is still a component in many medications.

, scientific studies have measured the health properties of wine. A 1940 study showed that wine contains the vitamins A, B and C, as well as 13 minerals essential to human life. In 1970, a professor at the University of Bordeaux hypothesised that wine could protect the cardiovascular system. His theory was confirmed in a 1982 study on rabbits. Shortly afterwards a worldwide study by the World Health Organisation showed that France had the lowest death rate from heart disease in the industrialised western world, despite the French habits of smoking, eating fatty foods and shunning exercise. Only the Japanese, with their low-fat diet of fish and rice, had a lower rate.

The first American journalist to speak of the French Paradox was Edward Dolnick, in a 1990 article for the magazine Health. In this article, French doctor Jacques Richard credited wine with protecting the French from heart disease. A year later, 20 million Americans watched a 60 Minutes broadcast on the same subject.

Findings on wine's health benefits have led to a renewed appetite around the world for this ancient drink. From 1949 to 1998, the number of wine-producing countries has jumped from 40 to 74 and production has risen by 85 percent. Today more people than ever drink wine for health and for pleasure.

Trace the Paradox through the centuries with the history of olive oil...