To boost your wine knowledge this May in celebration of National Wine Month here are 15 ‘Did you know?’ facts about wine to impress your friends –

· Wine is mentioned 521 times in the Bible.

* Noah was the first documented planter of vineyards.

* There are over 10,000 different grape varieties.

· Wine grapes are the most widely planted crop in the world.

* The average age of a French oak tree cut down to make a wine barrel is 170 years.

* Early Roman women were forbidden to drink wine, and a husband who found his wife drinking was at liberty to divorce, or even kill her.

* If you pay under £4 for a bottle of wine in a UK shop, nearly two-thirds of this is tax (excise duty and VAT).

* The worst place to store wine is the kitchen because the temperature is too warm and variable.

* Don’t store wine in a refrigerator – even at its warmest setting it will be too cold!

· A wine is “corked” if the bottle has a contaminated cork, which makes the wine smell musty, similar to wet cardboard.

* On average, one bottle of wine contains about 2.8 pounds of grapes.

· It takes the grapes from an entire grapevine to produce a single glass of Chateau d’Yquem – arguably the best sweet wine in the world.

* Plato argued that when a man reached 40, he could drink as much wine as he wanted to cure the “crabbedness of old age”

* The earliest known wine production occurred in Georgia around 8,000 BC

* The most expensive drinkable wine ever sold is reputed to be a Romanee-Conti 1978 which sold for $24,000

Visit www.maketimeforwine.org to find out more.