Wine is weird. After grapes are plucked from vines, cleaned and crushed (or not), they're ready for fermentation. Eukaryotic microorganisms go in, consume sugar, and burp out carbon dioxide and alcohol.

Animals and birds have been enjoying the side effects of overripe fruit for millennia, but it took the human mammals' cognitive capacity – not to mention flair for drama – to seek out a more civilized route from vine to happy place. While the precise evolution of wine production is lost to the mists of time, scientists have found evidence of 9000-year-old fermented rice and honey wine on shards of pottery in Jiahu, central China. (Per Patrick McGovern, the Indiana Jones of vino, most of its sugars likely came from hawthorn fruit and wild grapes).