Erzeugerabfüllung

Wines produced and bottled by a grower or a cooperative. You won’t see erzeugerabfüllung on the labels of well-known estates.

The country with the highest per capita wine consumption in the world is Italy.

Answer: False.

However, nestled within Italy’s capital city of Rome is the true answer: the Vatican City State. Each of the approximately 800 people who live inside the Vatican City consume about 16 gallons of wine a year. The country’s wine usage is partly the result of the Catholic celebration in which bread and wine are consecrated during the Mass. By comparison, U.S. per capita wine consumption is about 3 gallons.

“Every season is likeable . . . red wine and white; company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.”

—Virginia Woolf, “Montaigne” in The Common Reader.

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