For many years, wine served as an unofficial writing tool in more ways than one:
Wine, it turns out, was a key ingredient in many recipes for iron gall ink — for all you non-ink nerds, that was the writing ink used by most of the Western world from the Middle Ages all the way up to the 19th century. “Anyone anywhere near famous will have something in iron gall ink,” says , head of the conservation division at the Library of Congress.
A 1297 copy of history’s great political document the Magna Carta was penned in the stuff. Van Gogh drew with it, Da Vinci jotted notes with it, and Bach composed with it. “The practice of adding wine into historic inks was quite widespread,” says chemist , a senior lecturer at University College London who has worked with historic parchments and inks. The chemistry involved can get pretty wonky, but basically, the wine was believed to make the coloring agents in ink more stable. Wine was also considered a purer solvent than water. And iron gall inks were prized because they were so indelible.
(Image by Dr. Manfred Anders, from Wikimedia)
The Dish 
