Wine is a funny sort of cider made with pretty low-testosterone berry-type-jobs that you can press without even using a club.

The berries try to come across like they’re terribly macho by fermenting to quite a high level of alcohol, but this charade is fooling no one.

Wine was invented almost entirely to troll beer writers, in which respect it has been one of the world’s most unmitigated successes.

No one has ever got drunk on wine, they have only got sophisticated. One night a group of wine lovers got apocalyptically sophisticated and woke up to discover they’d mistakenly come up with France.

Red wine was devised for banter by a consortium of dentists.

There is a secret competition amongst wineglass makers to create stemware that can be filled to the widest point of the bowl but will also shatter into smithereens if someone gently breathes in its general direction from the other side of a mid-sized room. This competition has been going on for decades, but a winner is currently expected within the year.

When you start a job in the wine trade, openly liking the same wines as the general consumer becomes a sackable offence. Being caught liking Pinot Grigio gets you ritually assaulted with a magnum of Assyrtiko.

Australia only make wine ironically so they can laugh at Euro-snobs. They’re fuming that no one has got that yet.

Preferred vessels for fermenting wine include stainless steel, oak barrels, and hollowed-out gentlemen from Henley-on-Thames or the like.

If you happen to be drinking any European Riesling at any point you must instantly do a tweet saying ‘wow – check out the minerality on this’. If you are drinking an Antipodean Riesling you must tweet ‘wow – imagine the minerality if this was from the Rheingau.’

The natural wine movement began life as a conscious rebellion against the growing trend for things tasting nice.

The movement has since seen a series of schisms following worrying instances of people wilfully making nice-tasting natural wines.

The concept of terroir came about because everyone on wine social media was just getting on miles too well.

Wine is what you’re actually meant to drink in pubs and it hacks publicans right off that people keep ordering Guinness when they’ve got an Austrian Zweigelt they’re dying to tell you about.

Dionysius was actually the God of Rauchbier until the Sunday Times Wine Club bought the rights to him in the late seventies.

If you can get your entire thumb into the punt of a wine bottle, it is for sure a really really good one.

In Bordeaux they always explain Cabernet Sauvignon as ‘the Dabinett of the Gironde’.

The final round of the Master of Wine Exams involves strawpedoing a Nebuchadnezzar of Manzanilla, which is why only about 10% of candidates have passed to date. (The questions beforehand are just like ‘what colour is rosé?’)

Italy never wanted any part of this wine business to begin with.

Unlike cider, wine isn’t fermented by yeasts, but by energy generated from the egos of male sommeliers. This seemingly limitless renewable source is privately considered by the world’s governments to be the last hope for a sustainable future.

Obviously you don’t actually need to decant it. Big Glassware has done you a treat, hasn’t it mate?

There are actually only three different sorts of wine, it’s just that the power of suggestion is mighty. Previously there were only two, but then red food colouring got invented. 

If you add other fruits to a wine it becomes a ‘Made Cider’.

Every wine tasting note ever written has been absolutely bang on.

Actually orange wine is totally meant to be made from oranges, it’s just that some Georgians got the wrong end of the stick 6,000 years ago and now everyone’s fucking about with skin contact and amphorae.

The quality of any given English Sparkling Wine empirically improves by a factor of 2.7 with every French word you add to its label.

Wine was never intended to go with food and to this day vignerons worldwide are waiting impatiently for this stupid fad to end.

You’re not meant to sexualise drinks but actually the scientists at Cern have done the numbers and wine is objectively fourth sexiest. It’s kept off the podium by Green Chartreuse, Sparkled Dark Mild and that water you can get with the kind of bits in it.

Every bottle of Grande Cru Burgundy contains a tiny person with a snorkel waiting to jump out and dying with laughter.

Napoleon described Champagne as the perry of the French.

The greatest Argentinian Malbecs are grown at dizzyingly high altitude in the steepest reaches of the Andes Mountains and have been ever since the Mendozans realised no idiot was actually going to go and check.

Literally everyone hates stemmed wine glasses, but is too afraid to say. For Burgundians, Chardonnay is all about pints.

If you drink Sauternes or anything with the ^ accent and you’re wearing the wrong colour trousers you get a real bad rash.

Wine has a remarkable, magical ability to perfectly reflect the place in which its grapes are grown. Which is why there are stringent international laws against the planting of vines within the city limits of Greater London.

Everyone agrees 15% ABV is miles too strong for wine unless you add another 5% to it and call it ‘fortified’ in which case it is a banger.

No one in Jerez has any clue how on earth Fino happened but it’s out there now so they’re styling it out and hoping no one asks.

The film Sideways was meant to be about two guys on a stag week to Buckfast Abbey but Paul Giamatti was a baby about it, so they changed the script.

Pét nat wine is just cask beer made from grapes in an all fancy bottle with hoity airs.

Publishers worldwide have collectively agreed that the target number for ‘intro to wine’ books is 17,000. They’re close.

Lambrini only put ‘Perry’ on the back label for jokes. It’s actually relabelled Meursault zhuzhed up a bit.

The wine writers all actually really fancy the wine influencers, they’re just playing hard to get, those big silly kids.

Out of hand wine prices began because of a lad in Gevrey-Chambertin who didn’t have a scooby where decimel points are meant to go, but didn’t want to admit it.

All wine grapes are part of a hivemind, sharing a single, handed-down collective memory and my Christ they wish that wasn’t the case because it’s no great shakes being a wine grape they can tell you.

I have an actual wine diploma ok, so don’t even think about coming at me on any of this stuff.

If you would like to read The Official Cider Review Guide To Beer and become even more omnibibulously knowledgeable, you can do so here.