I would just like to interject with some more science of the day.
Up until fairly recently in the history of man did not know about germs. Now we do.
Also, up until fairly recently, there was not reliable water purification, and not all water was safe to drink. There were two main exceptions, two main ways to make water safe to drink. One was to make it into tea. The other was to make it into beer, or mix wine into it. There're reasons beer, wine, and tea are among the oldest drinks, this is one. Even if people didn't know WHY, mixing wine with water that it not safe to drink for some reasons (some diseases, not necessarily everything, not toxic metal waste, but some things you'd find in say, the Nile, or the Thames, or the Seine, or the Rubicon, or the JORDAN, or... you get the idea) because ethanol can be an antiseptic. So, while today you might get all the health benefits of wine from grape juice, without modern water processing, you wouldn't.
Back in the day in Rome, there was also a saying that went something along the lines of "they are barbarians who drink their wine unwatered", because wine was made very potent and was expected to be watered down in Roman cultures except for barbarians and drunkards. And could e drunk after adding unsafe water safely, because of the alcohol.
Also, aren't there separate words in Greek and Hebrew for juice versus fermented, alcoholic wine? Couldn't it be very easy to just check which word was used?
Also, for the record, I HATE the taste of almost all alcohol (there are 4 exceptions, none of them wine), but I see nothing wrong with it in and of itself.
Metherion
