Oeneus the king of Calydon, whose name in Greek means "wine",  was the first to be taught by Dionysus how to grow the vine and use it. 

Dionysus was usually depicted as a youth, wearing a crown of vines with grapes while holding the thyrsus, a wand which was a fertility symbol, and a cup of wine. He was always accompanied by female followers, the Maenads,  who expressed the physical abandonment. 

Legend says that while Dionysus was walking one day on the shore on an island in the Greek seas, he was abducted by pirates, who mistook him for the son of a rich king and expected a heavy ransom. They carried him aboard their ship and attempted to bind him with ropes; but the knots untied themselves and the ropes fell to the deck. The sea around the ship turned to wine, and a vine began to grow up the mast. The god assumed the form of a lion, and the pirates, in terror, leapt overboard and were transformed into dolphins.

Dionysus was symbolically associated, with the rebirth after death as in vine culturing; where the vines must be pruned after the vintage is over (death) and remain dormant during the winter , until (rebirth) spring  comes to start growing again. 

Greeks were influenced by the wine's dual nature; the  joy and ecstasy, and the  brutal, unthinking rage. They celebrated with wine the liberation from the bondage of reason, and the social custom. 

The wine helped them soften the hardship, and troubles of the everyday life. Under the influence of wine, one could feel possessed by a greater power and do works one otherwise could not.

At the end of February when the juice of the grapes became wine, unfermented and ready to drink, festivals honouring Dionysus were held and were celebrated by performing arts and wine drinking. 

These festivals were run by city officials  and by men and women who were prominent members of religious groups. In some cases, they were bound by oaths of purity and all were expected to lead exemplary lives. 

During the festivities the Greeks performed ritual dances and participated in day long

Plato writes in the Symposium : "Regarding wine, the account related by others is that  it was apparently bestowed upon us as a punishment, to render us irrational; our own account on the contrary, asserts that it is a medicine given with the aim of securing modesty of soul, and health and strength of the body."