As early as the late eighth century B.C., the Greek poet Hesiod was producing work on wine production. His two works which are most commonly known on the subject are Works and Days and Theogony. Hesiod advised that grapes for wine should be harvested and then dried before pressing.  At that time, wine was stored in clay jars, so by drying the grapes, their sugars would be more concentrated, leaving a wine high enough in alcohol for any unfermented (residual) sugar left in it not to re-ferment.  Hesiod also stipulated that wine be made according to a sign from the sky, which is the time mentioned above in italics.  These are the first writings that direct farmers to follow stars or use a cosmic calendar for different crops. Arcturus is a brilliant orange star on the constellation of Bootes, or the herdsman, while Hesiod's "Dog star" was Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Ancient Greeks saw Sirius as "the scorcher" of the ripening crops, due to its annual re-appearance in the morning sky in early Summer. When Hesiod linked the earthly activity of wine growing with the movements of the heavens, he linked the observable reality with the spiritual belief. Ancient Greek culture saw the cycle of life and death as including re-birth as the crucial third step.  The vine came to play a symbolically significant part in Greek culture due to its ability to transform itself from a grey bareness and lifelesness in Winter , to flowering bright green buds of rebirth and bounty from Spring to Autumn.  wine was also enjoyed by the Ancient Greeks to free the imagination and for its mineral rich liquid which sustained the body.