Wine regions in France, and three Korean grain drinks

Wine, the essay says, sits in French food culture with the Eiffel Tower, perfume and fashion; drinking it in France is dated to 600 B.C., and one invention of the Gauls is the wooden barrel for storing wine. France, in this telling, accounts for more than half of the world’s wine production, with 4 percent of its land in vineyards and some 500,000 people in grape farming. Those figures stay as the notes give them, and are not treated here as a later official total.

Bordeaux, on the south-west Atlantic coast where the Garonne and the Dordogne meet in the Gironde, is called a “home of wine,” and one of the largest and finest grape regions in the world. Soil, land-form, climate and grape variety are said to sit well together there, and a mid-latitude site lets the fruit take a good deal of summer sun. Yearly output is put at about 700 million bottles, 82 percent red, 17 percent white, and 1 percent rosé, with a large share also classed as wine of a higher grade. Burgundy, unlike Bordeaux, uses a single grape variety in one wine. It is only about 3 percent of France’s vineyard area, yet more than a hundred products are named, with Pinot Noir and Beaujolais among the reds and Chardonnay among the whites. Alsace is known as a leading place for white wine, with a stronger-tasting Gewürztraminer and a Riesling aged a long time; along the Loire, drunk chilled for its acidity and fruit, Anjou, Saumur and Vouvray are named.

In Korea, the origin of drink is left far off: ripe fruit falling and fermenting on the ground. In the literature, from the Mahan period before the Three Kingdoms, people already brewed a clear grain wine, offered it first to their ancestors at a rich harvest, and enjoyed dance, song and drinking. Of three kinds long handed down — takju, cheongju and soju — takju is treated as the oldest by its method; the name makgeolli is said to come from “just strained.” When takju is nearly finished, a clear liquid rises; a yongsu is set in to draw that liquid, which is the usual way to cheongju, and soju is read as a distillation of it.

How a glass is held in France, and two Korean manners

The French, the writer says, are strict about manners at table as elsewhere, and drinking is explained together with food culture. Money and time are spent freely on that pleasure; they drink, in this telling, not in order to get drunk but for a lift. Even as more people have taken to mineral water with a meal, and wine consumption in France is said to be falling, for many a meal without wine is still, in their own words, “a day without sun” — le repas sans vin est une journée sans soleil. To feel the scent better, a clear glass is chosen; one looks first, then smells, tilts the glass a little, and smells again. The bowl should be wide, slightly convex in the middle and narrower at the top so that the wine does not spill, and the stem long enough that fingers do not warm the bowl. Red wine (vin rouge), said to sit well with meat, is drunk at 14 to 18 degrees; white (vin blanc) and the pink called rosé, said to sit well with fish, at 8 to 10. Ice is not added, as it is with champagne, because the scent and taste are best at a fitting temperature.

Korean drinking manners, the essay divides in two. Hyangeumjurye is a ritual culture: elders are honoured, and food and drink follow a procedure, with guests invited courteously and a bow before shared pleasure. Gun-eum is a freer gathering in which wandering men or ordinary people sit with nature, eat and drink, and keep company. The two are not, in this telling, a split of noble and commoner, but a difference of formal and informal custom. At a drinking table the upper seat is usually the warmer lower part of the room, or a place with one’s back to the wall, looking toward the door. The first cup is not refused even if one drinks poorly; one does not lift a cup before an elder, and a cup from an elder is received with both hands and drunk with the head turned. When pouring for an elder, the right hand holds the cup and the left is set under the right arm so that a sleeve does not touch the food, and the other person’s wish is asked first.

Sources the notes list include Won Yong-hui, Stories of Drink in the World (Gwangnim Book House); Lee Jae-uk, How French People Live (Sinas); Kim Gyeong-rang and Choi Nae-gyeong, Reading French Culture (Hakmunsa); and Lee Chang-sun, Understanding French Culture (Hakmunsa).

Troubles on both sides, and a 1997 change left in place

In Korea, the essay says, the age of drinking has been falling and drinking among women rising, so that alcohol consumption has continued to increase; habitual drinking has added to the number of people dependent on alcohol, and a light view of drink-driving has added victims year after year. Unhealthy sexual relations when very drunk, and in serious cases infertility in both men and women, are also named. University drinking is treated as serious: in orientation or membership training, pressure from seniors has caused various harms, the writer says, pointing to recent reports.

In France, overall consumption is said to be falling, while consumption among the young is rising. A survey the notes cite finds that, among people aged 11 to 19, 40 percent have drunk and 12 percent drink regularly at least twice a week; among university students, 71 percent drink and 48 percent do so regularly, mostly in taverns and around festivals, and 65 percent drink with friends in a tavern, or else in a dormitory or at home. Those figures stay as the survey is given, and are not treated here as a later official total. Abuse among French youth is said to have been on the rise from the early 1980s, but among university students consumption is said to have fallen after freshman orientation was banned in 1997. That year stays in 1997. Young people who drink regularly are said to show more early sexual experience and violence; among traffic accidents from drink-driving, those aged 15 to 24 are named as the highest group and a large social problem.

Comparing the two, the writer judges Korean practice the more at fault: drink is pressed on people, and they drink until they are drunk, whereas in France wine is a lift in daily life, a tool of company, and treated as a drink in itself. In Korea, the essay says, drink has been seen as a gate one must pass in order to get on in social life, even though a dignified tradition had, until modern times, made one of the world’s most beautiful customs, now altered. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay on French wine from 600 B.C. and the wooden barrel of the Gauls, with production figures for France and for Bordeaux left as the notes give them.
2. Korean takju, cheongju and soju, from the Mahan period; hyangeumjurye and gun-eum; and how a French glass is held, without ice.
3. A cited survey of French youth and university students, a rise from the early 1980s, and a 1997 ban on freshman orientation, with those years left in place.

Last updated: 14 November 2026