“If you can’t drink it, don’t cook with it,” so said the late celebrity chef, Keith Floyd, about using wines to flavor food. If the guy was still around, he’d agree that any of the top wine brands we’ve listed in the infographic below would pass his taste, he who loved to cook with a half bottle of wine because the other half–he already drank.

Wine isn’t the only alcohol you can use for cooking; in fact, marinating with beer not only tenderizes meat, but neutralizes carcinogens from burnt meat. Moreover, beer, surprisingly, has less calories compared to wine. An 8 fl. oz. beer has about 93 calories versus 200 for the same amount of wine. Why then, er… the beery belly? It’s likely because we guzzle more bottles of beer than we would glasses of wine in one sitting. For more health benefits of beer and wine see the infographic below.

But this isn’t about cooking or health alone; the infographic will let you enjoy a round of facts and trivia that you can dispense with gusto during a drinking session. For instance, which do you think is older beer or wine? Or where do you find the oldest and still operational brewery and winery? Well, the oldest winery was founded in 1211, a century before Dante wrote The Divine Comedy. If you think that’s really old, wait till you check the oldest brewery below. If you want some high-brow facts, impress your drinking buddies by pointing out the most expensive wines and beers ever. While you’re at it, feign business intelligence by mentioning that the U.S. has overtaken France as the number one wine market last year, or that the U.S. and Germany are the only two countries to belong among the top five markets for both wine and beer.

FOR MORE INTERESTING FACTS AND FIGURES CHECK OUT THE INFOGRAPHIC BELOW:

Author: Alex Hillsberg, an independent journalist writing about a variety of topics including finance, entertainment and B2B & SaaS related issues.