Book & Film Reviews

What begins as a documentary about the production of premium red wine in Bordeaux evolves into a treatise on the global economics of the industry. For readers of this journal, the lovingly photographed history of wine production in Red Obsession will be entertaining, if not enlightening; but the assessment of the global economics of wine production and consumption will be trivial and quite possibly annoying. So, even if not a feast for the mind, the film is a treat for the senses, with credit going to cinematographers Steve Arnold and Lee Pulbrook and composer Burkhard von Dallwitz.

The first half of the film is filled with lovely panoramas of the five Premiers Crus estates of Bordeaux—Haut-Brion, Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, and Mouton Rothschild—plus interviews with some of the towering figures of contemporary Bordeaux. The scenes will be familiar to oenophiles but welcome for their beauty. Likewise, the interviews provide little new information for wine aficionados, but it’s a treat nonetheless to hear directly from winemakers such as Christian Moueix (who oversees production at Château Pétrus, among other estates) and proprietors such as Corinne Mentzelopoulos (now the sole shareholder of Château Margaux). Soon, natural scenes of vineyards are interspersed with scenes of the key commerce that occurs during “en primeur” week in Bordeaux.

One can only be impressed that the writers/directors David Roach and Warwick Ross were able to gain access to the region’s key players. Apparently, Roach and Ross had to spend six months just convincing some of them to talk, after they felt they had been burned by the 2004 documentary Mondovino, which portrayed the Bordeaux elite as villains.

Without explanation for the general audiences for whom the film is intended, the film focuses almost exclusively on a single, very special segment of the world of red wine: the Premiers Crus of Bordeaux. These same audiences may be pleased that the film is narrated by actor Russell Crowe, despite the fact that somewhat ironically he recently portrayed a London financial trader who is aggressively disdainful of French wine culture in the (very loose) film adaptation of Peter Mayle’s novel A Good Year.

Halfway through the film, we learn that traditional Bordeaux markets in the United States and the United Kingdom are weakening, and that a robust new market for premium Bordeaux is developing in China. Much of the second half of the film is essentially an examination of contemporary Chinese character, ambition, and taste. The focus is on the richest of the rich. With an estimated 600 (US dollar) billionaires in the new, post-Mao China (and presumably many thousands of millionaires), a market has exploded for the greatest wines of Bordeaux. One wealthy Chinese industrialist, who has made his fortune manufacturing sex toys, has a collection worth $60 million, with bottles of Lafite-Rothschild scattered throughout his house.

Interviews with wine critics, journalists, and winemakers reveal the way the industry works, how demand exceeds supply, how the weather determines yield and quality, and how the prices of the likes of Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild are set. Of course, all of this is a textbook example of what all budding economics students learn in their first year—the laws of supply and demand. Supply of the first growths of Bordeaux is limited. Even with a season of ideal rainfall and perfect temperatures, there is only so much wine that can be produced. Higher prices may cause Louis Vuitton to make more purses and Maserati more GranTurismi, but Latour will not expand its output. Supply of these brands is infinitely inelastic.

As for demand for the best of Bordeaux, it is rapidly increasing. As China’s economy has grown at breathtaking rates in recent years, so too has demand for luxury goods. China is now the world’s largest importer of fine wine from Bordeaux. Robust and rising demand, combined with inelastic supply: an obvious recipe for price escalation. If only the film had explained that clearly and simply.

However, the film does provide a hint—although no more than a hint—of why the prices of the first growths have increased so dramatically relative to the prices of other classified Bordeaux. This comes from the film’s extended discussion of Chinese character, ambition, and taste. One observer after another comments on the Chinese fascination with labels and brands. Combine this with the emergence of China’s billionaire and millionaire nouveaux riches, and the result is dramatically increased demand for the top tier of luxury-good brands, in particular, for collectibles—whether paintings by French Impressionists or classic wines by Lafite Rothschild.

The film reminds us that a Chinese proverb says, “Remember to dig the well before you are thirsty.” So, in addition to being important and growing Bordeaux consumers, Chinese entrepreneurs are now trying to become meaningful competi- tors, as they seriously invest in their own wine-making efforts, with wineries that may not produce the best wines but are built to resemble the great châteaux of Bordeaux.

Robert N. Stavins
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
robert_stavins@harvard.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.037

There is no point in hiding the headline: Somm, a new film written and directed by Jason Wise, is the best movie about the world of wine since Sideways. One was a work of fiction, and the other is a documentary, but both beautifully capture the passion that characterizes so many wine people – whether amateurs who love drinking wine (Miles and Maya in Sideways), or professionals who love producing and serving it (the sommeliers, chefs, and wine makers who populate Somm). Both films made me laugh; and both films made me cry. With Somm, the production values are so high, the cinematography so beautiful, and the music so evocative that you will forget at times that this is a documentary.

Somm is slang for sommelier, the wine professional typically found in fine restaurants. The sommelier – or wine director – is responsible for all aspects of wine service, with particular expertise in wine and food pairing. But some of the most important responsibilities of the best sommeliers are not in the front of the house, but behind the scenes: wine list development, wine procurement, storage, and cellar rotation, as well as staff training. In the film’s introduction, Chef Michael Mina describes sommeliers as “the new rock-stars of the industry.”

The storyline follows a group of four thirty-something men, three of whom live with their respective wives and girlfriends in San Francisco, and are working as sommeliers in various establishments: Brian McClintic, an affable former baseball player and screenwriter; DLynn Proctor, an intense and self-confident professional; Dustin Wilson, a young man who exudes modesty and warmth, and moved from Montagna at The Little Nell in Aspen to RN74 in San Francisco, with its Burgundy rich wine list; and Ian Cauble, whose life has been dedicated to wine since college, is remarkably knowledgeable about wine, and has an incredible nose and palate for tasting.

As the film opens, each has already been celebrated as one of the best young, up-and-coming sommeliers in the country, and each has gone through significant wine education, having achieved the first three levels of their professional association’s certification: Level I (introductory), Level II (Certified Sommelier), and Level III (Advanced Sommelier). Each now aspires to join the Court of Master Sommeliers, the absolute pinnacle of the profession, a level achieved by only 200 people globally over half a century.

Becoming a Master Sommelier requires passing a three-day exam that is offered only once per year and covers three components: theory, service, and blind tasting. On average, candidates sit for the exam two to three times, and some take it as many as six times. One has three years to pass all three parts. If that is not accomplished, one has to start from scratch. (As Jancis Robinson wrote in her autobiography, Tasting Pleasures: Confessions of aWine Lover, which I reviewed in this journal in 2007, she was the first person outside of the wine trade to pass the exam.)

Every Master Sommelier interviewed in the film says that the exam was the hardest thing they have ever done in their life. Ian is clearly regarded by the other three (and by the film’s writer/director) as the one most likely to succeed at this most challenging of tests. The three sommeliers signify their respect by calling him, “Dad.”

The film follows their days, weeks, and months – indeed years – of preparation for the Master Sommelier exam, and finally follows them from San Francisco to Dallas where the exam is to be given. Ian candidly acknowledges that “every moment of my life has been how am I going to prepare for this exam.” Separately, his girlfriend confirms that “the most important thing in his life is wine, then family, and then me.”

Mixed with the main thread of the foursome preparing for the exam are interviews with other sommeliers and vintners about a variety of topics, ranging from the history of wine production in Europe to techniques of viticulture and oenology. Talking heads quickly fade, their words illustrated by scenes that will warm any wine-lover’s heart, ranging from the gate at Romanee Conti to a hillside castle in Rheingau, Germany, where the cellar master lovingly pulls out a bottle of 1735 Schloss Johannisberg Riesling.

The film begins with three weeks remaining before the exam, for which the four men have been preparing for well over a year. One of the many characters featured along the way is Fred Dame, the first American to pass the exam, who did so in 1964 in the United Kingdom, and subsequently brought the exam and the system to the United States. We watch as he, along with other Master Sommeliers, help the four young men prepare.

The best I could come up with when trying to relate my life experiences to this was to think back to graduate school, thirty years ago, when I was working with my study group at the end of our first year of the Harvard Ph.D. program in economics, studying together to prepare for the “general examinations” that are the culmination of the first year. But, as intense and stressful as that was, it was nothing like this.

Likewise, the four men’s obsessive use of flash cards – day and night – to memorize the most obscure wine facts in preparation for the theory component of the exam reminded me of my experience decades ago teaching myself a tribal language when living in West Africa, but each of these guys has prepared thousands of cards; indeed, Dustin mentions that he has over four thousand!

It is the scenes of the foursome preparing for the blind-tasting component of the exam that will probably be most gripping for the readers of this journal. In the exam, one is presented with six wines—three whites and three reds—and a total of 25 minutes to describe for each: the wine’s structure, body, alcohol, climate, varietal(s), precise geographic location, and vintage.

Why does blind tasting matter? Various people in the film argue that such blind (“deductive”) tasting increases and improves one’s perception. One travels along a road, then it forks, choose a path, then it forks again, choose a path, and eventually the taster arrives at the wine. Ian swirls and sniffs a glass, and then in rapid succession rattles off: “This wine is from the old world. This wine is from France. This wine is from the Rhone Valley. This wine is from the northern Rhone. This wine is St. Joseph. This wine is from 2008.” Along the way, the scents discussed range from comparing fresh violet (a young Nebiolo) with dried violet (an old Nebiolo), to the much more esoteric, such as a freshly opened can of tennis balls versus a new garden hose!

Why all this exhaustive preparation for the exam? The answer comes from an analogy provided by one Master Sommelier. “Who will be a great maker of samurai swords? It will be someone who had a great teacher, who had a great teacher, who had a great teacher.” So, it is with the best sommeliers. It is not a natural talent, but a learned skill. But anyone who is familiar with academic studies of tasting results, and is skeptical of the ability of professionals, let alone others, to consistently identify wines and rank their quality, will find support for their skepticism in several dramatic and key scenes in Somm.

Two-thirds of the way through the 93 minutes of Somm, Brian, DLynn, Dustin, and Ian each makes his way to the exam locale in Dallas, Texas. Fifty people will sit for the exam. We learn later that six will pass.

Watching them holed up in their respective hotel rooms, continuing to cram days before the exams are to begin brought forth memories of another film, forty years ago—the young 1Ls (first-year students) of Harvard Law School cramming in a Cambridge hotel room for their final exams in The Paper Chase, the 1973 film based on John Jay Osborn Jr.’s novel.

Finally, with 20 minutes left in Somm, the exams begin for Brian, DLynn, Dustin, and Ian. The tension matches that found in the best suspense film. With 5 minutes left, each of the four learns the results, and we—as viewers—are present in the room with each as they learn their fate.

My wife and I arrived for a dinner in Manhattan we had been looking forward to for months. We had canceled our reservation at Per Se, so that we could experience Eleven Madison Park, the Three Michelin Star and New York Times Four Star restaurant that has been ranked as one of the five best restaurants anywhere in the world.

Maitre D’ Zach Fischer guided us through the sixteen-course tasting menu prepared brilliantly by Chef Daniel Humm. The menu and execution were sublime, the paired wines were fascinating even for a jaded collector, and the service was absolutely impeccable. Each and every course involved elaborate theater of presentation, was beautiful to behold, and was flavorful beyond words.

The wines? Each was brought to us and lovingly described by Eleven Madison Park’s wine director, Dustin Wilson, one of the four young men from Somm. His lapel clearly featured the small Sommelier pin, the color of which signifies the respective level of achievement: Certified Sommelier, purple; Advanced Sommelier, green; and Court of the Master Sommeliers, red. Dustin’s pin is small, but its color is vivid. To discover the hue, please see the movie, or have dinner at Eleven Madison Park. Neither will soon be forgotten.

Robert N. Stavins
Harvard University
robert_stavins@harvard.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.30

A wonderful photograph at the newly opened wine exhibition in Washington DC’s Smithsonian National Museum of American History shows Julia Child, circa 1970, standing behind a table covered with half a dozen or so bottles of wine, long loaves of French bread, and plates of cheese and hors d’oeuvres. Child is holding a glass of wine at eye level with an expression of analytical judgment on her face. The labels on the bottles were pasted over with apparently handwritten ones saying, in large letters, “Cabernet Sauvignon,” “Médoc Red Bordeaux,” “Pinot Noir,” “Burgundy 1967,” and “Pinot Chardonnay California 1967,” among others. In this scene from her famous television show, The French Chef, Child is teaching Americans how to throw a wine and cheese party.

The photo is particularly apropos of the museum’s newly renovated exhibition, “Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950–2000,” of which wine is a section. Child’s depiction of wine as an integral part of a meal coincided well with the resurgence of quality wine production in the United States during that period and likely did a great deal to encourage its consumer demand as well. That the wine exhibit is just down the hall from the section with the entire kitchen that Child used on her show helps integrate wine as a burgeoning part of American culture.

Living up to its reputation as America’s attic, the museum presents an impressive display of artifacts, along with detailed descriptions of post-Prohibition wine production, technology, innovation, and consumer acceptance—all topics germane to wine economics research. Cramming much information into its modest space, the exhibition is organized by themes of advances in viticulture, enology, marketing, and lifestyle, tracing the emergence of American wine from the end of Prohibition to today. “[I]n the second half of the twentieth century,” the exhibition’s introduction notes, “a community of California dreamers would spark a revolution in a bottle that not only realized Jefferson’s vision [of growing wine grapes in America], but changed the entire world of wine.”

The Paris wine tasting in 1976, immortalized in George Taber’s Time magazine article and subsequent book Judgment of Paris, is seen as a seminal event in the acceptance of American wine. Hence it should be no surprise that the exhibition includes bottles of the two winners of that tasting, the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon and Château Montelena’s Chardonnay from the same year. The labels on these bottles are in good shape, the foil remains, and they appear to be filled with the original wine. An earlier photograph from the 1938 California State Fair, contributed by the University of California at Davis, also emphasizes the importance for the California wine market of wine tastings and competitions.

Changing consumer demand, and the response to it by producers, is a theme repeated throughout the exhibition. An early advertisement focused on America’s initial taste for wine is for a generic “Sauterne,” explaining that “Sauterne, one of the fine wines of California, is a delicious, white table wine.” Another magazine ad by Gallo from 1965 takes consumers on an international wine tour; for France, it suggested “Gallo Vin Rosé of California,” for Germany “Gallo Rhine Garten,” and for Italy “Gallo Chianti of California.” All could be purchased for “[o]nly 72¢ to 93¢ a fifth depending on state taxes.”1 Another display describes a batch of wine in which the yeast died prematurely, leading to the production of a sweet, pinkish white Zinfandel, which Sutter Home decided to try to sell as a test of the market. The Smithsonian has a bottle from an early release of this wine under its original name, Oeil de Perdrix—a name that had to be changed based on the rules of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The wine was renamed White Zinfandel, and bumper stickers popped up proclaiming that “Life Is Hell, Without White Zinfandel.” As tastes evolved, though, more traditional dry Zinfandel also was produced, and both are still on the market.

The march of time in production methods in both farming and winemaking is documented in the exhibition. One sequence, for example, shows a box of sulfur strips for cleaning barrels sitting next to a 1964 wine bottled in a reused ShopRite Cherry Soda bottle, along with the requisite old wooden wine press. Mechanizing the harvest (for better or worse) was well under way by the 1970s; we can see a copy of one of the original patents for a harvesting machine. The role of universities and researchers in producing better and more stable wines is recognized, prompting André Tchelistcheff to exclaim: “What we did in forty years, it can be accomplished normally in Europe in four or five centuries.”

After Americans discovered wine, it was inevitable that they would get into their cars and visit wine country. The wine tourism business began to grow, led in large part by the new winery and tasting rooms constructed by Robert Mondavi in Napa Valley. Signage welcoming visitors, wine-themed t-shirts, ads for limousine tours, and posters for wine festivals all are on display. Wine tourism is playing an increasingly important role in the survival of small wineries as well as in regional economic growth.

The Smithsonian also began a wine oral history project in 1997, preserving a record of the modern winemaking process, along with the people, events, and archival documents significant in the growth of the American wine industry. The “Wine for the Table” section of this exhibition includes a series of video clips from these oral histories showing the winemaking process from the bud to the bottle at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. These videos are narrated, entirely in their own words, by those performing the work in the vineyard, lab, crush pad, press, and cellar. The winery’s proprietor, Warren Winiarski, talks about challenges in the vineyard, for example, while a budder, Jesus Valdez, discusses and demonstrates both the difficulty and satisfaction of grafting a new varietal onto existing rootstock. Interviews with many others across the wider wine community cover topics such as economic and financial aspects of winemaking, entrepreneurship, auctions, vineyard management, wine collecting, wine writing, and even food and wine pairings.2 Oral histories will be available in the museum’s newly renovated Archives.

Wine’s ubiquitous presence in American life and culture is emphasized by the fact that wine is now produced in all 50 states. In the “Return to Virginia” section of the exhibition, that state’s production is used as an example of this expansion. Virginian wines are highlighted not only because of the state’s growing reputation for producing quality wines but also because of the role played by Thomas Jefferson and other Virginians in the history of wine in America. That visitors to the American History museum can drive an hour or two from the exhibition and visit many outstanding wineries—and taste wines made from the native American (and Virginian) Norton grape—is an added bonus. A brief history of this grape and the efforts to revive it by those at the Chrysalis and Horton vineyards in Virginia is part of this display. But the exhibition’s curators did not forget to mention production in other states as well especially those in historically important Missouri, New York, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington.

This exhibition is scheduled to continue for several years. While not as expansive as the displays at the now-defunct Copia Center in Napa Valley (Copia had a Julia Child restaurant rather than her entire kitchen—and Child’s pots and pans, formerly at Copia, now are part of Julia’s kitchen in this exhibition), it is as interesting and informative as Copia and other wine museums, such as the Museé du Vin in Paris. More information about the entire exhibition is available at http://americanhistory.si.edu/food-the-exhibition. And at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, unlike other museums, admission is always free.

1Approximately $5.30 to $6.80 in 2012 dollars.

2A summary of these oral histories was provided in a private communication by Paula Johnson, curator in the Division of Work & Industry, National Museum of American History and the exhibition’s project director.

www.americanhistory.si.edu

Stephen Chaikind

Johns Hopkins University
stephen.chaikind@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.29

In the late nineteenth century, peasants from the prosperous and industrially advanced northern Italian province of Piedmont emigrated to California. They transplanted their traditional winemaking skills to the new world, taking advantage of a natural similarity in climatic and topographical characteristics. This identical viticultural terroir and their enological know-how allowed these Piedmontese migrants to take advantage of the openings in a relatively classless frontier society to build empires of wine. They were aided by ethnic economies, with which they were able to mobilize capital from other Piedmontese both in California and back in Italy. Simone Cinotto’s new book shows that the preceding statements, while forming an attractive narrative, are almost entirely refuted by a careful look at the history of Italians in the Californian wine industry.

Soft Soil, Black Grapes challenges both popular knowledge and conventional historiography, building its case using three examples of Piedmontese entrepreneurs and their companies. While the first two companies have since been absorbed by larger concerns (the Italian Swiss Colony and the Italian Vineyard Company), the third, Ernest and Julio Gallo, is one of the giants of the American wine industry. Cinotto draws on company and public archives, iconographic sources (including his own extensive collection of wine-related ephemera), and a critical review of other books on Californian winemaking.

Cinotto uses the introduction and first chapter to discuss the development of what he refers to as the “Pavesian myth.” The image of California as the “Piedmont on the Pacific” was a construction built in various discursive channels and with the contribution of a variety of actors. Cinotto names the myth after the Italian novelist Cesare Pavese, a Karl May-esque figure who never left Italy but wrote about the American West. Pavese described a California that was rural like northern Italy, but so fertile that a farmer hardly had to hoe. It was a narrative of continuity despite transplantation; later in the book Cinotto argues that this myth reduces to “natural”—Piedmontese emigrating and becoming winemakers—what was actually the product of a specific conjunction of historical circumstances.

That this was not the only possible outcome is illustrated in Cinotto’s statistics on Italian labor—only in the West would many work in the agricultural sector, in stark contrast to the more urban Italian communities of the Eastern seaboard. In chapter two (“Producing Winescapes: Immigrant Labor on California Land”), Cinotto shows how the terroir of the early locations on Italian vineyards was anything but ideal; the land they were planted on was selected not so much for its appropriateness for viticulture but rather for its low price. Early vineyards in these less-than-optimal spots were only possible with the transformative (and exploitative) use of low-cost immigrant labor to render them fertile. Indeed, the Italian Vineyard Company was created in the midst of the Cucamonga Desert outside of Los Angeles, where a layer of sand covered the somewhat fertile underlying earth and immigrant labor was necessary to clear the brush, haul in soil amendments, and keep out livestock and other pests. A striking image of grapevines growing out of the sandy soil of an obviously arid valley instantly banishes the idea that California was identical to Piedmont.

Equally fallacious was the idea of the seamless transplantation of enological knowledge from Italy to the Pacific coast. Cinotto makes an important digression in the third chapter to describe how the diffusion of up-to-date enological knowledge (the use of sulfites, the importance of a sufficient sugar level, ageing off lees) was restricted to a very small circle of elite winemakers in Piedmont. Italian peasants (like their cousins around the Mediterranean basin) while certainly familiar with growing grapes, did not produce high-quality wines but rather made a “more affordable beverage of pressed grapes and water,” one which tended to turn rapidly into vinegar (62). Cinotto also shows that far from being amateur peasant viticulturalists or experienced enologists, the three entrepreneurs described here were middle class merchants who had no direct experience with winemaking prior to their emigration.

Why is it then that these Piedmontese emigrants came to dominate the California wine industry? Previous scholarship had focused on ethnic economies and ethnic entrepreneurship, and the ways in which in-groups privilege their own members in economic transactions. Cinotto points out, however, that these theories fail to explain why another ethnic group (say the Japanese) did not come to dominate wine production, or why the Piedmontese did not create empires based on the production of, for example, bread or cheese. The author argues that the Piedmontese, theories notwithstanding, did not always act as an ethnically compact group; in addition, while they made use of ethnic ties, their success in the wine industry was ultimately due to other factors.

“The area known as the Cucamonga Desert was a vast, steppe-like rectangle beaten by wind, completely uninhabited and uncultivated… […] The layer of sand that covered its entire surface made it ill-suited to the abundant irrigation needed in an area that received very little precipitation. In fact, there was so much sand that it completely covered the tracks of the nearby Southern Pacific Railroad when the wind lifted it up.” (Cinotto, 2012, p. 56). Courtesy Cal Poly Pomona University Library Special Collections.

Changing economic and social conditions in the early twentieth century had opened a breach in the wine sector for the Piedmontese. Far from being first players in the wine industry, they had been relative latecomers. The Spanish had introduced Vitis vinifera in the 1500s, and thereafter the British and Irish, and still later the French, Germans, and Scandinavians entered the wine market. The Piedmontese had faced fierce competition in the late 1800s—indeed, this is why some of the early Piedmontese vineyards were in such disadvantageous locations, not by chance overlooked by earlier entrepreneurs. This “latecomer effect,” combined with the Piedmontese’s lack of capital and winemaking skills forced them to activate ethnic networks and build social capital through marriage and ethnic cooperation.

Key to understanding the Piedmontese success during and especially after Prohibition, Cinotto suggests, is knowledge of California’s complex theoretical constructions of race of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though quite racially mixed—with large populations from Europe, Mexico, and East Asia mingling with a relatively small native-born population—Californian society was stratified according to the prevailing pseudo-scientific racial theories of the day. Cinotto reveals that the racial category of “white” did not include Italians: the Piedmontese ranked behind northern Europeans, but they were still ahead of African Americans, Mexicans, and Asians. The three companies here surveyed all used this in-between position in the American racial hierarchy to mobilize a workforce with the carrot (appeals to ethnic solidarity coupled with corporate paternalism) and the stick (the threat of Mexicans or Japanese as replacement labor in the case of disputes).

In sum, Piedmontese winemakers articulated a narrative of ethnic identity that benefited from the specific racial and racist structure of Californian society on one hand, and aimed at interclass national solidarity on another. [. . .] Proletarian immigrants paid for the nonmonetary and immaterial benefits bestowed on them by ethnic winemaking entrepreneurs with modest wages and meager possibilities of reproach (p. 149).

Chapter 8 again seems like a slight digression from the main arguments, but is important as Cinotto shows how the Piedmontese winemakers, far from being limited by their cultural baggage, adapted quickly to the novel business environment of California and the capitalist Zeitgeist. They embraced technological innovation and mass production, as well as attempting to market their standardized products at the national and international level just like other American capitalists.

The final two chapters are as close as academic writing can be to exciting. The central question of the book is not why the Italians in California took up wine- making as a business, but rather why (to borrow a term from Rostow) they were able to achieve a sort of “enological takeoff” and came to dominate a market in which they had initially had only disadvantages. While ethnic cooperation and adoption of Fordist strategies were important, it was Prohibition—Cinotto argues—which provided the historical-economic opportunity which the Piedmontese winemakers were able to seize. Cinotto explains that Prohibition was not simply about pro- hibiting alcohol but rather a front in a battle against everything that was perceived as “foreign” by mainstream American society. This is not an original observation, but Cinotto’s genius is connecting it to how Piedmontese winemakers turned what was for most winemakers a disaster (i.e. the outlawing of their principal product) into a springboard.

Even before Prohibition officially began when the Volstead Act took effect in 1920, the rising sentiment of an ever-stronger temperance movement attached a negative stigma to the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, many of the Piedmontese’s primary competitors began to exit the market even before Prohibition started, and many more followed thereafter. The negative social capital of being involved with wine production and the shrinking legal business opportunities made winemaking a risky business, and those ethnic groups which possessed the social mobility to move up and away from it, did so. Thus many native French and Scandinavian winemakers—who had taken the places of the first native-born and British winemakers—dropped out of the business as the cost-benefit ratio changed. Another group of competitors—the German- American winemakers—were eager, in the post-WWI era, to avoid any association with what might be considered “foreign” (and, by extension, subversive) and gave up winemaking as well. The slowly-built ethnic networks of the Piedmontese became even more useful when the other ethnicities started to exit the wine industry.

The Piedmontese found a playing field that was remarkably clearer than it had been just a decade and a half earlier, but which allowed them to prosper in an industry whose daily components, under Prohibition, were “risk, danger, and hard work” (p. 221). Cinotto argues that it was because they were forced to remain in winemaking, as they lacked the upward mobility of the other ethnic groups, held back as they were by California’s racist social structure.

This book is commendable not only for what it accomplishes—demystifying a popular and historiographic misconception—but also for how it accomplishes that task: a carefully documented thesis built with clear exposition. While this erudite book certainly assumes an intelligent reader, Cinotto is careful to give the requisite background to concepts that may lie outside the ken of his audience, like the late nineteenth-century European agrarian crisis, the terms and theoretical debates about ethnic entrepreneurship, and anthropological theories about race and their effect on American immigration policy. The illustrations were also a valuable addition to the text: the maps of Italian and Californian wine regions helped the reader see their historical evolutions, and the 45 black and white photographs added force to what had been said in the text. Indeed, as the above-mentioned photograph of the vineyard in the Cucamonga Desert, they are occasionally even more important. Extensive endnotes—which go above and beyond the mere bibliographic citation, pointing the interested reader to other texts—and a thorough index round out the book’s utility. Soft Soil, Black Grapes is an essential addition to the bookshelf for anyone interested in the history of American viticulture or of Italian immigrants in the US, and a fascinating and informative read for anyone else.

Zachary Nowak
The Umbra Institute Perugia
znowak@umbra.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.16

Most winegrowers want to practice sustainable winegrowing but are not aware of any simple definition of sustainability or how to practice it. This book serves to provide the concepts and perspectives needed to address the complex issues associated with sustainable winegrowing. The author, Clifford P. Ohmart, has the background and experience to shed light on this topic perhaps better than anyone else. His career has included three different but related paths that prepared him to address sustainability with a broad perspective. He has a basic science background with a PhD from University of California at Berkeley where he specialized in integrated pest management (IPM) and insect ecology and has published extensively on these topics. He has also worked as a private consultant to growers to develop integrated pest management strategies and as a writer of a bimonthly column on sustainable winegrowing for Wines and Vines magazine since 1998. In his third career path he worked with large groups of winegrowers to develop regionally sustainable winegrowing programs. Such work resulted in the Lodi Winegrowers Workbook (a self-assessment of sustainable winegrowing practices) and the Lodi Rules for Sustainable Winegrowing, a third party certified sustainable winegrowing program.

The book is divided into two broad parts. The first, composed of five chapters, is devoted to defining and understanding sustainable winegrowing. The second, composed of ten chapters, addresses the practice of sustainable winegrowing from a holistic viewpoint. There are over 60 figures that enhance the text and plenty of references for further reading. The book is written in a very approachable style even for those without a background in farming or viticulture. What is particularly refreshing about Dr. Ohmart’s approach is that he understands that growing quality winegrapes sustainably is based on sound ecological principles and understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Early on in the book he indicates that the challenges to development of a regional sustainable winegrape growing program are to define it, to implement it and to measure its effects. While there is no simple definition for sustainable winegrowing the one he uses was developed by the California wine industry and is referred to as the “3E’s” of sustainability. Stated simply, they are practices which are environmentally sound, socially equitable and economically feasible. Sustainable winegrape growing considers soil building as the foundation, minimizes off-farm inputs and concerns itself with the health of the environment and social equity.

Ohmart points out that farming is not “natural” – farmland is less ecologically diverse than, for example, forested land and farming leaves a definite environmental footprint. He views sustainable winegrowing as a continuum from less sustainable to more sustainable but recognizes that complete sustainability is not possible. He compares organic farming to sustainable farming emphasizing the points in common such as minimizing soil erosion, keeping water free of contaminants and building soil fertility, but also points out the differences as organic farming uses no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. No nationwide certification program for sus- tainable viticulture exists, however there are regional programs. Organic farming and national organic standards have been codified for over a decade. Interestingly, perhaps because these organic standards were developed so long ago, some environmental concerns are largely not addressed by organic standards as they are in most sustainable farming programs. A chapter is devoted to the principles of biodynamic farming and its emphasis on spirituality and natural rhythms. Without prejudice he wisely points out that “there are award winning wines produced by each of the farming paradigms, organic, biodynamic, conventional and sustainable and there are bad wines produced by each of them as well”.

A very interesting chapter is devoted to wine as a commodity and the resulting constraints to sustainable winegrape growing. The dictionary definition of a com- modity as an economic term is “an article of trade or commerce that can be transported, especially an agricultural or mining product”. The Wikipedia definition is “a largely homogeneous product traded solely based on price”. In this the author sees the consolidation of wineries worldwide into large conglomerates and con- comitant increase on the downward pressure of grape prices as a threat to turn winegrapes into a commodity such as to make sustainable winegrowing impossible in most areas. For those wineries where most sales are local or through their own tasting room and where distribution is not large, the issue of commodification of wine is nonexistent. However, the author points out the need everywhere to resist the identification of wine as a commodity and rather emphasize that wine is a value added product. Winegrowers need to emphasize the uniqueness of the grapes they grow to wineries and consumers. Higher winegrape prices ensure a sustainable business and provide growth and flexibility for the regional wine industry.

For me the most important chapter in the book is chapter 5 regarding the role of science in winegrape growing in the United States. Too often I have attended presentations at so-called “scientific” sessions of grape growers and wine educators where the invited speaker is an organic winegrower who has taken an “us versus them” attitude. He may have made some fine wine but is unaware of the cost to make that wine. The session moderator usually thinks it not sufficiently important to ask the cost yet this is a critical point – it is the economic “E” that drives sustain- ability. For example, I heard one organic grower-presenter refer to his conventional winegrowing neighbors as “nozzle heads” because of the presenter’s view of such farmers as indiscriminant users of pesticides. This is despite the fact that most winegrowers implement integrated pest management practices which are science- based and data driven and cost effective. Yet, I have never heard an organic grower give information about the economic feasibility of their organic practices. Sample costs for the production of organic winegrapes are available from U.C. Davis and are very high (over $4,000 per ton to break even at a yield of 4 tons per acre). Often, especially in the East where disease pressure is higher than in California, the real economics of organic or quasi-organic practices would indicate unsustainable levels of crop loss, low yields or a prolonged time of more than 5 years to harvest of the first crop. Ohmart points out that the foundation of training of farmers, whether conventional or sustainable, organic or biodynamic, should be based on science. One must be objective in gathering data and be aware of science based statistical analyses. To be sustainable one cannot treat winegrape growing or winemaking purely as an art – one must use a scientific approach. Simply put, if you cannot measure it well you cannot manage it well.

People go into winegrowing for a variety of reasons but few have the experience or vision to know what their long-term goals for the vineyard should be. In Part II of this book Ohmart helps the grower develop a vision based on holistic principles of a sustainable vineyard. He warns, borrowing a quote from Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” He presents a vision for the long-term health, biodiversity and productivity of the farm. He describes the need to identify resources, to develop sustainable goals, shared values and the desired landscape of the future. His considerable experience in developing a holistic vision came from a groundbreaking workshop he had with members of the Lodi Winegrape Commission.

Perhaps the least recognized “E” of sustainability is social equity. The reason for its lack of attention is that it is probably the most challenging to address. Humorously, Ohmart refers to this “E” as the 3rd rail of sustainability because no one wants to touch the subject for fear of getting zapped. Ohmart does a good job in defining social equity in terms of its challenges, human resource issues, estate planning and community involvement.

The last several chapters of the book are devoted to principles of ecosystem management and data driven sustainability. A common thread is that of vine balance – keeping vine vigor and fruitfulness in balance through sustainable soil and water management principles. He keenly emphasizes the importance of the watershed region as a minimum ecosystem unit. The watershed region is an excellent unit for examining a region for long term planning and more appropriate for winegrowing than political boundaries. So important are watersheds to sustainable viticulture that in my opinion when considering designation of a region as an American Viticulture Area (AVA) perhaps a future consideration should be that area encompasses a specific watershed region. Ohmart also draws on his vast experience in IPM to demonstrate how it can serve as a cornerstone of sustainable farming. There is also a chapter on vineyard establishment which outlines the key principles in understanding the vigor of the site and the vineyard nutrient management to keep vines in balance. The final chapter on certification is quite useful. Several regions have developed sustainability certification. After reading this book the winegrower might want to develop a sustainability program if one does not exist in his region. Yet the author is very cautious and advises the grower to introduce the sustainability concepts slowly and deliberately into his practice before trying to establish a regional program. There are several types of certification programs including process-based, performance-based and practice-based and the author points out their respective advantages and disadvantages.

View from the Vineyard, A Practical Guide to Sustainable Winegrape Growing is a useful book for those who are interested in understanding current approaches to this most promising form of viticulture. While the book is largely based on experience in viticulture in California and the West, regions with rather different sustainability challenges from those in the East where my vineyard is located, it nonetheless presents a broad enough based viewpoint so that sustainable vineyard activities can be extrapolated to nearly any regional ecosystem and community. The key points of science-based measurement, data gathering and analysis along with achieving vine balance are emphasized throughout this book as important components of sustainable winegrowing. This is the first and only definitive book on sustainable winegrowing and I highly recommend it to all current and prospective winegrowers.

Lawrence R. Coia
President, Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association
njwineman@comcast.net
doi: 10.1017/jwe.2013.15

Boom Varietal, a full-length documentary about Argentina’s Malbec wine, made its debut at the Bend Film Festival in Oregon in October of 2011. Since that time it has been screened at more than twenty indie film festivals throughout the United States. The project is a joint effort of Kirk Ermisch, President of the Southern Wine Group and principal owner of Bodega Calle in Mendoza, Argentina, and Sky Pinnick, owner of Rage Productions. The film was shot on location around Mendoza, Argentina over an eight-week period of time.

Malbec is a wine that we all know a little bit about. Those schooled in French wine will remember it as one of the classic Bordeaux blending grapes. It is a wine produced in a New World style, using Old World grapes, in an emerging wine country. Most restaurants list a single Malbec on their wine menu and, even given their mark-up, these wines often represent a reasonably priced accompaniment to dinner asking for a full-bodied red wine. They are generally neither too robust nor too light when trying to satisfy a mixed array of palates. Many a consumer has stocked a home bar in preparation for a party with Malbec. In brief, Malbec generally fits in a consumer’s budget and most red wine drinkers at the table or party will be pleased with the choice.

Malbec was introduced to Argentina by the French agricultural engineer Michel Pouget in 1868. The grape variety is actually known as Cot which originated in the Province of Quercy in France. Production was centered in Cahors and, though production is limited, much of the Cot or Malbec wine coming out of France is labeled and marketed as Cahors (Robinson, Harding, and Vouillamoz, 2012, pp. 272–274). Today it is the most widely planted good-quality grape variety in Argentina with over one third of the red wine produced in Argentina being Malbec (Wines of Argentina Website, 2012).

When one thinks of wine movies, the list of memorable films is not that long. There are two well-known fictional movies that do come to mind. The first of these is Sideways (2004) that really put California Pinot Noir on the map. The second movie is Bottle Shock (2008). Bottle Shock is loosely based on the American point of view of events leading up to the 1976 Judgment of Paris. On the documentary side the film that comes to mind is Mondovino (2004). The film, Mondovino, is probably most remembered for its length and its poor film quality. The theme of Mondovino is a look at the globalization and corporatization of the wine industry. Though Boom Varietal is also a documentary, its entertainment value is much closer to Sideways and Bottle Shock than it is to Mondovino. At seventy-two minutes in length, it provides for comfortable documentary viewing.

Truth in reviewing requires that this writer mention that he enjoyed a bottle of the Ca de Calle Reserva 2010 Malbec Blend from Bodega Calle while first screening the film. The bottle was provided by the Southern Wine Group. Since the reviewer was obviously going to enjoy a glass (or more) of Malbec while reviewing the film, this should only be considered a distributional issue and not one that affects the efficiency of this review. The Southern Wine Group just happened to answer the question of what Malbec to enjoy when they set the price of their bottle at zero.

The movie itself is quite easy to describe: breath-taking cinematography, easy- listening music, informative interviews, and a story of family. The cinematography is provided by the vineyards and topography of Argentina. The instrumental music is provided by Franchot Tone. The interviews are provided by thirty-eight individ- uals having a connection to the Argentinian Malbec industry. The story of family and tradition comes out in many of these interviews. Though the film’s executive producer is a wine distributor and winery owner, one never gets the feeling during the film that the marketing people are tapping you on the shoulder whispering, “Buy more Malbec,” in your ear.

Through the interviews with various individuals connected to the Argentinian wine industry one learns about the history of Malbec and gets a glimpse at what the future might hold for the wine. As mentioned above, the cast of interviewees is both large and diverse including: producers, wine shop managers, field workers, vineyard owners, winemakers, wine economists, wine investors, wine critics, and wine drinkers. The movie is appropriately named Boom Varietal. As the firm opens we learn from Kirk Ermisch about the story of Malbec that is similar in nature to the rise and eventual decline of Merlot and Australian Shiraz. Initially both wines were available in modest quantity and high quality. Their popularity, however, caused an increase in production to supply consumer demand at the cost of quality. This is an issue that wine economist, author, and blogger, Mike Veseth, returns us to later in the film. If and when the popularity of Malbec begins to fade is yet to be determined and one of the points of this documentary.

Early in the film Santiago Achaval, President of Achaval Ferrer Wines, walks the viewer through the early history of Malbec in Argentina. Malbec came to Argentina in the mid-nineteenth century but Argentina’s claim to being the seat of Malbec occurred later in that century when much of the European Malbec crop was wiped out by Phylloxera. From there the story fast forwards to the time period 1950–1980. At this time many of the largest wineries in Argentina were owned by the State. It is at this point in the film that we are given a pictorial tour of the State-owned Giol Winery that at one time was the largest winery in the world. Wine was produced in quantity, not for its quality. In the 1980s the government got out of the wine business, closing the Giol Winery. This opened the door to small boutique wineries that were primarily family undertakings, and much of the current wine production of Argentinian Malbec is a story of family. Part of the story we hear comes from fieldworker Cesar Liberato. Liberato is dedicated to his work. He tells of his family’s involvement with vineyards over several generations and how working the fields is in his blood and in his soul. He notes that at one time Malbec was considered a bad grape, but now he considers it the queen of Argentinian grapes. We also meet brothers Pablo and Hector Durigutti of Familia Durigutti Wine. We learn of their family’s history as Italian emigrants who found work in the early vineyards of Argentina. To this day they say that it is the hardworking attitude of their grandparents that drives them. They get up early and work late to produce a product of quality that the world will enjoy.

As noted in the film, several of the current wine growers and winemakers are fourth or fifth- generation producers of wine. It is here in the film that we meet the father and son team of Carlos and Adolfo Basso who own and run Vina Amalia. Carlos discusses his early career working at large corporate run wineries but now also demonstrates the passion that he has for his life, owning with his son, a small family run operation. Through technical improvements in the 1990s, these family run wineries and vineyards began producing a product that satisfied the inter- national consumer, particularly the consumer in the United States. It is this point in time when Malbec began its ascent to that of a boom wine. It is now known in this country as Argentina’s signature varietal. Mike Veseth comments in the film, that Argentina is the OPEC of Malbec for the United States.
As was mentioned earlier, the topography of Argentina makes for excellent cinematography in a film. It also, however, presents the perfect climate for growing Malbec that wants a warm dry environment. Angel Mendoza, owner of Domaine St. Diego, explains to the viewer that at 32 to 33 degrees south latitude combined with mountains that allow for a contrast in temperatures during the day and night, Malbec seems to thrive in many parts of Argentina. These same weather patterns that normally allow for Malbec to thrive can quickly turn fickle and produce hail that can wipe out grape crops. Guillermo Donnerstag of Familia Marguery esti- mates that a five minute hail storm can cause a one million dollar crop loss in his vineyard. British Columbia expatriate and owner of Cantinian Wines, Dana Rothkop, lets us know that changing weather conditions cause both exhilaration and fear at the same time. He likens dealing with the weather to riding a rollercoaster.

The story of family and the enthusiasm that the interviewees in the film show for Argentinian Malbec is a compelling story. It is equally compelling because even though there are few people that drink Malbec exclusively, everyone seems to drink some Malbec. It is an easy drinking wine that is still presented in the market place at a great value. Santiago Achaval puts it well when he uses an analogy provided by his father, a physician, that people catch the wine bug. The wine bug clearly has all the symptoms of a virus. It’s contagious, it’s incurable, and it does a lot of damage to one’s checking account. Carolyn Gallagher, CEO of Uncorking Argentina Wine Tours, points out that the bug for Argentinian wine really took off in about 2005 when people started seeing Argentina as a wine tour destination. They saw Argentina as a place to relax and have fun as opposed to a country of political unrest. She notes that this new perception was greatly aided by the favorable comments by wine media across the world.

Not everything presented in the documentary paints a rosy picture of the rise of the Argentinian Malbec industry. Briefly presented is the story of Canadian investors Chris Rush and Joel Cyr, who attempted to be absentee owners of a vineyard in Argentina. Their idea of getting in on the ground floor of an investment deal by being land owners of grape producing property failed. Likewise, the picture provided by New York City wine bar manager Nicole Ciani is not as positive as other aspects of the film. As a wine bar manager she understands Malbec, but she is really not a big fan and isn’t convinced that she needs to push it at her establishment.

The film ends with an unanswered question, “What is the future of Argentinian Malbec?” Several of the interviewees in the film point out that this is a very tenuous question. Santiago Achaval stresses that the international market for a quality wine product is very demanding. Winemakers cannot rest on their past successes. A quality product always needs to be produced. Kirk Ermisch notes that Argentina has always dealt with domestic inflation and inflated prices can very quickly reduce international demand for Argentinian wine. Adolfo Basso is very aware that Argentina has a history of changes in government policy toward business and economic activity and a change in government policy could radically alter the production and sale of wine in Argentina. Mike Veseth notes that wine drinkers go for fads, and he states it’s too soon to tell whether Malbec is permanent versus a trend. Dana Rothkop compares what has happened to Malbec to the real estate bubble in the United States. Staying with the theme and title of the film he notes that the story of Malbec is the story of a boom and booms can end. Watch the film and determine for yourself if Argentine Malbec is a Boom Varietal, here today and gone tomorrow, or if it is here to stay.

References
Miller, R. (Director) (2008). Bottle Shock. Screenplay by Jody Savin and Randall Miller. Freestyle Releasing, 110 minutes

Nossiter, J. (Director) (2004). Mondovino. Screenplay by Jonathan Nossiter. Velocity/ Thinkfilm, 135 minutes

Payne, A. (Director) (2004). Sideways. Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. Based on the novel by Rex Picket. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 123 minutes

Robinson, J., Harding, J. and Vouillamoz, J. (2012). Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, including their Origins and Flavours. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers

Wines of Argentina (2012). www.winesofargentina.org

David J. Hoaas
Centenary College
dhoaas@centenary.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.14

The Economics of Beer, edited by Johan F.M. Swinnen, is a collection of some 18 essays on a range of topics in the economics of beer; from its long history to its current role in emerging markets, from its production to its consumption. In the Preface, the editor Johan F.M. Swinnen explains that many of these essays were outgrowths of a conference on Beeronomics in Leuven in 2009, while other essays were added to round out the volume. Both that conference and this book were reflections of interest in the economics of beer, inspired by the longstanding example of wine economics, by the fact that beer is the largest selling alcoholic beverage, and by a number of aspects of the industry that have long intrigued economists.

To take one example, in the U.S., the brewing industry has undergone the largest increase in national concentration of any major industry. From four firm concen- tration of less than 20 percent in 1947, the largest four brewers in the U.S. now account for more than 90 percent of domestic production. The reasons for this trans- formation lie in substantial changes in the economies associated with production, but perhaps more importantly, in advertising. The ability of advertising to increase demand altered the focus of competition, further increased economies of large scale, and led to the demise of unsuccessful advertisers and smaller brewers generally.

More recently, the product itself has undergone change, with the advent of imports and craft beers. While still modest in overall share, these have captured consumer tastes and preferences at odds with the more homogeneous product best produced (and advertised) by the large national brewers. Overall market growth in recent years has largely been in the import and craft segments, forcing the major brewers to confront taste and production issues different from those that gave rise to their dominance. That has not gone well for them. The major brewers have increasingly resorted to mergers and acquisitions among themselves, across national boundaries, and with some smaller labels, actions that have triggered an array of interesting public policy questions.

Such issues make the brewing industry endlessly fascinating, and this volume does not disappoint in its effort to capture that. It provides a truly panoramic view of major issues in the brewing industry–panoramic in the sense of covering a remark- ably wide range of topics, panoramic in the sense of analyzing beer and brewing in a many countries with diverse experiences, and panoramic in the sense of providing a historic as well as contemporary perspective. This is an ambitious agenda for any book, and with this one, the editor and authors have succeeded.

The essays in this volume are mostly relatively short, befitting an agenda of many topics. They take different approaches to their respective questions, as the infor- mation allows and the authors see fit. The chapters themselves are written by a large number of different authors (although Swinnen himself is author or co-author of six  of the chapters). A number of the chapter authors have previously written on beer and brewing.

The book itself is divided into four main sections, each comprised of several chapters. In the first section, “History,” five essays describe a rich history of beer in various societies, highlighting several themes that are repeated in later essays on the modern brewing industry. Poelmans and Swinnen lead off with “A Brief Economic History of Beer,” beginning with ancient societies and extending up until the present. It emphasizes the crucial roles of technological change on the one hand and government regulation on the other, on the evolution of the industry. In chapter 2, “Beer Production, Profits, and Public Authorities in the Renaissance,” Unger offers further insight into a important period characterized by the consolidation of brewers, the rise of concern over pollution from production, and the effect of input costs and uncertainty. German regulation of “quality and purity” beginning in the 1500s and extending into the 20th century is the focus of the next chapter. Entitled “Standards and International Trade Integration: A Historical Review of the German Reinheitsgebot, van Tongeren analyzes how this regulation served to restrict entry and raise prices. The next two chapters focus on the British and Belgian markets respectively, countries where beer has been unusually important. In “Brewing Nation: War, Taxes, and the Growth of the British Beer Industry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Nye explains why beer became that country’s drink of choice, and how and why the government facilitated the emergence of a brewing oligopoly. In chapter 5, entitled “Belgian Beers: Where History Meets Globalization,” Persyn, Swinnen, and Vanormelingen describe both the plethora of Belgian beers and the emergence of InBev and Trappist as dominant producers.

Part II is devoted to issues of consumption. It begins with Freeman’s “Cold Comfort in Hard Times: Do People Drink More Beer in Hard Times?” which offers a statistical analysis debunking the proposition that economic depression results in more beer consumption. In “Beer Drinking Nations: The Determinants of Global Beer Consumption,” Colen and Swinnen provide data and discussion of major trends in beer drinking across countries and over time, including reasons why beer lost its dominant status in some important countries. The next chapter – “Recent Economic Developments in the Import and Craft Segments of the US Brewing Industry,” by Tremblay and Tremblay, discuss these newly important brews, including the extent of substitution with mainstream beers and the advantages vs. disadvantages of their small size. McCluskey and Shreay discuss individuals’ adap- tation to different beers in “Culture and Beer Preferences,” recounting in particular responses of international students in the US to domestic beers.

The industrial organization of the brewing industry occupies Part III of this volume. In chapter 10, “Competition Policy Towards Brewing: Rational Response to Market Power or Unwarranted Interference in Efficient Markets?”, Slade surveys a range of issues but focuses on the UK’s required divestiture of public houses in 1989, concluding that it was likely a misguided policy. Elzinga and Swisher discuss reasons for beer industry consolidation and for policy approval for mergers in the US in their chapter “Developments in US Merger Policy: The Beer Industry as Lens.” The title of Chapter 12 is “The Growth of Television and the Decline of Local Beer.” In it, George utilizes historical variation in the availability of television across regions of the U.S. to help determine its importance in the decline of local brews, concluding that while television played a role, it was not a dominant one. In “Determinants of the Concentration in Beer Markets in Germany and the United States: 1950–2005,” Adams examines the reasons that the industries in those two countries evolved quite differently. And in chapter 14, “How the East Was Won: The Foreign Takeover of the Eastern European Brewing Industry,” Swinnen and Van Herck document the progressive encroachment of Western brewers into Eastern European markets, largely via acquisition.

The final substantive part of this book examines the new markets for beer in three of the four BRIC countries. In “Beer Battles in China: The Struggle over the World’s Largest Beer Market,” Bai, Huang, Rozelle, and Boswell recount the long history of beer in China, from its ancient beer culture, through its growth and consolidation, to the (sometimes problematic) joint ventures of the present time. Russia is the world’s third largest beer market, and its long history, recent explosive growth, and associated regulatory issues are all discussed in Chapter 15, “From Vodka to Baltika: A Perfect Storm in the Russian Beer Market,” by Deconinck and Swinnen. The effects of India’s ambivalent attitude toward alcohol, its regulatory environment, and traditional quality issues are discussed by Arora, Bhaskar, Minten, and Vandeplas in “Opening the Beer Gates: How Liberalization Caused Growth in India’s Beer Market.”

In their concluding section “Beeronomics: The Economics of Beer and Brewing,” Swinnen and Vandemoortele summarize and distill lessons from the seventeen chapters that preceded. They note the significant changes in the product and its con- sumption over time, changes in economies of scale, changes in concentration and integration in the industry, changes in regulations and taxes that impact brewers, among other significant issues.

While the authors and editors do not quite state it this way, it would seem that change might be a constant theme in the economics of beer and the industry that produces it. In country after country, the industry has undergone significant change. The product itself, while readily recognizable, has reflected changes in technology and tastes over time. And policy measures have changed over time, and often in turn they have changed the industry. Some tax and regulatory policies have favored the beer industry (the ban on vodka advertising in Russia), while others have adversely affected it (as when beer sales are viewed as a source of tax revenues). Some have blessed consolidation (merger policy in the US) while in other cases policy has forced deconcentration (vertical deintegration in the UK).

It is, of course, difficult to ensure that a collection of essays leaves no niches unfilled, and this volume is no different in that regard. Some might wish for a more direct and comprehensive discussion of the power of advertising expenditures to transform this industry. Similarly, readers might benefit from further discussion of the business challenges and strategies that now face mainstream brewers. And a truly comprehensive analysis might include discussion of the adverse health and social effects associated with beer consumption. The omission of the latter seems particularly unfortunate, since one of the major changes of the last 30 years or so has been the movement to raise the drinking age in the U.S. and to hold drinkers more accountable for their actions (as in drunk driving laws); but despite all those, the problem remains a scourge in some countries.

But as noted, such caveats may not be entirely fair since the book does not claim to present a truly comprehensive picture of the beer industry. On the other hand, a volume entitled “The Economics of Beer” might suggest to some readers that they will come away with such a comprehensive portrayal, when, inevitably, that is not quite the case. While quibbling about such things, one might question the statement on the back cover of this book (more likely the product of the publisher’s enthusiasm) that reads “This book is the first economic analysis of the beer market and brewing industry.” This statement would not seem to recognize Tremblay and Tremblay’s excellent “The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis” (2004).

But quibbles over the title and jacket cover should not distract from the real point. This book has enormous strengths not found elsewhere. It covers a range of topics that is truly exceptional. It incorporates diverse approaches ranging from descriptive history to regression analysis of new data. Its fascinating histories of beer would be difficult to find elsewhere, much less to compile oneself. The same can be said for its country studies, each of which clearly took considerable time to compile. Its new research is often creative and provocative, suggesting opportunities for further study. All of the essays are well written and easy to grasp. Such a volume is a considerable contribution to the literature. It is both a pleasure to read and is well worth reading by students of industry and economics interested in one of an intriguing and important industry, both in history and at present.

Reference
Tremblay, V.J. and Tremblay, C.H. (2004). The US Brewing Industry:
Data and Economic Analysis. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

John Kwoka
Northeastern University
j.kwoka@neu.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.13

Of course any book that covers wines and wineries in South Africa has to compete with the Platter Guide, an annual offering that scores and provides tasting notes on every wine that is commercially available in the country and provides useful information on each of the wine farms, where to stay and where to eat in the winelands. First published in 1980 by John Platter under the title John Platter’s Book of South African Wines, the first edition provided tasting notes on “over 1000 wines”, and came in at 156 pages. Now, 30 years later, the book is over 600 pages and covers literally thousands of different wines. The Platter Guide is not without controversy, as tasting is not blind until award winners are selected. During this process, the members of the tasting team identify what they regard as the best wines, which are then shortlisted and re-tasted by a panel, which then identifies what they regard as the best wines in a South African context, and these are awarded five stars. These days, the industry waits for the end-of-year announcement of the five-star wines with as much anticipation as the Oscars. The number of pages of the Platter Guide is probably as good a predictor of quantity in the South African industry: and the number of five star wines the most reliable predictor of quality.

Discerning readers will know that they have to benchmark their taste against the Guide, whose main virtue is consistency of opinion from year to year. Prefer a 31⁄2 star Chardonnay to a more expensive 41⁄2 star offering? The Guide allows you to identify every other 31⁄2 star Chardonnay on the market, and tells you where to find them. Want to indulge in a 5-star offering? Just make sure you get there early! Another handy feature of the Guide is the “Wines of the Year” section, where the 5 star wines are identified along with a “Superquaffer of the year” award, an “Exceptionally drinkable and well priced” selection and a “Buy now drink later” selection. There is even a section on other wine awards, including the “Top 100 SA Wines”!

Each entry in the Guide contains a plethora of information in the case of wine farms: location of the winery (together with GPS coordinates these days), when the winery was established, date of first bottling, trading hours, size of the farm and area under vineyards, other amenities (tourist attractions, restaurants, accessibility for the physically challenged), name of owners, name of winemaker and viticulturist where appropriate, length of their service and so forth. This is followed by a narrative section providing background to the farm, the current vintage, winemaking specifics, awards won, etc. Then the serious business of tasting, rating and annotating is recorded, with all wines at 4 stars and higher typeset in red to enable easier identification. Those with the patience to trawl through back copies of the Guide will end up knowing as much about a specific winery as it is possible to know: imagine 30 years of annotations about your favorite winey, be it Kanonkop or Meerlust (both awarded five stars for their Cabernet in the 1982 edition) or Simonsig, whose highest rating for a dry wine in the 1982 edition was three stars (but four stars for their “slightly sweet” Gewürztraminer) but now receive 4 and 41⁄2 stars for almost their entire offering.

The current print run is 40,000 per annum, and total sales are in excess of 1.4 million, an enormous number in the context of South Africa’s population and given that the Platter’s Guide is not available in the U.S. It is safe to say that the Guide has guided South African wine drinking habits for decades now, and it is hard to imagine the industry without it.

Nick Vink
University of Stellenbosch
nv@sun.ac.za
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.12

Authors Elmarie Swart and Izak Smit have produced a 200-page book whose purpose is to provide a one-volume overview of the South African industry with a very specific focus on terroir, using the concept of geographical ‘pockets’ to describe sub-districts of South Africa’s Wine of Origin classification of regions.
The book comes in five chapters, starting with an overview of the industry, then the descriptions of the ‘pockets’, a chapter on wine tasting, one on wine buying, and finally a short chapter on selected aspects of ‘local knowledge’.
Chapter 1 (A recent overview of the South African wine industry) contains some useful information that explains the industry in its historical context and in the current context with its focus on social upliftment and environmentally responsible wine production. Most useful, however, is the sections on the unique geographical, climate and grape variety combinations that make up terroir in the South African industry, and the description of the timeline as the grapes grow and ripen and become ready for harvesting.

There are two things I don’t like about Chapter 2, with its description of the different wine regions. First, as mentioned, the authors refer to sub-district demarcations as geographical ‘pockets’ (so, for example, the Stellenbosch region consists of the ‘Polkadraai pocket’ the ‘Stellenbosch Kloof pocket’ and 10 more. As a quick look at Google will attest, this is not a term that has caught on in South Africa, nor is it used anywhere else in the world. Second, in each ‘pocket’ the ‘top producers’ and their ‘flagship wines’ are identified and named. However, the reader is not told on what basis this selection is made.

Nevertheless, this chapter has many strengths, not least of which is the magnificent photographs (not confined only to this chapter – they are a feature of the whole book). Then there is the advice to travellers (along with GPS coordinates) and the very knowledgeable descriptions of each area and its wines. This description makes up the bulk of the book, and the chapter is rounded off with a description of garagiste wine making in South Africa, of brandy production, and of sparkling wine.

Chapter 3 has a section on wine tasting and understanding of wine styles, and a short description of the prevalent styles for the different wine cultivars. Chapter 4 is a bit more of a potpourri of issues with some tips on wine collecting – but nothing on wine selling, probably because the writer assumes all wines that are collected are primarily for own consumption rather than as an investment. This despite the title of the chapter: Profit and Pleasure. The obligatory ‘food and wine pairing’ section follows. Chapter 5 contains some useful tips for travellers.

Nick Vink
University of Stellenbosch
nv@sun.ac.za
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.11

This book has great aspirations: its purpose, according to Robin von Holdt in the Foreword, is to “de-myth the bunk”, or in other words to replace “the confetti of awards handed out in wine competitions” and the “jargon and small print”; with the opinions of “a panel of the world’s greatest tasters” adept at “professional judging”. Can the book live up to these expectations? Their proof that it can is that “the winning wines are largely sold out!”

Procedurally, it works as follows: there are two judging panels, with wine tasted in categories (whites, reds, etc.), and the whole process is accomplished over five days. There are three judges in each panel with an overall Chair (Tim Atkin MW from the UK). Of the seven judges, three are from the UK, two from South Africa (one a wine maker who was not allowed to judge his own wine) and one each from Sweden and Italy. The tasting protocols include unsighted tasting; the temperature at which the wine is served (red, fortified and port at approximately 19 °C; white, rosé and dessert wines at approximately 13 °C; sparkling wines at approximately 7 °C); tasted both decanted (12 hours red/2 hours white) and from the bottle (15 minutes), with judges made aware of the duplicate wines; judges cannot discuss the wines during tasting; and top scoring wines are tasted up to three times. The purpose of the whole process is to ensure that international best practice is followed, and an audit and good governance report is publicly available.

Wines are entered into the competition, so it is entirely possible that the selection does not actually represent South Africa’s top 100 wines. A total of 366 wines were tasted (down from 390 last year), which represents only a small proportion of the 5000 odd wines available in the retail market in South Africa. Something like a quarter of the red wines entered made the cut into the top 100 (51 of the 100), a third of the white wines, fewer than a fifth of the Méthode Cap Classique, three of the four natural sweet wines and seven of the nine port style wines. The wines are listed alphabetically in the book (i.e. they are not ranked). A quick look at the selection reveals that some of my perennial favorites (Beaumont, Kanonkop, Meerlust, Uiterwyk – De Waal Wines these days -, Vriesenhof, Waterford) are not represented. Is this because they did not make the cut, or were they just not entered?

Apart from the judging protocol, the front matter includes a resume of each of the judges, a listing of the winners (the top 100 wines) by cultivar and style, and approximate prices for white wines that sell for less than R100 (about $12 at the current exchange rate) and R120 for red wines. Each entry provides information about the winery, about the grapes, the wine making process and the wine itself (including the alcohol level), and extracts from the judges’ comments and the winemaker notes. The judges are evidently fond of higher alcohol wines: only 11 of the 39 whites have an alcohol level of below 13.5% and only 15 of the 51 reds have an alcohol level of below 14.25%. A full 80 of the top 100 wines come off irrigated vineyards.

The last part of the book reports on a “Wine list challenge” where 32 restaurants throughout the country are singled out for their meritorious wine lists. This is followed by some interesting essays on a wide range of wine related topics, some general industry information and maps of the wine producing regions and a glossary of wine terms.

Nick Vink
University of Stellenbosch
nv@sun.ac.za
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.10

Jancis Robinson MW has done it again! In addition to being one of the world’s best known wine writers and broadcasters, including being the wine correspondent for the UK’s Financial Times since 1989, Jancis has raised the bar once more for global wine reference books. She published The Oxford Companion to Wine in 1994 and shepherded it through two further editions in 1999 and 2006. Then in 2007 she published with Hugh Johnson the 6th edition of The World Atlas of Wine, which tells us where winegrapes are grown. And now, after four years of arduous research, she has published–with co-authors Julia Harding MW and José Vouillamoz–the definitive book on which winegrape varieties are grown around the world. It replaces Jancis Robinson’s much more modest but still popular 1986 consumer guide to grape varieties entitled Vines, Grapes and Wine.

This is an extraordinary addition to the literature on varieties in several dimensions: size (1,280 pages and 7lbs/3kgs!), beauty (it includes full-page color reproductions of 80 of the 500 paintings produced for the 7-volume, 3,200 page book, Ampélographie, by Pierre Viala and Vitor Vermorel published between 1901 and 1910), accessibility (because it’s senior writer is an exceptional journalist), originality (e.g., their vine family of 14 pedigree diagrams and their ancestors), and respect for the scientific literature (a 20-page bibliography up to mid-2011). The authors could have made the book even longer, as there are perhaps 10,000 grape varieties, but they confined themselves to those grape varieties they could find to be still used in making wine in commercial quantities. A preview of the volume is available at www.winegrapes.org.

The timing of this book is no accident: in recent years DNA profiling has added hugely to traditional ampelography (which has been based on physical character- istics of the vine’s appearance). Scientific publications from that vine profiling began in South Australia in 1993 and in California at UC Davis in 1997, and have surged ahead in the fifteen years since then. When one parent is missing, it is still possible for DNA profiling to identify parent-offspring relationships. And even when both parents are unknown, a probabilistic approach can be used to detect siblings, grandparents or grandchildren. The latter has been done for Syrah, for example: its parents were discovered barely a decade ago to be Mondeuse Blanche and Dureza, its great grandparent is very likely Pinot (according to Vouillamoz and Grando 2006), and it is either a grandchild or a half-sibling of both Mondeuse Noire and Viognier.

In addition to it being much easier to prepare such a book now that DNA profiling technology is available, the book is timely also because of the growing demand for this stock of knowledge. One reason has to do with globalization. Numerous countries are looking to expand their wine exports, and one way to successfully compete in a crowded marketplace is to differentiate one’s product via varietal choice. Consumers, too are always looking for new types of wines, and more so as homogenization of product ranges proceeds with multinationalization of both wineries and wine retailers. A second reason for this increased demand for information on what grape varieties are growing where relates to the perceived need to adapt to climate change. Especially in the New World, where regulations do not restrict varietal choice, winegrowers are continually on the lookout for attractive varieties that do well in climates similar to what they expect theirs to become in the decades ahead. Thirdly, the biotechnology revolution is providing breeders with new opportunities, which is increasing the interest in exploring traits of little-known varieties. And fourth, the book is able to help those seeking to preserve rare indigenous varieties, especially where only old vines survive.

Some varieties are found to be not as rare as previously believed, however. For example, Zinfandel is genetically identical not only to Pimitivo (in Puglia) but also Tribidrag (in Croatia). Also identical are the two ‘varieties’ in the Liguria region, near Genoa, of Pigato and Vermentino–which are also genetically identical to Favorita (in Piedmont) and Rolle (in southern France).

The 1,368 ‘prime’ varieties currently believed to be grown commercially are listed at the front of the book according to their country of origin. Italy has the most (377), followed by France (204) and Spain (84), and then four other countries contribute just under 80 varieties each (Greece, Portugal, Germany, and the United States). Most of the rest are from Southeastern Europe and the countries surrounding the Black and Caspian seas. There are many more varieties mentioned apart from these prime ones, carefully listed in the entry of each prime variety as a synonym. Also shown in each prime variety entry are the varieties commonly mistaken for that prime one. Some readers might be surprised to see that Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are not listed as prime varieties. This is because they are mutations of the single variety Pinot, rather than distinct varieties: they can’t be distinguished by standard DNA profiling, only by their skin color.

There is a very helpful Introduction that provides a basic guide for non-scientists to the vine family, mutations and clones, vine breeding to produce crosses or hybrids, pests and diseases and, most importantly, DNA profiling. A brief history of the gradual geographic spread of viniculture over the past ten-plus millennia also is provided.
José Vouillamoz complements the other two co-authors of this book in that he is a botanist and grape geneticist who trained in grape DNA profiling and parentage analyses in Carole Meredith’s lab at the University of California in Davis. He then worked in Trentino, Italy with Stella Grando and since 2004 has been an independent researcher at Switzerland’s University of Neuchâtel. His achievements include the parentage of Sangiovese, the family tree of Nebbiolo, and the expanded genealogy of Syrah and its relationship to Pinot. Together with archaeologist Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues from Georgia, Armenia and Turkey, he was the first to establish the DNA profiles of grape varieties from the Near East. He thus brings great scientific depth to this venture.
Thus this book is likely to be, for the foreseeable future, the ultimate guide to understanding the grape vines that contribute so much to our enjoyment of wine. Further DNA profiling undoubtedly will add to our knowledge stock over time, but for non-specialists there is more than could ever be hoped for in this single volume.

Reference
Vouillamoz, J.F. and M.S. GRANDO (2006),
‘Genealogy of Wine Grape Cultivars: Pinot is related to Syrah’,
Heredity 97(2): 102–10.

Kym Anderson
University of Adelaide
and
Australian National University
kym.anderson@adelaide.edu.au
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.9

In Search of Pinot Noir is the third in a rapid succession of serious, meaty books on wine by Benjamin Lewin, a molecular biologist, principal author of a respected textbook on genetics now known as Lewin’s Genes X, and editor of the journal Cell from 1974 to 1999. Lewin, who was entrepreneurial in the field of scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing, founded Cell with MIT Press, then took it private in 1984, founding Cell Press, before selling the title to Elsevier, the world’s largest STM publisher, in 1999. He has been seriously (as well as hedonically) interested in wine for most of his adult life, and earned the Master of Wine credential in 2008. His wine books, each a huge project on a topic of high visibility and a physical volume of considerable heft, have appeared with astonishing speed, one each in 2009, 2010 and 2011, all published by Vendange Press, an imprint that (so far at least) publishes only books by Lewin himself.

In Search of Pinot Noir is a book about Burgundy, and about wine made from the pinot noir grape anywhere (and almost everywhere) else. Lewin examines most of the basic questions about pinot, Burgundy and other regions where pinot is taken seriously: what do we expect of pinot noir; what do we mean by Burgundian style; how are the pinots of the New World (and other European regions) different from red Burgundies; which properties of red Burgundy are attributable to terroir and which to winemaking; have winemakers elsewhere sought to emulate Burgundies or to create new expressions of the grape; what governs the ability of red Burgundies to age attractively, etc.

None of these questions is new, nor does Lewin provide original or startling answers. What In Search…does do, however, is to look systematically across essentially all the world’s pinot noir with a single intellect and palate, and to assemble in one place a wealth of comparative data about many parameters of winegrowing, especially climate, topography, soils, varietal distribution, viticultural practices and winemaker opinions about the interplay between sites and styles. This is new, I think, and an important contribution to the international conversation about pinot. Where else does one find, within the same covers, aerial/satellite views of Clos St-Jacques on which the individual holdings of five vignerons have been labeled, of the Rochioli Vineyard showing individual blocks by clone and date of planting, and of Central Otago labeled with the sub-regional vineyard area designations? Or same-person tasting notes on a six-year vertical of Treinta y Dos, a recently revived 1932 planting of pinot noir at Bodega Chacra in southern Argentina; an 11-year vertical of Krafuss, Alois Lageder’s flagship pinot from the Alto Adige; and a seven-year vertical of Weingut Oekonomierat Rebholz’ Spätburgunder from the Im Sonnenschein vineyard in the Pfalz?

Lewin’s felicity with visual data presentations also offers readers an uncommonly rich array of charts and graphs expressing such matters as relative price evolution of
Burgundian crus from the 17th to the end of the 20th centuries (p. 50), comparison of growing season temperatures in the Willamette Valley and Burgundy from 1980 to 2010 (p. 228), and the variability of harvest dates in Burgundy since 1945 (p. 61).

The book is well and reliably sourced overall, albeit based primarily on secondary sources, and on interviews. Occasionally circumstances and events are reported or summarized imperfectly, or in ways that create incorrect impressions. On p. 237, In Search . . . says that “Pinot Noir was first planted [in the Russian River valley of California] in the 1960s after Joe Rochioli asked the University of California, Davis for advice how best to use the land; they advised planting grapevines.” This is not quite accurate (although my own book, North American Pinot Noir, is cited as its source). In truth, Rochioli was growing grapes well before 1960, but not pinot noir, which Rochioli introduced only after UC Extension advisers, asked to install a thermograph in his vineyard, determined that cool-climate varieties like pinot and chardonnay would work better in Rochioli’s site than the colombard and zinfandel on which he had first relied. On p. 244, reporting on the climate of Santa Barbara County’s coastal valleys, In Search . . . says that “cooling breezes enter directly from the ocean and are channeled along by the mountains, and there is strong diurnal variation.” (My emphasis.) In truth, there is much lower diurnal variation in these valleys than in most other pinot-friendly regions of California; the mesoclimatic hallmark of the southern central coast is relatively low daytime highs and relatively mild overnight lows. On p. 217, the caption for the table is misleading: the origin of many Oregonian pinot noir selection does not really “remain unknown;” growers were simply given an opportunity, when surveyed, to omit this information, which then appeared in the state statistics as “did not report.” Most instances of “did not report” are actually either Pommard or Wädenswil.

In his final chapter, Lewis (in his own words) “stick[s] [his] head into the lion’s den.” In fifteen pages, he attempts (1) to define what differentiates pinot noirs from other great red wines, (2) to isolate what differentiates non-Burgundian pinot noir from red Burgundies, (3) to answer the question he explored in earlier chapters about the relative importance of terroir and winemaking, which emerges as an essay-within-an-essay comparing DRC and Leroy versions of Romanée St-Vivant and Richebourg (4) to identify the greatest Burgundian cru (no surprise perhaps that “nothing can rival La Romanée Conti”), (4) to define “perfection” in pinot noir, and (5) to answer through tasting which of an eclectic selection of pinots succeeded best against the aforementioned definition of perfection. I read these pages hoping for epiphanies. Lewin’s familiarity with the turf and impressive command of relevant data were on display, and some interesting observations are recorded – viz, 1995 Williams Selyem Rochioli Vineyard “is a vindication of the notion that Pinot Noir can have alternative typicities . . . [which can be] equally expressive of the grape” and “there was more convergence of wine style [in the “Grand Tasting” with which the book concludes] than you detect when you compare current vintages.” But I have to confess that the argument seemed ruminative to me, and ultimately underwhelming.
Saying that “Pinot noir shows its most delicious side when aging,” a proposition with which I often agree, Lewin ends up with heavy emphasis on felicitous ageability as an indicator of wine’s hedonic worth, or at least of pinot noir’s hedonic worth. At one point he cites the auction prices of Domaine de la Romanée Conti as evidence that the market thinks Burgundies age more felicitously than any Bordeaux, and he stops just shy of embracing the notion that wines built to age do not show well when young. Surely, however, the stratospheric prices commanded by DRC wines (vis-à-vis those asked for Grand Cru Bordeaux) are primarily a function of reputation vs. minuscule supply. There is also the problem that “essence” arguments about defining properties of any region’s wine, or wine in any given region from a single grape, that are based almost exclusively on the properties of its rarest and most expensive exemplars, risk confusing a few majestic trees for the forest.

Occasionally good books seem needlessly flawed by shortcomings associated with editing, design and/or production. Throughout In Search . . . photographs display a mauve tint, and some are washed out, e.g., p. 82. Important topical transitions are sometimes made without benefit of appropriate subheads; e.g., the shift made on p. 313 from a discussion of Australia to information about South Africa. Often text is neither centered nor aligned in the cells of tables; in the table on p. 132 Rheinhessen is unnecessarily truncated to “Rheinhess—”. The table on p. 123 would have been clearer if “relative distance to Beaune” had not been expressed in miles; what is apparently meant here is the rough equivalent in miles of differences in latitude, but I had to puzzle this out.

Overall, this is a very serious and interesting book on a matter of growing interest, especially as pinot noir looks more and more like a major international variety.

John Winthrop Haeger
Stanford University
jwhaeger@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2013.8

The food supply chain is interesting—and important—for a variety of reasons. First, we depend on food for survival. While we might do without the newest electronic device or consumer good because of a supply chain disruption, and incur little discomfiture, disruptions in the food supply chain are much more problematic, having the potential to transform society (and not, I would argue, in a good way). Second, food is perishable. The nature of the product and how it’s produced, affect that perishability. Perishability requires exceptionally well managed supply chains. Third, it’s not one supply chain, but many—the chains vary greatly for meat, dairy, vegetables and fruit, for example. Even within a food type—seafood, for example— there is great variety in the chains. Fourth, the climate affects food production; most would argue that we have entered into a period of greater climate variation, resulting in less consistent food supplies. Fifth, we are seeing—at least in the United States of America—a rediscovery of food, with a large set of related and developing movements—to name a few, avoiding genetically modified organisms, eating seasonally, eating sustainably, farm-to-table, locavores, organic, nose-to-tail and knowing the provenance of one’s food. Sixth, the price and availability of certain food products have resulted in food counterfeiting, particularly of seafood. Seventh, because food products are often comingled in the supply chain, tracking the movement from origin to consumption is a challenge, yet important because of food-borne pathogens and, potentially, food terrorism. Finally, the chains vary greatly in the size of the players involved, ranging from small, farmer-owned and run operations, to large multinational corporations.

The book delves into these issues and numerous others. Many people will find this book interesting—government employees who are responsible for regulating and monitoring food production, people in the food production industry, retailers of food products, restaurant supply chain managers, even the casual readers interested in what food chains are now and where they are heading.

The titles of the book’s chapters, which give a good idea of what it covers, are: Introduction; Food Safety; Animal Protein Supply Chains; Commodity Crop Supply Chains; Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains; Food Regulation and Verification Mechanisms; Food Service; Food Manufacturing and Logistics; Food Retailing; Food Aid and Hunger Relief; The Future of Food Supply Chain Management. Most chapters end with a company profile or case study. The chapters also have discussion questions, which would make the book well suited for educational purposes. Where appropriate, the authors provide information on the extent to which the chain is concentrated; it was surprising to see the extent that major players have at different levels of the chain for different items—the top two companies account for over 40% of the production of broiler chickens, for example. It’s hard to single out one or two chapters to highlight, but for me the chapter on Food Aid and Hunger Relief reinforced the challenges we’re likely to face more often in the future, given weather-related disruptions to the supply chain.

As the book is chock full of facts and figures, the authors were thorough in their research. The book was an easy and generally engaging read. As I noted above, the use of company profiles and case studies helped ground the work. To me, the best single page in the book was Table 11.1, in which the authors compare conventional agriculture with alternative agriculture. The differences the authors point out, and the movement toward the latter, capture much of the challenges in food supply chain management (or, at least, gets one thinking about those challenges). This dichotomy can be divisive, because food brings out passions in people. To their credit, the authors have presented a balanced view, not only in this table but throughout the book. A big take away from the book for me was a much better understanding of the complexity of the food supply chain; that complexity helps explain why my favorite grocery store is sometimes out of stock of a desired item.

I have a couple of minor quibbles. I found some of the pictures and graphics hard to follow, perhaps that’s because they were better suited to reproduction in color, yet were gray scale in the book. In particular, the graphics of the USA showing food production were hard to understand. There were also several tables that seemed to contain errors. Finally, the book is USA-centric. However, it’s hard to imagine that people in other countries, with an interest in the topic, would not find it of great value.

On a more personal note, I would like to have seen a little on the supply chain for one of life’s great sustenances: wine!

Gary Thompson
Cornell University
gmt1@cornell.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.34

approached The Drops of God (DG) as a serious skeptic. After all, how could a career economist steeped in neoclassical theory find kinship in a 400 page comic book? Surprisingly, DG made short work of my inner skeptic, as my curiosity gave way to genuine interest before yielding entirely to the charms of my first full length graphic novel. Perhaps the contrast itself is the appeal – the animated storylines offer a welcome respite from the left brain-dominant world we economists inhabit. I recommend readers of this journal seeking an entertaining diversion to consider picking up volume 1. If you take the initial step, here’s betting you’ll soon be buying the next volume too.

DG is a multivolume wine-themed Japanese graphic novel (“manga”), currently making its English translation debut one volume at a time. This review is based on the first four volumes available in English. The manga was originally published as a comic strip in a weekly newspaper in Japan beginning in the early 2000s, before becoming a 34 volume series of graphic novels there (with a total of 48 volumes planned). The Fall 2008 issue of this journal provides an insightful review of the original Japanese version of the series (Musolf, 2008). DG’s popularity spawned translation into French, Korean, Taiwanese, and now English, as well as a television adaptation in Japan. Two siblings, successful manga authors writing under the pen name Tadashi Agi, created the series and Shu Okimoto provides attractive illustration. The English language publisher currently plans to print five volumes, which covers ten Japanese volumes.

Plot and Presentation
DG’s storylines offer compelling drama that alternate between moments of swift action and periods of reflection. The main plot builds around Shizuku Kanzaki, the son of Japan’s premier wine critic who, in an act of youthful rebellion, had vowed never to drink wine. When his father dies suddenly, he learns he must vie to inherit his mansion and world-class wine collection. The competition stipulated by his father’s will requires Shizuku attempt to identify a list of twelve wines (Apostles) favored by his father, plus the divine “Drops of God”, based on his poetic written descriptions. His opponent is his father’s rising star protégé wine critic and adopted second son.

Against this backdrop, a lively tale of intrigue and hijinks ensues. This pursuit takes our protagonists to far corners–exclusive Tokyo restaurants, Burgundian vineyards, the Taklimakan Desert in China, even a homeless wine guru’s makeshift shelter. The authors convey a deep reverence for exceptional wines, at times accompanied by emotional content that keeps the reader engaged. I unexpectedly found it hard to put down.

Part of the appeal stems from the vivid descriptions of wines sprinkled throughout each volume–evoking fields of wildflowers, crystalline lakes, rock concerts, and priceless works of art. Volume 3 describes the 2002 Chateau Lafite- Rothschild:

Plump, mature, almost pitch black cherry aromas. A bright forest full of foliage and frolicking animals. Germany’s swan castle. A beauty pregnant with madness, timeless architecture, surviving the ages, reflecting antiquity, modernity, and even futurity. Lafite is the stately calm of an old castle.

Similarly, the series lionizes legendary winemakers like Henri Jayer, who buck convention to chart their own courses, resulting in exceptional quality.

Through their characters, the authors demonstrate their affinity for premier French and Italian wines, which dominate the discourse. Yet, they provide balance by touting the quality and accessibility of lesser-known value wines. This duality offers newcomers a pathway to gain a toehold in the market by introducing them to affordable wines now, while stoking their aspirations to taste the superstar Grand Crus later. The first four volumes of DG make scant mention of other wine regions including those in the U.S., although I understand some later volumes of the original Japanese versions are devoted to them.1

Influence
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the series is the outsized influence ascribed to it by some in the wine industry. Decanter magazine called it, “Arguably the most influential wine publication for the last 20 years”. Such exaltations seem overblown at first blush, considering the hundreds of detailed tomes published over the period. Undoubtedly, the statement is meant to be provocative.

The evidence on its influence appears to be long on anecdotes and short on hard data. For example, numerous reported cases of changes in beverage ordering practices to include more wine within the Asian hospitality industry exist. Tales of demand spikes for specific wines mentioned by the series abound. More generally, the primary support for the DG’s influence remains the rapid growth of wine sales in Asia, marked by the emergence of Hong Kong as the world’s leading wine auction site by sales value, and the run-up in prices of high-end wines. This virtual explosion has roughly coincided with the publication dates of DG, beginning in 2004. Of course, no single publication or activity accounts for these remarkable market developments. The combination of globalization, rapid economic growth, wine investing, and the rising popularity of more traditional wine education surely share some of the credit.

Nonetheless, to the extent it educates readers, publication of this manga series could be credited with making basic wine knowledge far more popularly accessible than before. By lowering barriers to entry, DG may well facilitate market expansion, perhaps both for the specific wines it features and for wine generally.

It is impossible to definitively verify the claims of the series’ influence on demand (particularly Asian) given the numerous contemporaneous dynamics in the global wine market. Still, if the data were available, an economist could attempt to test its influence statistically. For example, a general approach might test for structural breaks in the time-series relationships between French wine prices and their determinants before and after the publication of the series in different countries.

However, this could create an attribution problem if a break were found. Another option might take pooled data on price and its determinants and incorporate a dummy variable (and interaction terms) to designate specific wines (and their vintages) mentioned by DG to assess potential influence on price. A variation could use an event study method to assess potential “excess returns” to prices of these specific wines by comparing them to a broader wine price index such as the Liv-ex 100. In principle, this approach would mitigate the attribution concern, however, it may be complicated by the potential information spillover effects of different overlapping publication timelines in neighboring countries (DG began publication in Japan in 2004, South Korea in 2005, Taiwan in 2006, and China in 2010).

Education Value and Human Character
How credible is the claim that DG is an important knowledge dissemination vehicle? The series appears designed in part as a heuristic tool. Its central character is a wine novice who serves as a ready point of departure for readers to learn about wines alongside him. In Shizuku Kanzaki’s initial encounters, he stumbles to grasp some basic precepts of wine knowledge and appreciation. But armed with a cocksure attitude and youthful exuberance, he forges ahead and becomes an educational conduit for the wine neophyte reader.

In this vein, the series offers numerous potentially useful, yet entertaining, basic oenological lessons. They touch upon, for example, the influence of soil on resulting wine characteristics, the restrained winemaker’s ability to reveal the essence of a grape, and proper pairing of wines with food. While the graphic format avoids technical language and greatly simplifies these insights, it undoubtedly helps educate at least some who would otherwise avoid making the investment in a more conventional wine education.

DG’s true pedagogical value may lie in its function as an initial hook to engage a previously disinterested (and likely considerably younger than typical wine aficionado) audience. If a subset later becomes more fully immersed in knowledge acquisition, accompanied by wine consumption and collection, one could conclude the market had been influenced, perhaps profoundly so.

DG’s depiction of wine as revelatory of personal character and wisdom was particularly intriguing to me. For instance, the series describes a range of personalities who experience wines in distinct ways–as purely a money-making business interest, as an instrument for psychological recovery, as a pathway to true knowledge, etc. Wine helps to reveal and sometimes improve character, and these profiles emerge via compelling episodic storylines.

In one case, an elderly father who bequeaths his small wine shop to his quarrelsome sons buys a large amount of a Marsannay village wine and counsels them to learn from the experiences of its sibling winemakers.

I want you two to be like the brothers Philippe and Vincent Lecheneaut who made their domaine succeed – that’s the message this wine bears. Domaine Lecheneaut was founded by their father Fernand. It was a puny domaine. Their father died in ’86. . .the brothers were at their wits end. . .the two of them had completely different personalities. Their views were opposite as well. Just like you two. . .As long as their agendas clashed in each bottle, there was no way their wine could move the drinker. They saw this and began to confer about all stages, so they could draw out each other’s strengths. While the older brother tended to the grapes, the younger turned them into wine. All for the single purpose of “creating a moving wine”. And eventually their talents blossomed. . .In 1991, they achieved their dream. . .wines labeled “Domaine Philippe et Vincent Lecheneaut” bearing both brothers names saw the light of day…their wine became the talk of critics and enthusiasts. In the end, Robert Parker, Jr., strict in his ratings of Burgundies, came to award a perfect score of 100 to their Grand Cru, Clos de la Roche. . .I want you working together to build up the dull, dinky shop I’m leaving you. Make it into the biggest wine shop in Japan. Be like the Lecheneaut brothers.

Readers know intuitively that wine alone cannot fundamentally alter human character. Yet, I found an enjoyable part of the experience to be my own willingness to suspend disbelief as the story unfolded. Imagining a world that benefits from having wine play a more primary role in social and professional relationships becomes easier to do thanks to DG. That alone is an achievement.

Closing Thoughts
As a first time manga reader, my expectations for this series were low. Yet, as a wine lover and Asia-watcher, I found the series surprisingly appealing. While it is no substitute for the deeper knowledge gained through serious study and experience, it artfully helps to demystify wine for those who may have considered it too formidable or simply lacked interest, while providing high entertainment value. Readers of this journal seeking a head-clearing break from data-intensive analytic work will benefit from test driving the first volume. You might find yourself transported into a parallel realm devoid of data but rich in drama, artistry, and imagination, all closely intertwined with our favorite liquid companion.

1 Volume 5 of the English translation series, released after this review was written, focuses on New World wines, particularly on California and Australia.

Reference

Musolf, P. (2008). Review of Tadashi Agi (writer) and Shu Okimoto (illustrator): Kami no Shizuku: Les Gouttes de Dieu. Vol. 1. Journal of Wine Economics, 3(2), 217–222.

Mark Heil
Washington, D.C.
mth3087@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.33

Though I bought the book in Leeds, England, during a conference where I met the author, I read most of it during another conference in unbearably hot Odessa, Ukraine, sitting and drinking (unfiltered, I insist) beer in a German beer cellar.

The title of Scruton’s book, a reminder of Descartes’ I think therefore I am, does not tell it all. Descartes was a serious man and though he was born in Touraine, a wine region, did probably not drink much. Scruton is often very funny, serious at times (perhaps too much), knows wine very well, drinks and fondles it, writes on beauty (2009a), sexual desire (2006), is one among the great contemporary philosophers of music (1997, 2009b), and even composed two operas. He does not look very tender, but his (written) relations with wine, women, music and poetry are very delicate. And this starts very fast, in his Prelude (a musical term, of course) where he quotes Emerson “who commends the great wino Hafiz [a Persian poet] in the following words:”

Hafiz praises wines, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy.

This is echoed in Scruton’s terms (p. 5) that “by thinking with wine you can learn not merely to drink in thoughts, but think in draughts. Wine, drunk at the right time, in the right place and the right company, is the path to meditation, and the harbinger of peace.”

Chapter 2 is devoted to his friends who made him “fall” for wine (or is it he who made them fall) and his acquisition of a 1945 Château Lafite, “the greatest year from the greatest of clarets,” to which I will get back later with a nice suggestion. The chapter ends on a remark (p. 27) concerned with the “new habit, associated with American wine critics like Robert Parker, of assigning points to each bottle” which should not only be “viewed with nothing but contempt” but also compared to “assigning points to symphonies, as though Beethoven’s 7th, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, Mozart’s 39th, Bruckner’s 8th all hovered between 90 and 95.”

In Chapter 3 Scruton goes for a walk (or is it biking?) on a Tour de France of wines, starting in Burgundy, down to the Rhône Valley, the Pyrenees, including Collioure (pp. 52–54)—where some editors of the Journal of Wine Economics have a very dear old friend—and ending in Bordeaux with Eliot’s description of a spiritual journey that applies equally to a journey through wine:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The exploration also discusses wines that, at least to me, are not well known (p. 59), but “as with women and horses, the real best is the second best.” This is very similar to what Orley Ashenfelter and I decided to do when we have to choose a bottle of Champaign: Always go for the cheapest.

With much reason, Scruton does not think very highly of blind tasting (p. 34): “To think that you can judge a wine from its taste and aroma alone is like thinking you can judge a Chinese poem by its sound, without knowing the language.” We can all agree on this after having applauded wine experts at the Princeton AAWE Conference in June 2012, where a blind tasting was organized to reproduce the famous 1976 Judgment of Paris (see Taber, 2005). But this time New Jersey and not Californian wines were compared to the same French wines than in 1976, though from a later vintage. The ‘expert’ tasters concluded that out of ten red wines, nine (including Châteaux Mouton-Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Leoville Las Cases, Montrose, and five NJ wines) were (statistically) not distinguishable.1

My only problem with the chapter is that Scruton defines himself as a terroiriste.2 I am not since I believe that terroir is chemistry. This was already the opinion expressed by Johan Joseph Krug (1800–1866), a famous champagne producer, who suggested that “a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate the various ingredients.”3 No trace of terroir.

Chapter 4 brings “news from elsewhere:” the Middle-East where wine was born; Greece where Bacchus, Dionysos, and more importantly, Eros used to hover; the United States; Australia, New Zealand and their misspelling of Syrah as Shiraz, the Iranian city of poets, gardens, nightingales and last but not least, wine; a few lines on South Africa, then Italy, Romania and Spain. But “travel narrows the mind, and the further you go the narrower it gets. There is only one way to visit a place with an open mind, and that is in the glass” (p. 84). Scruton had already warned the reader in chapter 3 (p. 54) not to read the “elsewhere” chapter: “After punishing body and soul with Australian Shiraz, Argentine Tempranillo, Romanian Cabernet Sauvignon and Greek Retsina, we crawl home like the Prodigal Son and beg forgiveness for our folly. . . [Claret] is the wine that made us and for which we were made, and it often astonishes me to discover that I drink anything else.”

This is for the “I drink” part of the book. Its author then moves to the “therefore I am” part which often needs much deeper philosophical knowledge than my very basic understanding of aesthetics only, which should but does not even include Immanuel Kant. Meanwhile, it rejoices me that even a man as serious as Kant “enjoyed wine and provided a pint bottle for each guest at his regular dinner parties” (p. 104). If this was merely a US pint (473 milliliters), I would have turned down his invitations, though even the imperial pint used in the UK (568 milliliters) would have left me quite unhappy.

In passing, Scruton evokes the great philosopher Avicenna who lived in Isfahan (Persia) during Islam’s Golden Age (980–1037 AD); he was a wine aficionado who recommended drinking at work defying “the Koranic injunction against wine, citing it as an example of sloppy reasoning,” (p. 109) that does not take into account whether it is a small or a large amount. Scruton (p. 133) also points to the fact that “in surah xvi, verse 7 of the Koran wine is unreservedly praised as one of God’s gifts. As the prophet, burdened by the trials of his Medina exile, became more tetchy, so did his attitude to wine begin to sour, as in surah v verses 91-92. Muslims believe that the later revelations cancel the earlier, whenever there is a conflict between them. I suspect, however, that God moves in a more mysterious way.”

Scruton is also quite skeptical that the vocabulary used by so-called experts to describe wine is of much help (pp. 125–126, 134, 137): “If I say of a wine that it has a flowery nose, lingers on the palate, with ripe berry flavours and a hint of chocolate and roasted almonds, then what I say conveys real information, from which someone might be able to construct a sensory image of the wine’s taste. But I have described the taste in terms of other tastes, and not attempted to attach a meaning, a content, or any kind of reference to it. The description I gave does not imply that the wine evokes, means, symbolizes or presents the idea of chocolate; and somebody who didn’t hit on this word as a description of the wine’s flavour would not show that he had missed the meaning of what he drank or indeed missed anything important at all. Our experience of wine is bound up with its nature as a drink [which] endows wine with a particular inwardness [and] intimacy with the body [that is not] achieved by any smell, since smell makes no contact with the body at all, but merely enchants without touching, like the beautiful girl at the other end of the party. . . Nothing else that we eat or drink comes to us with such a halo of significance, and by refusing to drink it people send an important message —the message that they do not belong on this earth.” Useless to add that I fully agree.

The last two chapters deal respectively with wine and whine, and being and bingeing. Though Scruton has something to say in favor of Puritanism, he castigates the ease with which (p. 140) “puritan outrage [and in particular, prohibition, but also sexual behaviour] can be displaced from one topic to another, and the equal ease with which the thing formerly disapproved of can be overnight exonerated from all taint of sin.”

He vehemently protests against “the humourless mullahs,” and the misuse of drinking, but also rejects the idea that fermented drinks are just shots of alcohol, and insists on their social functions across civilizations and time (pp. 144–160): “The burden of my arguments is that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is a culture, and that this culture has a social, outward-going, other-regarding meaning. . . When people sit down together sipping drinks, they rehearse in their souls the original act of settlement, the act that set our species on the path of civilization, and which endowed us with the order of neighbourhood and the rule of law.” But he has not much against drinking alone, and ends with a few words from the Chinese poet Li Po (700 BC), the same poet whom Mahler used in his Lied von der Erde (though in a very approximate translation):

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

Scruton knows that the best (including Li Po’s poetry) should be kept for the very end. The bouquet (of the wine, but in French the word is also used for the finishing of a firework) comes with the Appendix: What to drink with what, though here the second what does not stand for food, but for philosophers.

St Augustine (p. 178): Drink a glass of Moroccan Cabernet Sauvignon, though “the City of God requires many sittings, and I regard it as one of the rare occasions when a drinking person might have legitimate recourse to a glass of lager [which I did in Odessa, while reading Scruton], putting the book to one side just as soon as the glass is finished” [which I did not do, since I had three glasses, each of which containing half a liter].

Bacon (pp. 181–182): “Any discussion of his insights should, I think, proceed by the comparative method. I suggest opening six bottles of a single varietal—say Cabernet Franc—one from the Loire, one from California, one from Moravia, one from Hungary, and if you can find two other places where it is grown successfully you will already have given some proof of the inductive method—and then pretending to compare and contrast, taking notes in winespeak, while downing the lot.”

Descartes (p. 182): “As the thinker who came nearest, prior to the Monty Python, to stumbling on the title of [my] book, Descartes deserves a little recognition. . . He has ended up as the most overrated philosopher in history, famous for arguments that begin from nothing and go nowhere. I would suggest a deep dark Rhône wine [that] will compensate for the thinness of the Meditations.”

Spinoza (p. 182): “The last time that I understood what Spinoza meant by an attribute it was with a glass of red Mercurey, Les Nauges 1999. Unfortunately, I took another glass before writing down my thoughts and have never been able to retrieve them.”

Kant (p. 184): “And when it comes to [his] Critique of the Judgment, I find myself trying out [several wines], without getting any close to Kant’s proof that the judgment is universal but subjective, or his derivation of the ‘antinomy of taste’— surely one of his most profound and troubling paradoxes, and one that must yield to the argument contained in wine if it yields to anything.”

Nietzsche (p. 189): “Although we should drink to the author of The Birth of the Tragedy, therefore, it should be with a thin, hypochondriac potion, maybe a finger of Beaujolais in a glass topped up with soda-water.”

Husserl (p. 189): “I recommend three glasses of slivovitz from Husserl’s native Moravia, one to give courage, one to swallow down the jargon, and one to pour over the page.”

Sartre (pp. 190–192, passim): “Sartre’s great work of philosophy, L’être et le néant, introduces the Nothingness that haunts all that he wrote and said. . . If ever I were to read Sartre again, I would look for a 1964 Burgundy to wash the poison down. Small chance of finding one, however, so there is one great writer whom I shall never again revisit—and I thank God for it.”

Heidegger (p. 192): “What potion to complement the philosopher who told us that ‘nothing noths’? To raise an empty glass to one’s lips, and to feel it as it travels down—noth, noth, noth, the whole length of the tube: this surely is an experience to delight the real connoisseur.”

It’s now time for me to conclude. Obviously, due to his publicly admitted very conservative leanings, Roger does not mention that Karl Marx’s family were the happy owners of a vineyard on the Ruwer, an affluent of the Mosel. The family sold it, but there still exists a Karl Marx wine, of which I own a bottle that lies in my (not air-conditioned) cellar and at which I look from time to time. This is a bit like Roger whose bottle of 1945 Château Lafite “accompanied me through life’s turmoil’s like a talisman, but that I judged too good to share, except with that special person whom I had never met, and too good to drink alone unless to mark some new beginning.” (p. 26).

I promise to open my Karl Marx wine if Roger visits me. But then, in all fairness, he should come and have his 1945 Château Lafite with me.

1The judgment of white wines was similar. For details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Judgment_of_Princeton.
2 I am grateful to Roger for correcting my spelling of the word as “terroirist” in a previous version. I preferred it without the “e”, an almost voluntary slip of the pen.
3 See also Gergaud and Ginsburgh (2010).

References

Gergaud, O. and Ginsburgh, V. (2010).
Endowments, production technologies and the quality of wines in Bordeaux. Does terroir matter? Journal of Wine Economics, 5(1), 3–21.
Scruton, R. (1997). The Aesthetics of Music.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (2006). Sexual Desire:
A Philosophical Investigation. London: Continuum.
Scruton, R. (2009a). Beauty.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (2009b). Understanding Music:
Philosophy and Interpretation. London: Continuum.
Taber, G. (2005). Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine.
New York: Scribner.

Victor Ginsburgh
ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles
vginsbur@ulb.ac.be
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.32

Please do not judge Creating Wine by its cover. The main title plus the illustrations of two grape vines might suggest that this is a book about practical viticulture or perhaps home winemaking. The devil is in the details and in this case the truth is in the subtitle (The Emergence of a World Industry 1840–1914). This is the story of how the world wine business evolved in the critical years before war in Europe and Prohibition in the United States when the roots of today’s global industry were established.

The story told here is how different wine regions adjusted to exogenous shocks (such as the Phylloxera scourge) and disruptive technological change (such as improved rail and sea transportation) and how these differential responses set the industries on courses that still vary today. Significantly, Simpson finds his explanations not simply in history or culture, but instead in differences in relative factor abundancies (land scare Old World, labor scarce New World) and differing patterns of political and economic power. Here’s a summary of the basic argument.

There are many ways to characterize the Old World – New World dichotomy, but from an economic standpoint it is can be boiled down to the fact that the Old World is dominated (if that’s the right word) by small family winegrowers and by cooperative producers, which account for over half of total production in some regions. Wine growing and production are often separated from the marketing function. New World wine, by comparison, is highly concentrated and vertically integrated, with growing often a distinct business from production and marketing. The top five firms in the U.S. and Australia produce about 70 percent of the wine, according to Simpson’s figures. The concentration ratio is only slightly less (50 percent) in Argentina and Chile. The figure is about 10 percent in Italy, France and Spain, although it is possible to find particular regions where a few (often cooperative) producers dominate. It would be easy to say that it is collective wine versus corporate wine, but many large U.S. wine firms are family-owned so the stereotype doesn’t completely fit.

These differences aren’t new, Simpson argues, but rather evolved over the period covered by his book in response to six “distinct but interrelated” factors: production conditions (terroir), traditions (path dependency), technology and technological change, the nature of market demand, the responsiveness of the political system to the plight of small producers, and particular forms of political organization. The political factors are especially relevant in understanding the differential government policy responses to periodic crises related to fraud, adulteration and over-production. Simpson weaves these six factors together in complex ways, showing that no single cause is responsible for the final effect.

This is rigorous political economy analysis (the author is professor of economic history at the Carlos III University of Madrid) so, although there are no equations, there are plenty of useful tables and charts, which add to the story, as well as some useful maps. And although it wouldn’t hurt to have taken an introductory economics class to understand some of the terminology, I don’t think this is a firm pre-requisite. I found the writing to be clear and interesting.

Part I focuses on Europe and particularly France and introduces in quick succession the problems of the railroads (19th century globalization), Phylloxera and the development of viticultural science, and the political economy of the response to fraud caused in part by Phylloxera-driven shortages of wine grapes. The rest of the book examines Europe’s failure to penetrate export markets (especially the U.K.) followed by comparative analyses of the evolving wine industries in Bordeaux, Champagne, Spain, Portugal, the U.S., Australia and Argentina. A final chapter brings things forward to the present.

I enjoyed this book because of the way it helped me make connections. In every chapter I found two or three interesting facts that I already knew and then Simpson supplied the key connecting idea. Suddenly it all made sense! A very satisfying (and informative) read. Let me pick one example to illustrate. Thousands of Chinese workers came to the United States in the 19th century to help build the transcontinental railroad. Many remained, especially on the West Coast, after the Golden Spike was driven home. Cheap, hardworking and quick to master new skills, they became the backbone of the California wine industry.

But economic conditions changed and anti-Chinese attitudes emerged and many were driven from the country; an underlying labor shortage was revealed, only partially bridged by fresh immigrants from Italy and other European countries. The problem of scarce and expensive labor became the defining economic constraint of American wine, Simpson tells us (just as the uneconomic division and re-division of European vineyards over time defined Old World wine economics). The technical innovation of a “vertical” winery, where the force of gravity moved the grapes and juice from one part of the production process to the next, was created to economize on labor, Simpson says, not just to provide more gentle treatment of the grapes as a dozen wine tour guides must have told me over the years.

Getting a better understanding of the past is satisfying, but I think what I like best about Creating Wine is the way it helped me think about the present and the future. Exogenous shocks are still with us, technological change (the now widespread use of 24,000 liter bulk wine ocean shippers) is there, too, and the problem of penetrating new export markets is with us, too. Reflecting on the past in this way promotes a deeper appreciation of current issues and

Creating Wine is a good book for anyone who loves wine economics, wine history or . . . wine! Highly recommended.

Mike Veseth
University of Puget Sound and WineEconomist.com
veseth@pugetsound.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.31

Reviewer: Neal D. Hulkower I got carsick reading a significant portion of this book but it wasn’t because I was doing so in a moving vehicle. Here is an example of why: “Leaving Tarara on Rt. 658 and continuing northwest, you’ll intersect Rt. 15 again. Turn right onto Rt. 15 and make sure to put on your left turn signal and turn left on Rt. 672 before you find yourself suddenly going over the Potomac River into Maryland. At the intersection of Rt. 287, continue straight, now on Rt. 673, which soon becomes Rt. 690.” (pp. 101–102) Between pages 56 and 163, passages like this mar Leahy’s otherwise honest and useful portrait of the Old Dominion’s mushrooming wine industry. Ironically, while he admires the achievements of Virginia’s vineyard growers and winemakers due in large part to the implementation of modern technology, Leahy himself ignores the advent of online mapping and the Global Positioning System in favor of these turn-by-turn instructions. Does he really expect wine tourists to take the hardback book along, prop it up on the dash and read the directions while behind the wheel? Absurdly, he neglects to include addresses, phone numbers, and websites of the wineries he visited. Instead, almost as an afterthought on the very last page, he points you to his website, www.beyondjeffersonvines.com, for tasting notes. Nevertheless, there is much to recommend in this volume by a well-credentialed resident connoisseur of Virginia wines. In it, we are treated to an overview of four centuries of grape-growing in the commonwealth, a grand tour of wineries and vineyards, a brief discussion of the importance of support from the state government, cameos of several “Virginia Women of the Vine,” and an up-to-date snapshot of the challenges and efforts to gain domestic and worldwide recognition and market share for the industry.

Leahy divides the 400-year history of the commercial wine industry in Virginia, America’s oldest, into 5 phases, each fitting nicely into one century beginning with the seventeenth. In 1619, the Jamestown Assembly passed Acte 12 which required under penalty that each male head of household plant 10 (incorrectly stated as 20 in the book) imported vinifera vines with the intent of supplying wine to Great Britain. When this proved unsuccessful for various reasons, not the least of which was an inhospitable environment, efforts turned to growing tobacco. Experiments with vitis vinifera continued the following century most notably by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and at a farm named Colle. While his efforts failed, it was recently learned that others were fruitful even before Jefferson’s first attempt in 1771. One of the more fascinating tales recounts the discovery of records of the work of Charles Carter whose success was certified by the Royal Governor in 1763. In the nineteenth century, the emphasis was on native and hybrid grapes especially norton, named after Dr. Daniel Norton. As Leahy notes: “It is unclear whether Dr. Norton manually ‘created’ the variety by physically hybridizing it, or whether hybridization was accidental, due to cross-pollination in his garden. . .” (pp. 26–27). To this day, norton remains a popular and versatile alternative to the traditional vinifera grapes, producing a range of styles from rosé to table reds to port-like dessert wines. With a recognized world-class grape that flourished in the Virginia climate, things were looking up. “Unfortunately, just as the promise of quality commercial Virginia viticulture was being realized, Prohibition took hold in 1914.” (p. 27) It wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that the wine industry began a very slow recovery. Now in the twenty-first century and well into the fifth phase, Old Dominion’s vinous odyssey has taken a sharp turn toward the promised land, a wine industry with serious national and international creds.

Leahy describes visits to dozens of wineries and vineyards in the six American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) and other regions in all parts of Virginia. When I was taken off of the virtual road and directed into a tasting room or vineyard, I was treated to insights into the personalities and opinions of the proprietors and varying degrees of detail on the grapes grown and/or the wines produced. During my residence in Alexandria, Virginia from 2004 to 2011, I visited several of the wineries that are mentioned by Leahy. For the most part, his impressions matched mine. For example, I was quite taken by Linden Vineyards which I visited twice leaving each time with a mixed case of truly impressive bottlings of Bordeaux blends and seyval blanc, a hybrid varietal that has been a guilty pleasure of mine. On the other hand, Leahy is too kind to even briefly mention Naked Mountain Winery & Vineyards which I consider a genuine blemish. Perhaps its inclusion is due to it having “one of the best slogans in the business: Drink Naked!” (p. 86) I’ll demur.

Leahy points out that experimentation to determine the most suitable grape varietals for the various Virginia terroirs continues. Several of the winemakers quoted in the book cite viognier as Virginia’s signature grape. I certainly found the examples I’ve tasted to be noteworthy. I have also been impressed with some of the chardonnay, the varietal with the most acreage. Cabernet franc and petit verdot are also mentioned as producing very successful wines, an observation that once again matches my personal experience. Nebiollo also does surprisingly well in selected sites. As a transplant to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, I found it amusing to read that pinot noir is produced by some wineries.

Stylistically, the wines of Virginia produced from vinifera grapes occupy the middle ground between those from Europe and those from California but lean more toward the former. Because of exceedingly inconsistent and occasionally inhos- pitable weather, fruit and alcohol tend to be much more restrained than in what comes from the west coast. Leahy quotes Rutger de Vink, founder of RdV Vineyards: “We’re ripe but not as ripe as California; we’re kind of between Napa and Bordeaux. . .” (p. 8) Virginia viogniers compare more favorably with those from the Rhône than with those from Paso Robles. The cabernet franc based wines are reminiscent of those from the Loire.

Any of the half dozen women in Virginia’s wine industry introduced in the book would make delightful company over a glass of the local product. Lucie Morton, “a Virginia native with an international reputation as a viticulturist, vineyard consultant, and researcher” (p. 169) is in the spotlight first and gets the most ink. We also meet three winemakers, a regional sales manager, and a vineyard manager. Leahy notes “that despite a lopsided gender balance, women can and do make valuable contributions to [the Virginia wine industry]” (p. 169).

Being personally involved in turning national and international attention to Virginia wines, Leahy is particularly well-qualified to write a book on the industry in the state. But the book he did produce suffers from a number of problems in addition to the one I opened this review with. Unfortunate ordering of chapters resulted in unnecessary repetition of material. Poor editing suggests a rush to print. Three uninspiring black and white photographs alternate as illustrations above chapter headings failing to do justice to the beauty of Virginia’s vineyards. Especially irritating is the index. While its four three-column pages appear impressive, the listing is woefully incomplete. For example, Middleburg, recently named Virginia’s seventh AVA, is not included nor is the historically significant Acte 12. At least one important fact in the five pages of additional information at the end of the book is out of date; the total economic impact of the wine and grape industry in the commonwealth is listed as $362 million per year (no year given), which is less than half of the $747 million in 2010 documented in a study commissioned by the Virginia Wine Board. Old Dominion’s rapidly maturing wine industry is arguably the most exciting and potentially the most influential east of the Rockies. It certainly merits better treatment, perhaps along the lines of Cole Danehower’s Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest.

Like the commonwealth’s wine industry it describes, Beyond Jefferson’s Vines has both glaring flaws but more than enough compensating virtues to fill the need for an authoritative reference adequately for the moment. One can only hope, however, that like the best winemakers we meet in his chapters, Leahy will learn from his mistakes and produce a much improved edition in a not too distant vintage.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.30

Voodoo Vintners presents the history and farming techniques of a group of biodynamic viniculturists and winemakers in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, in America’s Pacific Northwest. The region is considered excellent for Pinot Noir. Biodynamics is an occasionally ridiculed organic farming method based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the Austrian philosopher, mystic, and founder of anthroposophy. “Voodoo” refers to the method’s occult origin. As biodynamics has gained popularity with winegrowers, it has entered the awareness of consumers keen on organic food and wine, alternative lifestyles, and holism. It surprises me that this awareness extends to wine drinkers who just twist and pour. Nevertheless, Voodoo Vintners aims to be “a simple, readable, enjoyable book on biodynamic viticulture for the everyday wine lover to flip through and enjoy” (ix). (If “enjoying an enjoyable book” is not your idea of readable, you will find much in this book to inspire rapid flipping.) Cole gaily blends journalese, research, and conversations with offbeat Oregon wine people and succeeds in keeping things snappy. Unfortunately, her casual approach underplays biodynamics and the richness of Steiner’s thought.

Cole marks the turning point in Oregon biodynamic winegrowing with the appearance of Burgundian biodynamics pioneer Lalou Bize-Leroy at the 2001 International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville. In Cole’s reconstruction of the event, Bize-Leroy presented three of her Domaine Leroy wines, which are among Burgundy’s most prestigious. The wines (Corton-Renardes, Clos de la Roche, and Latricières-Chambertin, all from the great 1999 vintage) deeply impressed the tasters, including several local winegrowers, who studied them as Bize-Leroy spoke on Steiner. (According to Cole, Bize-Leroy’s speech was incomprehensible for linguistic reasons.) Non-biodynamic wines from these vineyards would also have impressed, but it does not appear that comparisons were made. Bize-Leroy’s strict control of yields, which is not a biodynamic technique, and her exceptional tasting, blending, and winemaking skills, attested by her non-biodynamic negociant line Maison Leroy, go unmentioned. Nevertheless, Cole notes a significant increase in the local interest in biodynamics following the tasting and attributes the change to the event. At the same time, she concedes that of the four winegrowers present who later converted to biodynamics, none confirms that the tasting or speech influenced the decision to convert. To me, the Bize-Leroy tasting seems more a convenient benchmark in a diffusely triggered trend than a watershed.

In a chapter entitled “The Green Factor” and elsewhere in the book, Cole presents environmentalism as another important reason for the spread of biodynamics. In Oregon, the green movement has a long tradition and sets the tone in the urban consumer milieu. Organizations devoted to conservation are numerous. Among them is the American chapter of Demeter, the biodynamic certification society. For the state’s eco-conscious consumers, an affiliation with one of these groups is a sign of a winery’s environmental awareness and commitment to sustainability. Most Oregon wine is sold in the local market. Therefore, biodynamics possesses a promotional cachet that may be an incentive to winegrowers. Nevertheless, Cole concludes that the voodoo vintners have embraced the method not as a marketing tool but as a means to produce good wine while remaining faithful to environmentalist values, which is almost the same thing but not quite. Some of the wine is not good: “Biodynamically farmed grapes make fascinating wines. They also make banal wines” (x), says Cole. (All the same, bad biodynamic wine that does not sell would be evidence of sincerity.) Beyond a Pinot Gris that Cole found “crisp and clean” and “pure” (vii), whether biodynamic wine has a concretely distinctive taste is unstated, and Cole doubts that biodynamics has much to do with expressing terroir. Of the biodynamic wines I have tasted, most have been almost startlingly vibrant and fresh and had a subtle seawater tang, something a professional winemaking acquaintance described as the “goût biodynamique” and which may simply be unadulterated umami. The vagueness of this terminology notwithstanding, it would be interesting to know whether biodynamic wine is equally popular in places where the green movement is weak. Such a comparison might reveal whether consumers buy (and winegrowers produce) biodynamic wine for the flavor or the idea.

As explained in the chapter “Big Biodynamics,” saving money is also a reason to adopt Steinerian farming. The method relies chiefly on small quantities of natural, often homemade field sprays and the precise zodiacal timing of vineyard work and winemaking. The main piece of special equipment required is a simple machine for stirring the sprays. Once established, biodynamics may reduce vine-tending and grape-processing costs by improving a vineyard’s disease and pest resistance, vigor, and fruit, Cole writes. The cost of farming at 230-acre Montinore Estates in Forest Grove is $3,200 per acre, which is $1,300 per acre less than at nearby non-biodynamic Willamette Valley Vineyards, Cole reports. Montinore Riesling is available at a “ridiculously affordable” $10 per bottle (113). Cole notes similar success at other West Coast biodynamic wineries of a comparable scale.

The book does not clarify whether biodynamic winegrowing is economical for all estates, however. Cole cites one winegrower’s estimate that biodynamic vineyards cost approximately 10 to 15 percent more to manage than other sustainably farmed vineyards. Cole attributes these added costs to the demands of proper composting; field-spray mixing; encouraging biodiversity, which can include farm animals; paperwork; and, amusingly, studying books on biodynamics. Demeter certification costs $480. Annual renewals cost $380 plus 0.5 percent of gross sales. A consultant receives approximately $1,000 per visit, according to Cole. Where economies of scale are limited, these expenses must be passed on to the customer. Therefore, despite the attractive prices of certain wines and the abundance of receptive consumers, some biodynamic Oregon Pinot Noir remains a difficult sell.

Josh Bergström of 84-acre Bergström Wines comments: “Price is funny when it comes to Oregon. We are making efforts here that are world-class. We have some of the lowest yields in the state, and we implement a very expensive farming system. We pay our team very well. We have great packaging, and we buy nothing but the best French barrels. If we followed the lead of Napa, Burgundy, or Bordeaux, our wine would be $200. Our most expensive wine is $85, and that’s still a tough pill for people to swallow” (134). Those words are either the death rattle of a voodoo vintner on the verge of bankruptcy or a rehearsal for a chat with a loan officer about buying more land. Biodynamic Riesling specialist Jay Somers sympathizes: “It’s more about surviving than making money” (106). Bergström Pinot Noir is apparently not hard to swallow. The company’s world-class website can boast more accolades than Matt Kramer’s mother, and Somers recently bought a 40-acre vineyard and built a winery in partnership with Ernst Loosen, the Mosel Valley producer. One gets the impression that voodoo vintnering might involve a bit of voodoo financing too. In all, 1,274 acres of vineyard are farmed biodynamically in Oregon, which is approximately 6.5 percent of the state’s total 19,300 vineyard acres, according to Cole.

Despite an enthusiastic consensus that “it’s spiritual” (83), the underpinnings of biodynamics in Steiner’s revelations make Cole and the voodoo vintners uncomfortable. To provide some context, in 1924, in response to an increasing concern among European farmers about environmental degradation, Steiner gave a series of lectures that became the basis of practical biodynamics. Known in English as the Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, the lectures pose many challenges to readers accustomed to keeping their feet on the ground. To say the least, Steiner’s view of agriculture was unconventional. For Steiner, a farm extends past the boundaries of perceived reality, and his approach to farming draws on his acquaintance with supernatural forces and beings that influence plant growth. When Steiner said that agriculture is about healing the earth, he was speaking of curing imbalances in the physical realm by nourishing the connection to a universe beyond the senses. Yields, quality, profitability, environmental impact — the concerns of the modern winegrower — are not the primary focus of Steiner’s ideas. If anything, the recipe for superior Pinot Noir is a coincidental reward for cleansing one’s soul of delusions and opening oneself to a reality that is not centered on the ego. Steiner is “out there” in the best Zen sense of detachment, yet not contemplative. Biodynamic agriculture is a farm for active self-transcendence.

Voodoo Vintners dedicates one chapter to a summary of Steiner’s life and thought. Given the book’s humble ambitions, this sketch might be sufficient. Readers with an appetite for a thorough treatment of Steiner’s interests and achievements, which lead far and wide into questions of science, philosophy, and spirituality, may prefer Colin Wilson’s helpful Rudolf Steiner: The Man and his Vision. Wilson says little about biodynamics, but he succeeds where Cole does not in communicating the attraction and earnestness of Steiner’s work. I optimistically took up Cole’s book expecting guidance in the obscurities of biodynamics and Steiner-mind. I finished it with the feeling I had just misspent two hours channel-surfing.

For her part, Coles expresses a desire to address Steiner’s unusual ideas directly (28). Nevertheless, she avoids discussing the lectures, retreating instead to the skepticism she establishes in her introduction. Biodynamics, she writes, is accompanied by “a lot of extraneous spiritual baggage that I can’t help but view cynically” (x). Cole is a journalist and schooled in incredulity. However, she is not alone in her hardheadedness. Regarding Steiner’s visions, Demeter USA executive director Jim Fullmer says, “We are pragmatic, practical people. We don’t take a lot of bullshit” (8). Even the voodoo vintners find it difficult to go further than Sam Tannahill, who underlines the importance of thoughts and feelings to farming practices, or Robert Gross, whose website mentions gravity and magnetism but says nothing about the immaterial beings who for Steiner play an indispensable role in farming. “Astonishing” turns out to mean noncommittal, and to commune as Steiner did with sylphs, undines, gnomes, and salamanders is not a reason for any winegrower portrayed in the book to pursue the agricultural epiphany of a superb bottle of wine. I find this general halfheartedness disappointing.

Cole develops her aversion to mysticism by historicizing biodynamics and questioning Steiner’s character. She provides anecdotal evidence that the herbs used in the biodynamic field sprays are part of the agricultural tradition of Iran. Admittedly, certain aspects of Steiner’s theology were Zoroastrian. However, the value of Cole’s suggestion that biodynamics is just another term for Middle Eastern natural farming is difficult to judge without a comparison of Steiner’s explanation of the sprays with the corresponding Zoroastrian accounts. Cole also implies that biodynamics is the result of plagiarism and faddism, which is trivialization and unfair to an original and insightful thinker. In addition, Cole writes that Steiner was “lonely,” “schizophrenic,” “a budding homosexual” in youth and unable to consummate “his later marriages to women [sic]”(31–32). For Cole, allegations like these disqualify Steiner (not to mention many of my favorite writers), although we are encouraged to patronize him: “It can’t have been easy to grow up in the environment that bred the First World War and then Nazism. Steiner dealt with the instability around him by believing that he possessed supernatural powers that would help him to rise above the chaos” (30). That statement is the most ingenuous summary of the great Austro-Hungarian cultural convulsion that you will find and delivers on the promise of “simple.”

Fleeing the chance for some one-on-one with Big Weird, Cole takes cover behind Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Maria Thun, and Lynn Carpenter-Boggs, who have worked to transform Steiner’s agro-esotericism into how-to farming techniques. Pfeiffer (1899– 1961), a German soil scientist, promulgated Steiner’s ideas in the U.S. after immigrating in 1940. Cole writes that Pfeiffer “should rightfully be deemed the genius behind biodynamics” (39). Warranted or not, Cole’s elevation of Pfeiffer is part of a strategy of discrediting Steiner, in which the practitioners presented in the book share to differing degrees. Scattered attributions of a protobiodynamics to Goethe, an uncompromising anti-reductionist who inspired Steiner but whose supreme literary gift and canonical status protect him from attack, also contribute to the pattern of isolating Steiner, divorcing biodynamics from its cryptic origins, and emphasizing the method’s practical, testable aspects.

Such diversionary tactics are understandable. If the intellectual environment of Cole and the voodoo vintners is anything like mine, they inhabit an embattled realm in which mechanistic, strictly quantitative thinking has more generous modes of thought on the defensive. Even in a culture as open-minded as Oregon’s, these circumstances make it nearly impossible to take Steiner at his word much less adopt the down-to-earth approach to interpreting him that Cole touches on in a paragraph about phenomenology (34). Although Cole does not follow up on her idea, Steiner, who saw himself as a spiritual scientist, might have welcomed a view of his thought that equated subjectivity and objectivity, as absurd as that balance may appear to a rationalist. In any case, to fully digest Steiner and the expanded existence he saw, the solid nutrients of reason should be supplemented with the enzymes of intuition; inner, somatic, and qualitative experience; imagination; the arts; and myth. In groping for the truth of our unruly reality, we should avail ourselves confidently of all the means of knowing. If biodynamics cannot be contained by the Tetra Pak of the scientific method, it is not Steiner’s fault.

Peter Musolf
Yokohama, Japan
aawe@wine-economics.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.29

Economically it may be the worst of times, but oenologically, it is the best. Winemaking technology has not only matured, ensuring higher quality, but has also been shared globally. I no longer approach an inexpensive unknown label, regardless of origin, with quite the same trepidation as I did in the 1970s. In his fourth book on vinous subjects, journalist George Taber chronicles the evolution over the past couple of decades that has resulted in reducing the gap in quality between the best bottles with high price tags and those with the lowest. Taber asserts and then illustrates that “[t]he chasm…has dramatically narrowed in the last generation” (p. 1). This pleasant volume, as agreeable to read as many of the inexpensive wines recommended therein are to drink, is divided into three parts plus a Guide to Best Buys. Part I, “A Global Business in Turmoil,” sets the tone by relating “embarrassing” instances in which so-called experts misidentified wines in blind tastings or fell prey to frauds. “Clearly, wine consumers should not be buying a bottle simply because it is expensive or because some famous person says it’s good. People should decide for themselves which wines to drink. . . . They may be pleasantly surprised by what they discover” (p. 9).

In Part II, “The Iconoclasts,” Taber introduces several characters who offer alternative approaches to understanding and determining taste preferences to assessing the value of medals awarded to wines, to packaging them in creative ways, and to critiquing them. A commanding knowledge of his subjects based on interviews, research, and literature reviews informs his stories, which sustain an engaging personal tone. For example, we learn about Tim Hanni, who has divided tasters into four phenotypes, “the combination of physiological and behavioral traits someone exhibits when it comes to taste” (p. 37). These are sweet; hypersensitive, preferring “delicacy and finesse”; sensitive or more balanced; and tolerant, able to enjoy more intensive flavors. A test is included that allows the reader to find out what his or her Taste Sensitivity Quotient is. I took this test and followed up with a slightly more thorough evaluation on Hanni’s web site. As someone with extremely eclectic, even promiscuous, tastes in both food and wine, I found the result irrelevant and even naïve.

Part III tells several tales of some of the most prominent “Wine Revolutionaries” who are filling shelves with inexpensive, though in my opinion not always good-value, wine. We learn the histories of “Two-Buck Chuck,” the creation of Fred Franzia of California’s Central Coast, and John Casella’s [yellow tail] from Australia. “The Next Giant of Bargain Wines” tells the tale of the emerging wine industry in China, which some cognoscenti believe will produce rivals to the best of France.

Taber’s “Guide to Best Buys” lists his preferences in 34 categories, mostly varietals, for wines costing $10 or less, and a couple of splurge bottles between $10 and $20. He also lists bargain brands from a dozen regions around the world and concludes with his picks for boxed wines. I read the 128 pages nodding in agreement with many of the recommendations, especially for bottles from Washington State, Spain, and the Southern Hemisphere, and only occasionally shaking my head in disagreement. I’ve never been enamored of “Two-Buck Chuck,” for example.

With the statement “Far too many winemakers stress the importance of their terroir to charge more” (p. 162), Taber stakes out a position with the “antiterroirists” in the ongoing dialectic and foreshadows the plaints in the Occupy Wine manifesto (http://wineeconomist.com/2011/12/06/occupy-napa-andsonoma-and-burgundy-and-bordeaux/). With this volume, he has become an important advocate for reasonably priced wines, but he is no ideologue. He also drinks and appreciates the best wine that the world has to offer but, like the 99% of us, cannot drink them every day.

A big disappointment for me, a recent transplant to McMinnville and committed “locapour,” is the lack of a worthy contender from Oregon for a bargain wine under $10. Taber’s recommendations include 10 Washington/Oregon bargain brands, yet none of the ones listed originate at an Oregon winery. Only Castle Rock, which offers a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, is mentioned. A Maysara Roseena from the McMinnville AVA is a splurge off-dry rosé at $14. “Both Washington and Oregon have many boutique wineries that charge premium prices, so it can be difficult to find wines under $10” (p. 277). I confirmed this after tasting a 2008 Rascal Pinot Noir and a 2009 Rascal Pinot Gris, both on sale for $5.99, regularly $7.99. Although the nose of the pinot noir exhibited some of the characteristics typical of a Willamette Valley product, hints of earth, dark fruit, dried herbs, hay, and coffee, the overall impression was simple and fairly muted. The taste was lifeless ending in a short watery finish. Initially, the pinot gris made a bit better impression with lots of pear on the nose and an ordinary taste but decent finish. The next day was a different story, with everything out of whack. My desire to support the local economy yet drink well for less has not yet reached a happy equilibrium. The search goes on. In the meantime, I find some comfort in the advice of Edmund Burke in A Letter to a Noble Lord, “Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is however another and a higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.”

I enthusiastically recommend Taber’s latest treatise on wines. It is blessedly devoid of purple prose. It represents solid journalism addressing the “who what why where” of the current and emerging bargain wine scene. Finally, it presents one worldly taster’s advice on what to drink while not spending a fortune. But things are rapidly changing. With the economy likely to stay in the doldrums for a while,  established wineries are creating less expensive labels to stay afloat and Taber’s recommendations may soon be dated. So, like the wines it extols, this book should be consumed young.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.11

Let me begin with the conclusion. Yes, if you’re interested in wine, you should read this book. It proselytizes for natural wine, a significant movement in winemaking today. It is something important to know about whether you agree with its philosophy or not. Besides, the book is delightfully written.

“Natural wine” has no precise definition. Essentially, it is wine from grapes grown organically with no additions in the winemaking process and no extraordinary manipulations. A sticking point is the use of sulfur, which most winemakers feel is required to prevent spoilage. Sulfur may be permitted in organic winemaking but is sharply frowned upon for natural wines.

The book Naked Wine is a largely first-person account of Alice Feiring’s encounters in this semi-cult-like world. Feiring travels from the wine country of California to France, Italy, and Spain investigating the origins of the natural wine movement and detailing its present manifestations. She uses the account of her personal adventures along with vivid portrayals of the colorful personalities she meets (some unquestionably oddballs) to convey her crusading passion for her subject. She writes engagingly and her explanations of sometimes technical aspects of winemaking are clear. She does seem to go overboard in her insistence that many (not all) natural wines are delicious and that most other wines, particularly those containing more than a modicum of sulfur, are undrinkable.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to question the premise upon which the book is ostensibly based, that is, the assumption that natural is always inherently better than artificial. Where is it written that nature’s efforts have to be superior to man’s? Such a conviction seems to be based on a new-agey sort of mysticism: something that is natural is better simply because it is natural.

As a physician, I can testify that in many situations, nature messes up big time. In diseases such as heart failure or kidney failure, the initial damage is often minor compared to that caused by the body’s ongoing misguided efforts at amelioration. The major thrust in the modern management of heart failure is to counteract the body’s defense mechanisms that are the cause of progressive deterioration. These are mechanisms that, having evolved to cope with entirely different problems, are now deployed as an inappropriate approach to novel circumstances not foreseen by evolution. So don’t try to tell me that Mother Nature knows best.

The majority of our aroma and flavor preferences are acquired, that is, we learn them in the process of growing up. What we like depends on experience, sometimes very early experience. In Germany, for many years most baby formulas were flavored with vanilla. Investigators presented German adults with two samples of ketchup (Haller, 1999). They were the same except that one contained added vanilla. Those subjects who had been bottle-fed preferred the sample with vanilla by a factor of 2 to 1. In contrast, most of their breast-fed contemporaries liked the plain ketchup better.

My generation and some of those that followed were brought up mostly on natural ingredients, because that is what was available. That’s why we prefer natural flavors. Now that almost everything in the supermarket is processed and includes unnatural substances, our children and grandchildren may be in the process of acquiring a different taste profile. They could end up preferring artificial favors in many instances over the natural.

So I don’t accept the idea that a “natural” wine must be intrinsically superior by its nature alone. That doesn’t mean that such wines can’t be very good. I can think of three reasons why natural wine might be better than conventional wine. The first is that natural winemaking avoids many of the pernicious practices employed by less fastidious producers. Secondly, it is a quasi-evangelical movement overseen by dedicated and conscientious winemakers who would undoubtedly make excellent wine regardless of the philosophy under which they worked. Finally, the wines produced are individual and distinct unlike the uniformity of many contemporary wines, which appear to be made to appeal to the aesthetic of a small group of wine critics.

The proof of the wine is in the drinking. At the end of her book, Ms. Feiring provides a list of winemakers who employ the practices that she extols. I collected about a dozen wines from those producers that were available in my area and not too expensive. I drank them along with my wife and a friend.

Overall, we were quite impressed. Most of the wines were very good. There was only one that we really didn’t like. It may have been a spoiled bottle, something that is not altogether unexpected in wines with little or no sulfur. That one disappointment was balanced by a marvelous red Burgundy from an unheralded appellation (Savigny-les-Beaune “Les Lavières” 2009, Domaine Chandon de Briailles), which I am tempted to put in the category of a great wine. It is unfair to do so, however, until one sees how it ages at which point, again, the lack of sulfur becomes an issue.

Beyond a favorable price-to-quality ratio, these wines are also very individual. They have distinctive character. Some accentuate the characteristics of place or varietal, while others seem to go off on a tangent of their own. They are wines with personality in a world threatened by uniformity of style.

The book was fun and natural wine is fun, but it is not the only act in town. A great many wines give pleasure and most are not in the natural style. I am enthusiastic about many categories of wine, including Rieslings from Austria, Germany, and Alsace. If I come across one from a natural producer I will be eager to try it, but I will certainly not confine myself to those kinds of wines alone. Nor am I ready to give up aged Bordeaux or grand cru Burgundy. Still, I am very pleased to have been introduced to the category of natural wine.

Jeffrey D. Postman
Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.10

References

Haller, R., Rummel, G., Henneberg, S., Pollmer, U., and Koster, E.P. (1999). The influence of early experience with vanillin on food preference in later life. Chemical Senses, 24, 465–467.

Because of their length and definitive-sounding titles, Ken Burns’s films can leave the exhausted viewer wondering, “What more could I possibly learn about this subject?” Critics have often answered, “Plenty.” Jazz music did not end in the 1940s, or example, and countries other than the United States fought and sacrificed during World War II. Claiming to be authoritative, Burns invites attacks for his errors of omission.

Undoubtedly, such attacks will also be made on his six-hour film “Prohibition,” which debuted on PBS in 2011 and is now available on three DVDs. Readers of this journal will wonder why there is so little wine in the film, which focuses on beer and distilled spirits. Historians will note the lopsided attention to Prohibition’s origins, compared to the cursory analysis of its repeal and long-term effects. And movie buffs will wonder what happened to Eliot Ness. Despite these shortcomings “Prohibition” resurrects unjustly forgotten historical actors, presents fascinating film footage and photographs, and reanimates the sense of contingency that make historical turning points so fascinating. It is well worth the several evenings it will probably take you to watch it.

You will immediately recognize the hallmarks of a Ken Burns film: modern-day footage of preserved historical sites, slow camera pans across black-and-white photographs, well-chosen literary talking heads, a concise and witty narration written by Geoffrey C. Ward, and original music that pays homage to the period. For all that, this film is a departure from the usual ecumenism and determination to avoid linking past events to present-day controversies. Unlike 1990’s “The Civil War,” which deftly avoided blaming either the North or the South, “Prohibition” shows Burns arguing that Prohibition solved few of the problems it set out to solve and created several more that were solved only by its repeal in 1933. The film does not flinch from the horrors and persistence of alcoholism, and it helps the viewer to see the logic behind the ban on alcohol. But instead of dismissing the whole effort, the film takes seriously its causes and effects, its detractors and champions.

The three episode titles move the argument chronologically. Why did Prohibition pass in 1919? Because the United States had become “A Nation of Drunkards.” What was it like to live during Prohibition? It was like living in “A Nation of Scofflaws.” Why was Prohibition repealed in 1933? Because the United States had become “A Nation of Hypocrites.” Burns views Prohibition as a policy destined to fail. He also maintains the United States should wear that failure as a badge of honor.

Fortunately, Burns does not overstate this thesis by demonizing Prohibition’s supporters. In fact, the film lionizes many of them, portraying the herculean efforts of courageous men and women. Some of them are well-known: Lyman Beecher and his thundering sermons, Carrie Nation and her hatchet, Wayne Wheeler and his mastery of Congress. Lesser-known reformers also get screen time, which will raise their profile among the current and next generation of students. The Washington Temperance Society began in Baltimore in 1840 with a method to help individuals control their addiction that was remarkably similar to that of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded almost a century later, in 1935. In the 1870s, Eliza Jane Thompson began a series of mostly female sit-ins at taverns and drugstores, launching a bold movement that led to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s founding in 1879. Mabel Walker Willebrandt transformed the U.S. Justice Department into a national law-enforcement agency, one that pioneered such techniques as wiretapping. The film spreads the news about these half-forgotten historical figures, even though they supported a policy that Burns clearly opposes. He also spotlights a driven reformer with whom he agrees, Long Island socialite Pauline Sabin, who was instrumental in overturning the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933.

In addition to crusaders, there are criminals, and not just Al Capone. Impressed by the quantities of smuggled liquor passing through Puget Sound, Seattle police officer Roy Olmstead quickly put himself in charge of it and earned the nickname “The Good Bootlegger.” Pouncing on the Volstead Act’s exception for prescription medications, Cincinnati attorney George Remus became the country’s biggest moonshiner. Unlike Capone, Remus and Olmstead seldom resorted to violence. Like Capone, they wound up behind bars. The message is clear. The booze ban turned talented, law-abiding men into crooks, and who could blame them for trying?

The excavation of buried treasures will endear the film to historians, but scholars from other disciplines will find few original insights. Economists have studied the effects of Prohibition on alcohol consumption rates, on the California grape industry, and on the market for sacramental wine. The film does dramatize some of these effects. Products suddenly appeared on store shelves that allowed anyone to turn his home into a winery. The Volstead Act’s exemption for religious services took a toll on Judeo-Christian institutions. When only one-fourth of the sacramental wine was actually used for sacraments, and when “rabbis” surnamed Kelley and O’Shanahan purchased wine in bulk, churches and temples lost some of their moral authority. The handling of the federal revenue question is sound, but not eye-opening. The Sixteenth Amendment’s income tax helped pave the way for the Eighteenth Amendment’s alcohol ban by making the federal government less dependent on liquor taxes. The desperate need for more federal revenue by 1933 was a major reason President Franklin Roosevelt supported the repeal. This level of analysis is pretty much all the film has to offer the economists in the audience. It is a familiar but unchallenging narrative, the equivalent of a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck.

So if the film breaks little academic ground, then why is it still worth watching? Because Burns’s films are now an American institution that attracts wonderful talent and serious scholars. No economics paper will have narration by Peter Coyote. No history book will be voiced by Patricia Clarkson, John Lithgow, Tom Hanks, Oliver Platt, Samuel L. Jackson, and Paul “the guy from Sideways” Giamatti. Historians still cite their venerable peer William Leuchtenberg, but Ken Burns can put him on camera to tell the story of his father’s ill-fated distillery. Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call (Scribner, 2010), appears on camera frequently as the film’s organizing device. Other writers fill the screen and offer keen insights, including Pete Hamill, Noah Feldman, Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Jonathan Eig, and Michael Lerner. Occasionally, they repeat points from the previous week’s episode, but it is satisfying to see good scholarship rewarded with speaking parts.

The second reason to keep watching is to see the historical footage dug up by the production team. In documenting an illegal activity, where do you find moving images of people in the act of breaking the law? One obvious solution is archival footage featuring law-enforcement officers. Cops and sheriffs knew that stopping sales of all booze was impossible, but they still had incentive to make a good show of it. “Prohibition” features scene after scene of authorities chopping open beer kegs, whiskey barrels, and wine vats, letting the contents flow into storm drains. Another solution is to make your own close-up footage of cocktails and beers being poured into glasses on sparkling countertops. “Prohibition” rerolls both of these money shots so often that you find yourself looking for variations on the theme. Oh, look, that freshly poured martini has an olive in it. Look at how this time the neighborhood kids are scooping whiskey out of the gutter with tin cups to bring home or sell. I wonder how they cleaned up all that broken glass after they finished smashing bottles. After seeing a foaming mug and a leaking keg for the dozenth time, ones gets the sense that the filmmakers’ script outran their supply of unearthed celluloid.

Although these segments can start to drag, “Prohibition” startles the viewer with some truly fascinating footage. Instead of flappers doing the jitterbug, the film offers a fresh segment on reporter Lois Bancroft Long, who covered the social scene at speakeasies and jazz clubs for the New Yorker, wrote under the pen name Lipstick, and completely erased the line in journalism between participant and observer. The Lois Long segment features readings of her acerbic prose and footage of her quintessentially New Woman lifestyle. The frame does not glamorize Long and her proto-feminist drinking buddies, and it lets the audience decide whether public drunkenness and serial monogamy were truly a liberating force for women. The underlying point is that the widespread acceptance of illegal hooch opened the door to the acceptance of other activities and lifestyles that had previously been off-limits.

Even when the film focuses on the army of reformers who spent at least eight decades pushing for temperance, it yields profound surprises. The 1870s photos of Ohio housewives stoically enduring abuse and threats as they kept vigil outside bars and liquor stores are a distant echo of the iconic photos of college students sitting defiantly at lunch counters, department stores, and bus depots during the postwar civil rights movement. These resonant images force the viewer to question his or her own first impressions. How can I find one group of nonviolent protestors heroic and the other group ridiculous just because I disagree with their objectives? Burns also shows us excerpts from a 1909 nickelodeon, Ten Nights in a Barroom, which compressed the ill effects of drinking into a melodramatic crescendo not seen on screen again until Reefer Madness in 1936.

By far, the film’s most impressive trick is a reminder more than a surprise. Prohibition, Burns asserts, is not ancient history. The era’s alumni still walk among us. In addition to William Leuchtenberg, several octoand nonagenarian interviewees appear on camera to offer first-hand accounts of the dizzying pace of social transformation in the 1920s. Prohibition changed the way they viewed their parents, their courtship rituals, and their relation to law and the state. Repeal advocates used a carbon copy of the original argument that Prohibition supporters had used years earlier. If drunken parents were bad role models, so, too, were scofflaw parents. How do we raise our children to be moral citizens when so many of us break the law at 5:00 every afternoon? The interviews with John Paul Stevens, however, reveal these arguments to be oversimplified. Born in Chicago in 1920, Stevens recalls growing up the son of a prosperous hotelier, who by practical professional obligation was involved in malfeasance. Nevertheless, the young Stevens grew up to be the longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, showing that at least one child in a nation of hypocrites and scofflaws could still develop a respect for law and civic order.

The film’s main strength is its willingness to be open-minded in ways like this. Whatever it lacks in original research or insights, it makes up for by modeling the proper temperament for learning about the past. Burns sticks to his argument to the end. Prohibition was an extreme solution to a problem that begged for a different, multifaceted approach. Thus, it failed and was repealed. In this claim, Burns is probably on the same wavelength as 95% of his PBS viewers. But he also shows his viewers that the counterarguments have merit, too. Maybe some good things did come out of Prohibition. Following Daniel Okrent’s lead, the film emphasizes that in the nineteenth century, the rules and expectations for hard liquor were truly those of a different country. Social conventions about drinking on the job, during adolescence, and at the breakfast table have changed completely over the past 150 years. As the acceptance of hard alcohol in public declined, the acceptance of women in appearing in public—either to drink or to speak out—rose, in no small part because of the Prohibition battles. The film leaves us to think deeply about the paradox that a puritanical attempt to regulate immorality accelerated the modernization of American society.

Josh Ashenmiller
Fullerton College
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.12

Would it be useful to learn about wine flavor chemistry? From the standpoint of the professional involved in winemaking, student of enology, or those who wish to follow the winemaking literature, this is undoubtedly an important topic. Maynard Amerine, a University of California at Davis professor and pioneer in viticulture and enology stated late in his career that if he were a young man who wanted to become a winemaker, he would first study chemistry. The secrets of many a mystery of wine’s flavors are being discovered at a rapid pace through advances in wine chemistry. Despite the fact that winemaking might always remain an art, science has contributed greatly to the improvement in winemaking, and today’s wines are much less likely to have sensory faults. Thus wine chemistry science clearly has benefits for the consumer as well. This second edition of Wine Flavour Chemistry, by Jokie Bakker and Ronald J. Clarke, attempts to present the important concepts and research on this topic to give us a better understanding of the fundamental components of wine flavors. In fact, in the Preface to the first edition of this book, the authors indicate that it is “aimed to be of interest to consumers with an inquisitive mind about wine, and all those involved with the production and trade in wines with an interest in the chemical and technical aspects of wine flavor.”

The authors have approached the topic of wine flavor chemistry from backgrounds with considerable experience in the field and the wide scope of the book reflects that. Dr. Jokie Bakker has worked as a researcher in food flavor and color and as a wine industry consultant. Dr. Ronald J. Clarke, a writer and food industry consultant, spent some 40 years studying the manufacture of coffee, on which he has written or co-edited several books. He offers useful insights on wine flavor with coffee and wine comparisons that are scattered throughout the book. This book is organized into seven broad-based chapters and includes two appendices. The introduction covers the vinification process and includes a short discussion of the physiological aspects of wine. Chapter 2 presents important grape varieties and their growing regions and also summarizes the wine appellation or other classification systems of six major wine-producing countries. Three chapters form the book’s core. Chapter 3 presents basic taste and stimulant components, Chapter 4 discusses the volatile components, and Chapter 5 includes wine-tasting procedures and overall wine flavor concepts. A separate chapter is devoted to Sherry, Port, and Madeira. There is a concluding chapter on wine chemical formation pathways during fermentation, which would have been much better placed in an introductory chapter.

What are the highlights of this book? Each topic presented is relatively well referenced as each chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography that includes references to both general texts and specific research publications. The seven chapters and two appendices feature more than a hundred useful tables . The many detailed tables remind one of a reference book such as the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. These tables are so extensive and informative that they represent the highlight of the book. There are also several excellent discussions including those on the important role that compounds such as SO2 play in winemaking, CO2 in young wines and champagne, and O2 throughout the vinification, aging, and bottling process. The importance of reduction/oxidation reactions throughout the wine process is also well presented.

What are this book’s failings? Unfortunately, even the reader with considerable chemistry background will likely find this book frustrating, not because of its complexity but because its design is suboptimal. First, and most strikingly, the book lacks illustrations. Although the cover of the book beautifully and sensually illustrates newly poured red wine sloshing in a wine glass, with flavor almost jumping out at the reader, none of that sort of illustration is in the interior of the book. Images of processing sequences, graphs, and chemical structures are offered, but far too few to illustrate the important concepts that the text attempts to describe. Only a single spider-plot illustration graces the entire book! (A spider-plot illustration shows the intensity of multiple characteristics of a given component, e.g., flavor, on a single plot and resembles a spider web.) Such plots would be much more effective in presenting the flavor profiles of different grape varieties than simply listing the characteristic components in a table.

Another frustration is the inconsistent presentation of topics both from an organizational viewpoint and from a conceptual one. The poor organization results in useless repetition and incomplete discussions of the topic. For example, Chapter 3 explains the location of polyphenols within grapes without an accompanying illustration. However, in the final chapter the topic is represented and includes a figure that shows the location of extractable chemical compounds, including polyphenols. One example of inconsistency in concept presentation is the discussion of the role of alcohol in the flavor of wine. An early chapter cites literature that suggests that ethanol concentration, at least over a limited range, does not affect the sweetness, acidity, aroma, or flavor perception of a Riesling wine. In a subsequent chapter, in which wine balance and suppleness are discussed, a well-known and conceptually useful empirical concept known as the Suppleness Index (SI) is presented. The relation is:

Suppleness Index = Alcohol − (Acidity + Tannin)

This relation indicates that higher concentrations of alcohol (including sugars) are needed to balance higher acidity or tannins for a wine to have an SI within a desirable range. The authors neither mention the discordance in presentations nor offer an explanation for these discordant findings.

Technological innovations have improved our ability to determine the chemical compounds responsible for flavor, and some can help in determining the optimal maturity of grapes, but the authors fall short in describing the details of some of the recent technologies. Although gas chromatography remains the most important tool for evaluating volatile compounds, it involves relatively large, immobile, and expensive equipment. A new technology often referred to as the electronic nose is relatively inexpensive and portable and might revolutionize how one can determine optimal grape maturity. It is based on changes in the electrical resistance of its metal oxide sensors caused by the volatile chemicals produced by grapes. Although the authors mention the device, they give short shrift to details of the progress in its use and potential.

The writing style includes awkward phrasing and occasional spelling errors, which are also frustrating for the reader. From a publisher like Wiley-Blackwell, one would have expected the book to receive some attention from an editor to simplify complex run-on sentences and eliminate spelling errors. Here is an example of a sentence that includes both: “The receptor proteins for sweet, bitter and umami are available for tastant compounds to bind to, this resulting very specific binding leads in a number of steps to the stimulation of neutron activation, giving the information to our brain.” We can only be thankful that, unlike as is stated in that clumsy sentence, neurons, not neutrons, are activated. Wine Flavour Chemistry is not essential reading for all those involved in commercial winemaking, as stated in the blurb on the book’s back cover. Neither is it a useful textbook for teaching the concepts of wine flavor chemistry except as a reference book, as it is far too dry, lacks illustrations, and is relatively poorly organized. A far better book for less than half the price is Concepts in Wine Chemistry, by Yair Margalit (2nd ed., paperback, 2010). It is eminently better organized and is more readable, understandable, and illustrated. It is surprising that the authors, Bakker and Clarke, did not reference this text by Margalit. Perhaps they would not have written Wine Flavour Chemistry had they been aware of it! Although Bakker and Clarke offer many useful references, they have perhaps overreferenced authors such as the French Pascal Ribereau-Gayon at the expense of some top-notch American researchers such as Bruce Zoeklein of Virginia Tech, who has done much pioneering work in enology and wine flavor chemistry. Other books that discuss wine flavor chemistry that I would also recommend include Wine Science, a textbook by Ronald Jackson. For the beginner and for wine lovers who do not necessarily have a background in chemistry, I recommend Winetaster’s Secrets, by Andrew Sharp. Finally, those who really want to have fun challenging their olfactory discriminatory ability and also wish to learn some of the fundamental compounds of wine flavor and specific wine varieties should buy a 54-bottle set of basic smells that can be found in wine titled Le Nez du Vin, by Jean Lenoir. Although hundreds of smells in wine are described in it, you will find the identification of even this simple set of 54 difficult but also entertaining and informative.

Lawrence R. Coia, MD
Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association
doi:10.1017/jwe.2012.9

References

Jackson, R., and Jackson, R.S. (2008). Wine Science: Principles and Applications. 3rd ed. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier Academic Press.

Lenoir, J. (2010). Le Nez du Vin, Red Wines (Les Vins Rouges): Wine Aroma Kit. Carnoux en Provence, France: Jean Lenoir.

Margalit, Y. (2010). Concepts in Wine Chemistry. San Francisco: Wine Appreciation Guild. Sharp, A. (2001). Winetaster’s Secrets: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Joy of Winetasting.
Toronto: Warwick.

The most-visited winery in the U.S. is not in California. The Biltmore Winery in North Carolina entertains about a million guests per year. By comparison, the Korbel Champagne Cellars hosts about 120,000 visitors and Robert Mondavi is in the neighborhood of 100,000 (Horiuchi, 2011 and Schlabach, 2011).

This is one of the anecdotes that Prof. Ian Taplin includes in a lively and entertaining history of the North Carolina wine industry. The book is filled with anecdotes about people, places and wineries. It also includes speculation about what forces might explain the recent revival of viticulture and wine making since 1990. But the work suffers from two defects. First, Taplin does not identify the position of the North Carolina wine industry in the national and global wine market. Second, he has tried to use an analytical framework (knowledge-based clusters) to add structure to his history. Taplin is not an economist and has allowed the lure of the cluster idea to blind him to other considerations.

Wine has been made in the southeast from the native muscadinia rotundifolia grape, commonly called muscadine, since the 1600s. But the real history of North Carolina winemaking begins after the end of prohibition.

Prohibition began in North Carolina on May 26, 1906, eleven years before the 18th amendment was adopted, persisting for five years after repeal. There was a surge in wine production in the 1970’s when the state imposed a differential sales tax on wine from outside the state, causing muscadine wine production to jump from virtually nothing to a high of 200,000 gallons per year. Production collapsed when the tax was ruled unconstitutional.

According to Taplin, vinifera plantings in North Carolina started in earnest in the Yadkin Valley and northern Piedmont in the early 1990’s. There were about 21 vinifera wine-makers and 200 growers by 2001 (Taplin, 2011, p. 78).

Taplin lists several causative factors – people like Charlie and Ed Shelton with the vision to see the Yadkin Valley as the “Napa Valley of the East,” (Taplin, 2011, p. 86), knowledge network effects of local wine production clusters, retirement of growers of traditional crops (especially tobacco), growing cultural acceptance of alcohol, and anticipation of the removal of the U.S. tobacco quota and price supports (finally ended in 2004).

Taplin believes the dynamism of clusters and of key North Carolina personalities caused this growth, but offers no stronger evidence than proof by anecdote:

“ . . . the number of wineries would double again every two years up to the present. . . . one can discern a pattern of trial-and-error learning, a gradual accumulation of viticultural knowledge and the establishment of informal procedures for exchange of tacit operational details.” (p. 69)

…

“One can see [. . .] how a series of intersecting events has produced circumstances that enabled an incipient market to develop. It did so through the growth of informal structured interactions based upon cooperation and knowledge exchange that provided allocative efficiency to firms.” (p. 100)

We have two comments about these excerpts. First, clusters create allocative efficiency? A citation for this claim would have been nice. Second, this dynamic is nothing new. In other regions, winemakers routinely help each other. At the 1981 opening of the Amador Foothill Winery, owner Ben Zeitman thanked Bardon Stevenot who had been making wine nearby for several decades. Although Taplin did find that a few North Carolina winemakers obtained advice or hired staff from out of state, he paints a picture of a very insular wine industry. North Carolina winemakers mainly talk to each other.

This is the first flaw in the analysis. Taplin has failed to recognize the transmission of misinformation. He complains that North Carolina vinifera wines have a vegetal smell caused by methoxypyrazine, a problem which can be eliminated using well-known vineyard management techniques (Scheiner, et al., 2009). According to Taplin many North Carolina winery owners believe the vegetal smell and flavor are virtues rather than flaws to be fixed. Taplin fails to recognize that when a cluster is closed, misinformation transmits and becomes group truth just as easily as good information.

The second major flaw is Taplin’s failure to acknowledge the terror dimension of geographic cluster formation in the wine industry. Wineries tend to be built in areas that have appropriate terroir – absolute advantage – for growing vinifera. Terroir is at least as important as knowledge in fostering growth of a winery cluster.

Taplin stresses the role of tobacco at various places in the book. For over 50 years, North Carolina tobacco growers received about 38 percent of all tobacco support payments, the most of any state (Tiller et al., 2004, Table 2, page 8). Families kept their land and grew tobacco. California, a state without significant tobacco price support, started reviving wine production promptly after prohibition was lifted in 1933. In North Carolina wine production only began to pick up around 1990. However, after spending many pages discussing the transition from tobacco farming to growing vinifera, it turns out that only 1–2 percent of tobacco growers actually made this transition.

There are numerous pages scattered throughout the book that extoll the virtues of the Biltmore Winery. As mentioned earlier, Biltmore is the most-visited winery in the U.S. One reviewer (Lima) has tasted Biltmore wines. They are very similar to California wines. A search of the Biltmore Winery web site reveals their secret (Biltmore, 2011). Of Biltmore’s 17 wines, 16 are made from at least 50 percent California grapes. Only one (a chardonnay) uses 100 percent North Carolina grapes. Taplin’s use of Biltmore as an example of a successful North Carolina winery is misleading in the extreme. He does note that Biltmore sources juice from California and New York, but he attributes this to the inability of North Carolina growers to meet the demands of a winery producing 150,000 cases per year (p. 70).

But perhaps there is another reason. Recall the earlier discussion of the prevalence of methoxypyrazine in North Carolina grapes. Perhaps Biltmore is simply purchasing superior vinifera grapes from California.

The economic analysis in this book is often confused. For example, “. . . financial resources necessary to sustain them for years of red ink on the balance sheet” (p. 6). Few companies will survive long with red ink on the balance sheet. However, they might last several years if they only have red ink on their income statement.

Taplin’s frequent references to examining “these issues empirically” (p. 29 is one instance) leave the reader gasping for actual data. There are exactly four charts or tables, one with an obvious error. The metrics in Table 4.1 do not agree with those in the text. The table claims yields of 1,875 to 4,714 tons per acre. In the text yields of 2 to 8 tons per acre are cited. This glaring mistake makes the reader doubt the validity of the entire enterprise.

Readers of this book should focus on the lively narrative punctuated by quotations from Taplin’s numerous interviews with winery owners and winemakers. However, we recommend skipping the attempts at economic analysis. Reading those sections will only lead to confusion and headaches.

For the reviewers, the best part of the book review process was being spurred to begin reading Thomas Pinney’s masterly two volume history of wine in America (Pinney, 1989 and 2005). Naturally, Pinney includes a discussion of wine in North Carolina. See that book reviewed in this journal (Summer, 2006).

Tony Lima
California State University, East Bay

and Norma Schroder
Blue Weasel Productions

References

Biltmore Winery (2011). http://www.biltmore.com/our_wine/trade.asp. Accessed June 25, 2011.

Horiuchi, G. (2011). Communications Manager, The Wine Institute. Personal e-mail communication, July 11.

Pinney, T. (1989). A History of Wine in America From the Beginnings to Prohibition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Pinney, T. (2005). A History of Wine in America: From Prohibition to the Present. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Scheiner, J.J., Sacks, G.L. and VandenHeuvel, J.E. (2009). How viticultural factors affect methoxypyrazines. Wines & Vines, November, 2009. Available at http:// www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=features&content=68769&ftitle= How%20Viticultural%20Factors%20Affect%20Methoxypyrazines. Accessed September 24, 2011.

Schlabach, S. (2011). Director of Retail Visitor Services, Korbel Champagne Cellars. Personal e-mail communication July 13.

Summer, D.A. (2006) Review of T. Pinney’s A History of Wine in America: From Prohibition to the Present. Journal of Wine Economics, 1(2), 191–194.

Taplin, I. (2011). The Modern American Wine Industry: Market Formation and Growth in North Carolina. London: Pickering & Chatto.

Tiller, K.J., English, B.C. and Menard, R.J. (2004). Tobacco quota buyout legislation: economic impacts in the southeast. Paper presented at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association, February 17, 2004. Available through the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture at http://agpolicy.utk.edu/pubs/tillersaea04buyou timpact.pdf. Accessed September 7, 2011.

Zeitman, B. (2011). Co-owner, Amador Foothill Winery. Personal communication, September 12.

Wine was discovered in the Zagros mountains of northwestern Iran some 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Greeks and Romans then spread grapes and wine around the lands bordering the Mediterranean. At around the year 200 the Romans promoted a wine industry along the Rhine and Mosel rivers. After that expansion of grapes and wine nothing much happened for the next 1,600 years until the California gold rush of 1848 stimulated the cultivation of wine in the New World. Shortly after, in the 1850s, the gold rush in Australia led to the establishment of a wine industry in Victoria. At present, we may be witnessing the peak of yet another period of significant wine grape area expansion and wine production growth in the “New World” wine countries of Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and New Zealand.

Significant changes in the spatial expansion of crops are attention grabbers, which call for explanation and understanding of their causes and impacts. The causes of the New World wine expansion are, according to the book, “. . . innovation in product and process, spurred by consistent investments and research efforts” (p. 2). Moreover, the editors of the book regard the wine industry as “extremely interesting from a development point of view because the late-comers in the international market have radically changed how wine is produced, sold and consumed” (p. 11). Finally, the editors believe that, “An investigation into the wine industry of countries such as Argentina, Chile and South Africa represents an extraordinary opportunity to show how a traditional agro-food industry can become highly competitive and catch up in the global market . . . ” (p. 2).

The book collects selected papers from a workshop organized by the Project “Innovation and globalization in the wine sector” which was held in 2009 at the Universita` del Piemonte Orientale, Novara, Italy. The contributions to the book are organized into an introduction and two parts. The introduction, authored by the editors of the book, explains the aim of the book, motivates the research questions, and it highlights the main concern of the book: to contribute to our knowledge about how economically and technologically lagging countries catch up.

Part I of the book comprises three chapters. The chapters are said to “adopt a macro-level perspective to analyze the process of catch-up in a variety of contexts (that is, both emerging and developed economies), with a focus on the role played by scientific research and innovation” (p. 2). More simply put, Chapter 2, describes how the New World wine countries, in particular the United States, Australia, Argentina, Chile and South Africa, but not New Zealand, have caught up with the Old World wine countries of Europe. Chapter 3 presents results from a bibliometric study that traces the growth of the contributions of New World wine countries to the international scientific literature on topics related to wine. And in Chapter 4 Kym Anderson explains how Australia organized its wine industry in order for collective action, which includes R&D, to be effective.

In Chapter 2, entitled “Catching-up trajectories in the wine sector,” Cusamo, Morrison and Rabellotti adopt a “Sectoral Systems of Innovation” perspective for their story of how the New World wine countries caught up with the Old World wine countries of Europe. Sectoral systems of innovation are conceived as an extension of “the traditional concept of sector adopted in industrial economics” and include more actors, non-market interactions in addition to market interactions, and “knowledge and learning processes” (p. 24). This perspective, the authors suggest, is useful to cope with the dynamic and complex interplay of firms, industries, markets, and countries. The authors conclude the chapter with the insight that innovative, scientific approaches to production, knowledge imports, universities, and R&D-organizations have all contributed towards the modernization of the wine industries in the New World wine countries.

Under the title “The changing geography of science in wine: evidence from emerging countries” Cassi, Morrison and Rabellotti report in Chapter 3 the results of their bibliometric investigation of (i) the contribution of New World wine countries to internationally published wine research and of (ii) the interconnections among productive wine researchers who publish. The data used for this purpose are derived from the World of Science edition of the Science Citation Index Extended (SCIE) of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), which has become the standard source for such studies. In total, more than 12,000 records of publications from the period 1992–2006 were analyzed. The chapter impressively documents the growth in the contribution of the New World wine countries to the international scientific literature related to wine and grapes. Moreover, analysis of co-publications, i.e., publications co-authored by researchers affiliated with different research organizations, reveals a trend toward more complex national and international networks of cooperation in the world of wine sciences.

In the third chapter of Part I of the book Kym Anderson provides a brief account of the boom-and-bust phases in the evolution of Australia’s wine industry. In addition, Anderson describes the main organizations and institutions of the innovation system that has provided the basis for the spectacular success of Australia’s wines in world export markets during the last 25 years. Advertising, brand building, and research are all concerned with the production of information, which is a non-rival good that invites free-riding. Apparently, the arrangements of the Australian wine industry succeeded in internalizing much of the information externalities, and in overcoming the free-rider problem associated with generic advertising and R&D.

Part II of the book collects case studies of the various ways in which New World wine countries have employed their sectoral systems of innovation – universities, public R&D organizations, and researchers – in their efforts to become competitive players in global markets for wine. In Chapter 5 Kunc and Tiffin compare the activities of two universities, one located close to the Mendoza wine region of Argentina and the other located in the heart of Chile’s Maule Valley wine region. The comparison includes wine-related research activities, training of wine industry personnel, consulting, and networking activities by the universities.

The relationship between product upgrading and the intensity of networking activities by oenologists in the Mendoza and San Juan wine regions of Argentina is the focus of Chapter 6, “The remaking of the Argentine wine sector” by McDermott and Corredoira. A sample of 115 firms was surveyed of which an extremely high proportion (97 percent) responded. Results of eight regression models are reported which explain levels of product upgrading in terms of some control variables and a battery of thirteen variables measuring the network linkages of oenologists to other firms and to government support institutions. No crisp and clear qualitative results emerge from this analysis.

In Chapter 7, “Bridging researchers and the openness of wine innovation systems in Chile and South Africa”, Giuliani and Rabellotti apply techniques from formal network analysis to identify “bridging” researchers and to investigate their characteristics. A “bridge” in a network is usually understood as the only link between two nodes. In this chapter “bridging researchers”, in contrast, are defined as “those researchers who are simultaneously well connected with both the domestic industry and the international academic community” (p. 156). Information on their networking activities were collected from 42 researchers in Chile and from 40 researchers in South Africa. Results suggest that researchers in Chile tend to entertain more links to researchers in the USA whereas their South African peers look more towards Australia and Europe. Moreover, the authors were able to show what many research managers and policy makers appear to know intuitively: “First, . . . there is a small number of researchers who at the same time have a prominent scientific openness as well as a significant degree of connection with the domestic industry”, and “Second, these researchers are significantly more ‘talented’ than the other researchers . . . ” (p. 165).

The fourth and last chapter of Part II of the book contains a description by Lorentzen of institutions and organizations which provide innovation support services to the grape and wine producers of South Africa’s Western Cape Province. In addition, the chapter contains a verbal summary of the results of extensive interviews of 23 members of Winetech, an organization which is at the center of many wine innovation activities in South Africa.

The book closes with Chapter 9, “What have we learned from the wine industry? Some concluding remarks.” Here the editors of the book return to the issue of catching-up and they summarize the results and insights from the individual chapter in four lessons and three policy recommendations.

The key lessons are (pp. 203–205):

. 1)  “Traditional sectors are not necessarily low-tech and characterized by low knowledge intensity; they can be knowledge intensive and highly innovative.”

. 2)  “Innovation is not just the result of formal R&D.”

. 3)  “Access to foreign knowledge and local capability building are complementary activities.”

. 4)  “Networks of private and public actors are key to learning and innovation.”

Lessons 1–3 are likely to be familiar to most scholars of innovation in agrifood industries. Lesson 4, in contrast, adds a novel and potentially seminal perspective to what earlier research might have called “spillovers”.

The policy recommendations submitted by the editors are (pp. 206–207):

. 1)  “. . . to invest in public universities, tertiary formal education and PROs [Public Research Organizations], paying special attention to the specialization and specificity of wine regions.”

. 2)  “to attract and support talent and to take advantage of international linkages to build domestic research and innovation competences.”

. 3)  “. . . to experiment with new forms of governance of public-private partnerships, so as to implement participatory mechanisms in setting research agendas.”

There are two weakness of the book that I would like to point out. First, the book neglects most of the vast and rich literature on catching up in agriculture. The big catch-up in agriculture was the Green Revolution in Mexico and South Asia some 40 years ago. This catch-up revolution also was science-driven and knowledge intensive. Moreover, in its wake came the founding of the CGIAR, which has evolved into a truly global non-profit research organization. The significance of the Green Revolution as a catch-up event would seem to exceed that of the New World wine revolution by far, but somehow the authors and editors have missed this story.

Whilst reading the book a nagging question emerged in my mind: Given that a R&D infrastructure or knowledge system is important, perhaps even indispensable for successful innovation in competitive global wine markets, why have the Old World countries not made better use of their own well-established research organizations? In Germany, the Geisenheim wine research station will celebrate its 140th birthday next year and the Oppenheim wine education and training facility on the other bank of the Rhine was founded some 115 years ago. But the German wine industry is not known for bubbling innovation. There are some hints in the book why this may be so: a double layer of domestic and EU regulation may be sufficient to suffocate many attempts at entrepreneurial innovation. But this only begs another question: Why did the wine industry in the Old World not acquire regulations that allowed it to make better use of its innovation potential?

Books that collect contributions from different authors can never be cut from one cloth, their style varies, and if the individual contributions are concerned with similar or related issued some repetition is unavoidable. This is also true for this book. But fortunately for its readers, repetition and overlap are small and tolerable.

Overall, the editors have produced a book that contributes to our knowledge of the significance of innovation for the success of the New Wine World countries. It helps us to better understand the drivers of the most recent episode of wine grape area expansion and wine production growth. The hardcover price is likely to dishearten some buyers. Fortunately, there also is a much cheaper ebook version available. Whatever the version, the book deserves a place on the shelves or data files of sociologists, geographers, economists, and policy makers concerned with the evolution of the global wine industry.

Rolf A.E. Mueller
Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Germany

Anyone analyzing the economics of wine will quickly notice the diversity of forces pressuring the industry. Wine’s (alleged) progression towards homogeneity to meet mass market demand, corporate ownership consolidation, often cut-throat international competition, rivers of excess supply, technological manipulation in production, wildly vacillating price differentials and the impacts of global warming, among a host of other factors, may be simultaneously viewed as evil, good or both depending on one’s perspective. These issues also make for a robust research agenda in wine economics. A new book by Mike Veseth, Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists, nicely captures the essence of these factors affecting the evolution of wine and the agenda for wine economics.

The running theme throughout this book is a search for the future of wine. Written in a brisk and non-technical style, Veseth uses this theme to focus on the competing forces vying for wine’s future, expanding on and unifying essays previewed on his wineeconomist.com website. The overarching influence affecting the current market for wine, and one that will increasingly affect the future of wine, is globalization – albeit wine’s global reach has existed since vineyards were first planted. Entwined with shrinking international borders and reduced barriers to the wine trade are increased efficiencies in wine production, shipping and marketing. These and other changes, in turn, have fostered a gnawing fear and vocal backlash against what these disruptions will bring to the wine world as we know it today.

Veseth takes us on a journey through wine economics via the use of what amounts to case studies exemplifying how wine economic issues are playing out in the marketplace. One learns, for example, about the lingering effects that certain very sweet and often badly made wines of the past have had on current consumer perceptions and taste. We gain insights, too, on the way large international and national retail chains are altering consumer wine buying routines, how new consumer interest in wine is being cultivated, and the ways, means and implications of the world wine glut. Further, we get a sense in Wine Wars of how historical, social and cultural factors in France, China and other countries will likely affect the future of wine. In France, for example, we hear both sides of the “terroirist” debate on what wine should be. And we glean several unique perspectives on how China’s relationship with wine might really shape wine consumption and production there – an analysis that extends beyond the current hyperbole for anything having to do with the Rothschild name among China’s nouveau riche. Veseth explains, for example, the unique workings of China’s production supply-chain, the use of fruits other than grapes in winemaking, and why it might be reasonable for Chinese wine consumers to mix their wine with Coca Cola.

The personal approach Veseth takes in Wine Wars can lead the reader to think of this as an interactive book. In fact, Veseth encourages this by inviting us to “(g)rab your wineglass and follow me . . . ,” calling each of the book’s sections flights, and adding a wine tasting at the end of each section with suggested pairings exemplifying the ideas in that part of the book. If I had not seen Mondovino yet, I would have been encouraged do so when reading Wine Wars. I did, however, take a look at the Japanese soap opera Kami no Shizuku, review Jancis Robinsons’ wine course, and went scurrying to the encyclopedia to find out what a New Zealand Dalmatian gum digger was. While I started reading the book with a glass in-hand of a 2005 Haut-Medoc picked up during one of the recent rounds of Bordeaux “vintage of the century” hysterias a few years ago, Veseth’s book also motivated me to try my first box wine. No such luck obtaining a bottle of Lafite Rothschild, though.

The sometimes invisible hand of globalization is made more visible throughout Wine Wars. The interrelationships that bring wine to the world are truly international in nature today, and will only become more so in the future. Veseth infuses Wine Wars with stories about these connections and conflicts, and in the process we learn much about the business aspects of wine – in addition to enjoying the narratives that inform the economics. The global role of flying consultants and wine formulation in the laboratory to satisfy the tastes of influential wine critics are well-known, for example, but the way huge amounts of wine are shipped around the world in freighter-sized plastic bags inside crates, or the marketing philosophies and German ownership behind the Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw (aka Two-Buck Chuck) wine are less known.

Wine retailing too is a global exercise. It is not only Trader Joe’s and its twin Aldi that are introducing new buyers to wine through their inexpensive but (often) drinkable offerings. Wine Wars introduces many of us who do not live in Britain to Tesco and how this supermarket chain is using its marketing muscle to change the rules on wine shipping, bottling (lighter, with screw caps) and pricing. We also are given the lowdown on methods used by Costco that have helped it become the biggest retailer of wine in the United States, such as how it displays its wine and the rationale behind the selection of wines offered in its “warehouses.”

The consolidation of winery ownership continues as well, with discussions in Wine Wars about the marketing strategies of the large wine conglomerates, such as Gallo and Constellation Brands. Using an inventive allegory of a “wine wall,” with bottom, middle and top shelf wines representing the spectrum of quality and price on their respective levels, Veseth takes us through examples of the range of product differentiation from the large players, indicating both benefits and pitfalls from such corporate consolidation. If you’ve ever wondered, but never took the time to follow, who owns which wines and which wineries remain independent, you will get a good idea from Wine Wars (however, things change so rapidly in this area that reading Wine Business Daily online is necessary to keep current).

All of these changes in the wine industry can and do create conflicts, of course. Veseth covers the evolving tensions, especially in the third “flight” of Wine Wars, and the tone of the book becomes more serious towards this latter part of the volume. Just as terroir is a multidimensional concept, so too are the arguments for and against a “globalized” style of wine – if one agrees that such a style exists at all. In addition to documenting a growing globalization in wine, Wine Wars also discusses events demonstrating the antithesis to globalization; for example, opposition to American and other influences on French wine is being fought by CRAV (Comite ́ Re ́ gional d’Action Viticole), many family wineries continue despite economic pressures, and Michel Rolland’s approach is not implemented in every winery in existence.

Anyone with an interest in wine and wine economics will enjoy reading Wine Wars. While the economics in this book is not presented in the form of econometric models and t-values, there is no mistaking the well of economic theory and knowledge that underlie the chapters in this book, and that hint at part of the future for wine economics research.

Stephen Chaikind
Gallaudet University and Johns Hopkins University

Alimentary globalism – Tokyo sushi in New York, Chilean grapes in wintertime Seattle, Coca-Cola in Trinidad, Big Macs in Beijing, and so on – disrupts established foodways, as anthropologists call the complex of behaviors surrounding the way we produce, acquire, cook, and eat our food. This, in turn, reshapes who we are. An article on wine might have fit in well here. Still, Watson and Caldwell’s collection of nineteen wide-ranging essays nicely documents the spread of such change and the various ways in which communities react to it.

For instance, just growing green beans in Burkina Faso, where they are raised for export, has been enough to change the diet and meal patterns in that poor, underfed country by altering land use and work habits. Consequently, as Susanne Freidberg’s contribution explains, the notion of a good sauce, a local dish closely tied to the social identity of women, has also changed. Without even eating the alien beans, the Burkinabe ́ became different people. In a similar vein, Jeffrey Pilcher discusses how the modernization of tortilla production in Mexico, once exclusively the patient labor of housewives, is damaging health and harmfully redefining femininity.

Things don’t have to turn out badly, however. What was surprising and heartening to discover in this collection is how resilient some communities have remained, though pressed to adapt. The Chinese, in a process anthropologists term localization, have forced a compromise between endemic needs and what a novel mode of food demands. Beijing double cheeseburgers taste the way they do in Berlin and Los Angeles. But to the young Chinese who eat them, it is the jolly and well-mopped social space surrounding those succulent disks of minced cow that offers something new and useful, the reader learns, and keeps the customers coming back. As Watson, Eriberto Lozada, and Yunxiang Yan show in their articles, McDonald’s and other fast-food vendors have been less agents of change in China than indicators of a diffusely triggered social transformation there.

Not so cheering is the attitude of the capitalists. Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lozada points out, doesn’t care particularly how it sells chicken, as long as it sells a lot of it. If Colonel Sanders freaks out Chinese youngsters, replace him with Chicky, the child-charming mascot who decorates KFC’s 3,400 Chinese stores. Chicky is emblematic of KFC China’s willingness to change, even if that has meant replacing coleslaw with bamboo shoots, and mashed potatoes with porridge. Capitalism is a human enterprise, after all, and if humans are resilient, it only follows that capitalism will be so too.

And not just capitalism. Hans and Judith-Maria Buechler describe in their article on German bread how independent artisan bakers survived profitably under the extreme anti-capitalism of the German Democratic Republic. In contrast, the West German baking conglomerates who forced most of these little guys out of business after the Wende were cooperative market socialists before they invaded the East. Like culture and politics, the business world, too, is prone to modern ironies.

Harriet Ritvo reminds us in “Mad Cow Mysteries” (an article I’d like to ask the volume’s GMO defender Robert Paarlberg to study) that the governments we expect to protect us from bad food can be conflicted and dangerously unreliable. Ritvo’s depiction of the British leadership’s tardy conversion from human BSE deniers to prion experts makes plain the rarest rosbif may be a politician who understands anything but politics. Yet as Ritvo observes, the body politic is what the body politic eats, and it doesn’t easily tolerate a change in diet.

Fifteen years later and a world away in Japan, another government facing crisis seems willing to trade health for other interests. Yet promoting the sale of Fukushima-radiated fish and rice may not simply be a way of showing decisiveness or diverting cash into a disaster-ravaged region. As the British example invites one to conclude, Japan’s fish-and-rice policy is designed to feed a fish-and-rice polity. Home cooking local food, that is, may be a good means of nurturing not just the physical but also the psychosocial recovery of tsunami-decimated communities. Sarah Phillips points out in her piece on the post-Chernobyl food crisis, however, that compromising food safety and neglecting citizen health contributed to the collapse of Soviet Russian control in Ukraine. Poisoning your constituents is a good way to lose their support.

Much of the ethnographic data gathered in this work is now reaching its expiration date. Its theoretical concerns, however, and the broad relations it illuminates between globalization, governance, business, science, food and drink, health, and the recipes for self-construction are still interesting. Eating and drinking, it’s pleasant to think, may belong to a different category than automobiles, TV sets, and other impersonal classics of modern manufacturing. Like music and language, their roots still touch the living, private prehistory, the temps perdu of food fetishist Marcel Proust. This is why we treasure certain foods, and become confused when they are lost. This is why we can use food to reconfigure and console ourselves. Cultural identity has always been a malleable thing. We don’t feel a strong need to worry about this fact, however, until the pace of communal self-transformation speeds up to less than a generation. Then, as the bullet train of psychic foreclosure, renovation, and reopening keeps accelerating, people start reaching for the emergency brake . . . or a slice of pizza. Food and eating can offer a means of slowing the change. Eating, especially when we practice it in the self-conscious fashion so popular and apparently necessary nowadays, allows us to locate, isolate, and nourish a familiar, reliable me. It’s still an idealized, constructed me. But when I sit down to eat, a madeleine, an Oreo, or a heritage turkey at a Thanksgiving feast, at least I seem to recognize the face looking back at me from the plate.

Peter Musolf
Yokohama

The Finest Wines of California is the fourth title in a series of “illustrated guides” to major wine regions developed by the team responsible The World of Fine Wine, a serious, ultra-glossy, “cultural journal” launched in 2004. The author is Stephen Brook, an accomplished UK-based writer on wine and related topics whose works include very good books on Sauternes, Pauillac and Germany interalia. More relevant in this context, he is also the author of a hefty, authoritative survey of California wines published in 1999 by Faber & Faber, which is now out of print. That Mr. Brook is both outsider to California and a student of its wines since the 1970s are assets: in both books he demonstrates an unusual ability to paint the California wine scene sympathetically, objectively, and in an implicitly global frame. That twelve years have passed since The Wines of California appeared in 1999 makes the new title especially welcome.

Like the series’ sibling titles devoted to Champagne, Bordeaux and Tuscany, The Finest Wines of California is heavily and handsomely illustrated; I counted the equivalent of 110 (of 320) pages devoted to photos and label facsimiles. The text is split between overview information on the macro-region, its history, culture, vintages, wine styles and dominant varieties, and a large number of producer profiles organized by sub-regions. Each of the profiles is an engaging combination of essential history, human-interest material, some quite serious notes on viticulture and winemaking, brief reader service information, and nicely written tasting notes. Although any selection of “finest” producers will inevitably be subjective, Brook’s choices seem appropriate and defensible overall. The text makes clear in most cases why he chose his targets, and he admits honestly that not all wines covered in the book should necessarily be counted among his personal favorites. I confess that by my lights Napa gets more than its fair share of attention – more than a third of the book’s total page count – while regions like Mendocino, the true Sonoma Coast and the Santa Cruz Mountains seem underrepresented. (Is this because I am pinot-oriented, and not a heavy consumer of cabernet sauvignon?) One is inclined to miss Flowers, for example, the first modern winery in the true Sonoma Coast, and a virtual revolving door for extraordinary winemaking talent. Conversely, Brook’s excellent and quite detailed profile of Kistler, the consequence of a rare and fortuitous interview with this winery’s eremitic founder, is a welcome contribution to the available literature.

The seven introductory chapters seem an excellent survey of California’s fine wine country, which is essentially the state’s coastal valleys plus the western foothills of the Sierras. There is good attention here to the tension between terroir and winemaking, winemakers’ interventionist practices, the importance of mesoclimates, the jumble of confusion that results from America’s idiosyncratic approach to appellations, the impact of phylloxera and Prohibition on the California wine story, and the challenges associated with marketing wines from regions whose reputations are young. Occasionally, the differences drawn between American and European orientations seem a little stark. Why, for example, should nested appellations in California (“Green Valley” is an AVA within the Russian River Valley AVA . . . [p. 30]) be any more “confusing” than Listrac inside HautMedoc inside Bordeaux? Nor have I noticed that most modern Bordelais vintners are much less infatuated with phenolic ripeness than their Napa Valley counterparts (p. 50.) Kudos are due for the currency of volatile information. Foxen’s move to a new winery in 2009 is noted, as is Kosta Browne’s sale to a private equity firm in the same year.

I confess to some discomfort with two pages of a short chapter on “Significant Others” headed “The Ne ́ gociants” (pp. 306–7.) Of the ten non-estate producers described briefly here, most are landless boutique operations with a significant stake in California pinot noir, including Arcadian, Capiaux, Copain, Ojai, Patz & Hall, Radio Coteau, Siduri and Testarossa. (Oh dear, my pinot bias is showing again!) Mr. Brook explains that he decided to cover these producers as a group, rather than give them individual profiles, because their fruit sources “tend to fluctuate” and “present an ever-shifting pattern,” making them different from the non-estate producers he opted to cover individually. The “intention” of the latter, he writes, is “to maintain long-term contracts with those they buy from.” My reading of “owners’ intentions” may be different from Mr. Brook’s, but I cannot discern much difference between a non-estate producer like Testarossa (summarized as a ne ́ gociant) and a non-estate producer like Kosta Browne, which earned a separate profile on pp. 224–5. There is ironic dissonance too: Copain, summarized as a ne ́ gociant, actually does own 13 acres of vineyard, but does not use the fruit; currently they sell grapes to a handful of small producers; in the past buyers have even included Kosta Browne! More serious than the who-is-and-whois-not problem, however, is that the quasiparenthetical treatment given to these ne ́gociants understates the enormously important role that small, non-estate, winemaker-owned brands have played, at least since about 1985 (but arguably earlier, viz. Lee Stewart’s Souverain brand) at the qualitative pinnacle of the ultrapremium segment of California wine. Again and again, these brands have built the reputation of vineyards (like Hirsch and Pisoni) which, in due season, have spawned estate brands of their own. In some cases they have been essential to the reputation of entire regions – consider what vineyard-designated wines made by exogenous, landless brands like Littorai and Williams Selyem did for the establishment of Anderson Valley’s reputation for top-quality pinot noir. Conversely, consider the drag against reputation that has been displayed when a region’s large vineyards have sold exclusively to large ne ́ gociants, leaving no fruit to satisfy local, boutique-sized non-estate players. Santa Barbara County until late in the 1980s is a case in point. Like Mr. Brook, I find estate producers easier to appreciate, easier to explain to non-specialists, easier to classify geographically and, well, more like Europe. And in a perfect world maybe all winemakers would be winegrowers, and all winegrowers would, like the Burgundian vigneron, work their own vines. But in this case one of California imperfections is also part of its special wine story and a critical part of its ultra-premium story. A bit tighter focus here might have been helpful, especially to those without much previous experience with California wine.

On balance, this is an extremely attractive, well-researched and well-written introduction to the best wines of the Golden State.

John Winthrop Haeger
Stanford University

Does alcohol have a flavor? Definitely, but not a well defined one. Try a nonalcoholic beer and there is clearly something missing. A person’s flavor perception has three components: tactile, gustatory and olfactory. Alcohol has a pronounced tactile effect in your mouth, the familiar burn. Indeed, consuming very high proof alcohol is quite painful. In addition, alcohol is capable of activating sweet and bitter taste receptors on the tongue. Some people get a distinct sense of sweetness from vodka. It may not be possible to have a completely “dry” wine even if the sugar levels are well below detection threshold because the alcohol gives it some sweetness. Alcohol has also been described to have a bitter taste (Scinska et al., 2000). Some people who are labeled “supertasters” possess genes that cause them to experience the taste of bitterness much more powerfully than others. These people also drink less alcohol (Duffy, 2004).

Whether the flavor of alcohol has an olfactory component is hard to say but at best, it is very mild. Many people feel that vodka has an aroma but that is probably from traces of congeners left over from distilling. “Pure” alcohol is so strong that the discomfort from consuming it prevents any reflection on whether it has flavor or not. I suppose someone could mix 99.9% alcohol and distilled water and nose it but I have seen no references to such a trial.

It is no secret that in the last 20 years or so the alcohol levels in wine have been rising across the world. Could it be due to climate change? Probably not. Some vineyard areas that experienced little increase in average temperature had large increases in alcohol levels over the last 20 years and vice versa. By comparing the increase in alcohol content in vineyard areas around the world which have experienced different degrees of warming, it is possible to estimate the contribution of global warming to the rise in alcohol in wine (Alston et al., 2011). It accounts for only a minor portion of the increase.

Actually, the reason for the increase in the percentage of alcohol in wine is pretty clear. It is a byproduct of changes in grape cultivation brought about by increased scientific understanding and perceived market demand. In short, the definition of grape “maturity” has changed. Ages ago people judged the ripeness of their grapes by tasting them. More recently it has become possible to measure the actual sugar content so you could aim to harvest at, say, 23.5 Brix, the old California standard. Multiply the Brix by 0.55 and you get an approximation of the resulting alcohol content of the wine (0.55r23.5 = 12.925%).

In the old world, where nature was not always cooperative, viticulturalists always felt pressure to harvest as soon as possible because a heavy rain could ruin a whole year’s production. Now that we have meteorological forecasts for a week in advance it is less dangerous to allow the grapes to mature further. In California, which depends on irrigation, harvesting can be put off as long as you want. The theory the winemakers work on is that longer hang time will result in greater concentration of the “phenolic” contents of the grapes, the compounds that give wine its flavor. In addition, the tannins become “softer”, which means less harsh. Of course, the sugar content continues to go up, hence more alcohol. Another casualty is the acid content which decreases. A low acid wine tastes dull. Adding natural grape acids, however, is simple.

So what do high alcohol wines taste like? It’s hard to divorce the alcohol component from the other excesses in these wines. The major difference is in the sense of irritation of the mucous membranes. That is why such wines are referred to as “hot”. The difference in sweetness between a 13% and a 14.5% alcohol wine, low to begin with, is probably undetectable as is the change in bitterness. Same for the olfactory component, whatever that is. So it is just the burn that makes these wines seem unbalanced but you can get used to that. It is probably not the increased alcohol in newer wines but the style of the wine itself that is controversial. Of course, higher alcohol causes you to get tipsy faster. You may or may not approve of that.

It is possible to remove excess alcohol from wine by a process called “reverse osmosis” (Vinovation). Under pressure, the wine flows past a fine filter which allows only the water and alcohol plus a few other minor things to get through. The “goodness” of the wine is left behind. You then distill the alcohol off and return the water to the wine. (Returning water from another source would be illegal under the law.) The opposite is possible, too. You can return the alcohol and discard the water in order to correct an overly dilute wine. The whole process is extremely high tech and seems intuitively to be beyond the permissible boundaries of manipulation of a natural product. But my objections have become muted since I learned that one of my favorite Bordeaux chateaux uses reverse osmosis and I love their wines.

Clark Smith, who runs Vinovation, the most prominent California provider of reverse osmosis and other high tech services, can line up somewhere around 18 glasses that contain the same wine but differ only by the amount of alcohol in gradations of 0.1% (Schneider, 2007). Smith maintains that a taster will find about 3 or 4 “sweet spots”, alcohol levels at which the wine tastes best. The winemaker must choose which of these is the style he wants to distribute to his segment of the market. Tasters claim to notice different qualities in wines as close to one another as 0.1% alcohol. This sounds like nonsense to me. If the wines are truly the same except for a slight difference in alcohol content I would expect neighboring samples to be indistinguishable.

Admittedly, it is possible that different levels of alcohol may affect the release of volatile compounds. Respectable claims have been published which state that diluting alcoholic beverages may have the paradoxical effect of accentuating rather than diminishing the aroma (McGee, 2010). The principle is that many of the volatile odor compounds are held in the solution by the alcohol and dilution frees them up. This trick is usually performed with spirits and the degree to which the drink is diluted is substantial. I can’t see that changing the alcohol content of wine by 0.1% could possibly produce any such effect.

Wine can only be brought into the province of Ontario, Canada by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Each wine is tested for various characteristics including alcohol content. Alston et al. used the LCBO figures covering the years 1992–2009 to analyze trends in the changes in alcohol content in wines from around the world (Alston et al., 2011). Unsurprisingly, red wines are more alcoholic than white, New World wines more so than Old World wines and hot climate wines more than cool climate ones. Overall, the alcohol in wines has gone up an average of 0.23% a year, so a wine of 13% alcohol 20 years ago will have become 13.5% today, but this can vary between 0.2 and 2% depending on the region.

Alston’s group was also interested in looking at the actual alcohol content of wines compared to what was printed on the label. The misrepresentation of alcohol content was systematically skewed towards what producers felt would be the levels the public would find desirable. Thus, high alcohol wines were reported as lower than they actually were while low alcohol wines were reported as higher. Since there were more of the former than the latter, the overall trend was to underreport the alcohol content by 0.13%. This varied significantly by region. The biggest fibbers were from Argentina, Spain and the United States.

Alcohol is the reason we enjoy the flavor of wine. Very few people like the taste of wine at their first sip. If its flavors were not reinforced by the mood-altering effect of alcohol, we would not find them pleasant. Certain basic tastes have a built in affective component. Sweet is good; bitter is bad. This is not true of the olfactory components of taste, which we learn to consider pleasant or unpleasant depending on the conditions under which we first encounter them1 (Herz, 2007). Learning to appreciate flavors occurs as early as in the womb and with breast-feeding and possesses a large degree of cultural specificity. Japanese eat stuff for breakfast that would turn our stomachs while, on the other hand, they cannot understand how we enjoy something as disgusting as cheese. Let us not forget that alcohol is why we have wine. No one would bother to ferment grapes if alcohol didn’t have a pleasurable psychological effect. Let’s be grateful that it does.

Jeffery Postman
Mount Sinai Medical Center
New York
E-mail: jpostman@nyc.rr.com

1) The one clear exception is cilantro where whether you like it or hate it seems to be genetically determined. If one identical twin likes or dislikes cilantro, most likely the other will feel the same way. This is much less so of fraternal twins.

References

Alston, J.M., Fuller, K.B., Lapsley, J.T., Soleas, G. and Tumber, K.B. (2011). Splendide mendax: false label claims about high and rising alcohol content of wine. American Association of Wine Economists, AAWE Working Paper No. 82.

Duffy, V.B., Davidson, A.C., Kidd, J.R., Kidd, K.K., Speed, W.C., Pakstis, A.J., Reed, D.R., Snyder, D.J. and Bartoshuk, L.M. (2004). Bitter receptor gene (TAS2R38), 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) bitterness and alcohol intake. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 28(11), 1629–1637.

Herz, R. (2007). The Scent of Desire: Discovering our Enigmatic Sense of Smell. New York: HarperCollins.

McGee, H. (2010). To enhance flavor, just add water. New York Times, July 27. Schneider, D. (2007). What does it mean now that a winemaker can select the structure of a wine? The Art of Eating, 73 & 74 (20th Anniversary Issue).

Scinska, A.S., Koros, E., Habrat, B., Kukwa, A., Kostowski, W. and Bienkowski, P. (2000).

Bitter and sweet components of ethanol taste in humans. Drug Alcohol Dependence, 60(2), 199–206.

Vinovation (2011). Custom Equipment Manufacture www.vinovation.com/custequip.htm, website accessed on 6/14/11

Jeffery Postman
Mount Sinai Medical Center
New York
E-Mail: jpostman@nyc.rr.com

2011 is a perfect year to praise and review a book concerned with Champagne. The Notre-Dame cathedral of Reims is celebrating its 800th anniversary. The church is known as the place where French Kings were crowned (though there are doubts whether Sarkozy’s coronation also took place there) and Champagne used to be served at royal banquets that followed coronation. This does not imply that this beautiful sparkling liquid is 800 years old, and there is no historical record testifying that Clovis I, King of the Francs, who was baptized in Reims in 499 AC, got drunk after sipping a few glasses of Dom Perignon. Indeed, due to the complicated and poorly understood “two-fermentation” process, most of the production was still and not sparkling until roughly 1840.

Guy’s book, subtitled Wine and the Making of a National Identity, tells it almost all. You will, however, not find much about Clovis, since the book starts in 1789 and stops in 1914, but the concluding chapter also briefly discusses what is happening today, and how France defends (again, as will be seen later) the notions of “terroir”2 and AOC (appellation d’origine controˆ le ́ e), as well as the word “champagne” itself that the two Frenchman, Pierre Berge ́ and Yves Saint Laurent, were prevented to use as name for a perfume. Being French is therefore not enough. . .

It is a highly learned book since it grew out from a doctoral dissertation at Indiana University, and starts with an epigraph by Friedrich Engels: “La belle France! What wine! What diversity, from Bordeaux to sparkling champagne!” which should remind us that Karl Marx was the happy owner of a vineyard in Trier, on the Mosel. Nobody’s perfect.

The author describes “the complex association of champagne with social distinction and fraternal union” since the wine became a must at every private or public event. Guy quotes a British observer who noted in 1882 that “we cannot open a railway, launch a vessel, inaugurate a public edifice, start a newspaper, entertain a distinguished foreigner, invite a leading politician to favor us with his views on things in general, celebrate an anniversary, or specially appeal on behalf of a benevolent institution without a banquet, and hence without the aid of Champagne” (p. 11) 3).

The most interesting part of the volume is concerned with the fight led by winegrowers between 1890 and 1910 to give an identity to their region, and define its boundaries. In 1891, Rene ́ Lamarre, a nineteen-year old winemaker issued a pamphlet suggesting that “within ten years, people will no longer be acquainted with the name Champagne, but with those of Roederer, Planckaert, Bollinger, and it will not matter from which grapes these wines are produced.” (Lamarre, quoted p. 40) Wine, he claimed, should not be distanced from the soil, and foreign grapes (that is from other French regions) should be banned from Champagne. Interestingly, Lamarre’s intention was to create a Champagne united producers’ cooperative that would sell the wine directly to consumers at 25 francs (instead of 10), of which 23 francs would go to producers. This would make it impossible for the Roederer’s of that world to buy wine from local producers. They would have to get their grapes from other regions such as Chaˆ lons-sur-Marne, to the east of the main winegrowing areas along the Marne river, which people would call “vin de cochon” (cochon means pig) and they would, supposedly, no longer be permitted to use the name Champagne. The fight for AOCs had started. Not bad for a nineteen-year old boy!

In January 1911, 3,000 bottles of wine from the South of France were to be delivered to Perrier, another Champagne producer. This spurred a new revolution that made some winemakers march and sing to the tune of L’Internationale (p. 159)

proving that Marx and Engels (see above) can sometimes be invoked. . . It led to a new deadlock about the delimitations of the region where Champagne vines could or could not be grown.

Sadly enough, phylloxera also made its way to Champagne (though much later than in other regions), but some regional “specialists” believed that “the considerable differences that exist between the cultivation, planting and soil of the vines of Champagne and the vines of the Seine-et-Marne can perhaps preserve [them] from the invasion of the blight” (p. 92, Guy quoting a regional wine specialist). And indeed growers chose not to follow other regions, which relied on American rootstocks, and thought that chemicals could save the vineyards. Though the blight had started in 1875 in Bordeaux, in 1890, Champagne growers were still very optimistic and “issued a small brochure to assure English-speaking consumers that phylloxera was not a threat to quality or supplies of Champagne” (p. 97). Guess what? They were wrong.

And then came World War I, which stopped the AOC debate for exogenous reasons: “Champagne vineyards were pulverized under the relentless assault of modern armed combat” (p. 187). It fortunately killed phylloxera also, since at the time, there was still no agreement whether chemicals or American rootstocks could save the vineyards. The debate eventually ended with the creation in 1919 of the Syndicat ge ́ne ́ral des vignerons de la Champagne viticole de ́limite ́e, whose main goal was to repress fraudulent wines. Whether they succeeded is another story.

A very nice and readable book for those who like history, or wine, or both, but are also interested in understanding some details of how the French identity was built.

You will find no guidance about which wines to buy. This is not what the book is about. Just use the following rule of thumb that two editors of the Journal of Wine Economics, meeting in a restaurant during the third AAWE meeting in Reims in 2009, give you for free: “In case you have to choose, always go for the cheapest.”

Note that this goes very much against a dialogue imagined by Rene ́ Lamarre (whom we met earlier):

The two JWE editors are either small spenders, or know nothing about Champagne. Or – but the dialogue does not say so – the customer chose the 40 francs bottle.

And the AOC debate is still going strong, not only in Champagne but also in the whole country.

Victor Ginsburgh
ECARES Brussels

2) On the very debatable value of “terroir”, see Robin Cross, Andrew Plantinga and Robert Stavins (2011). What is the value of terroir. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 101, 152–156 and Olivier Gergaud and Victor Ginsburgh (2010). Endowments, production technologies and the quality of wines in Bordeaux. Does terroir matter? Journal of Wine Economics, 5(1), 3–21.

3) Page numbers refer to Guy’s book.

They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (or a wine by its label?), but does weight offer any clue to quality? Some winemakers apparently think so – they put their best wines (or at least their most expensive ones) in the heaviest imaginable bottles to give them physical heft to match their presumed sensory impact.

If you take Benjamin Lewin’s latest book as a sample of one, intellectual heft and physical weight are pretty highly correlated, too. At 634 pages and 1.9 kg this is indeed a weighty tome – and a very valuable one for anyone interested in wine.

Wine: Myths and Reality is a book for people (like me) with a geeky interest in wine. I like it so much, in fact, that I am going to make it required reading for the students in my university class, The Idea of Wine. They may not appreciate having to carry it around in their backpacks, but I guarantee they will thank me when they sit down to read it.

DIY Master of Wine?

I was tempted to title this review “Dr. Lewin’s DIY MW” (Do-It-Yourself Master of Wine). As I was reading the book I couldn’t help thinking about the Master of Wine exams and how closely the book seems to follow the syllabus. The Master of Wine was invented to help educate and prepare wine professionals – people who make their living in the wine business as buyers, sellers, advisors, writers and critics. I am sure that studying Dr. Lewin’s book isn’t adequate to pass the MW exam’s four-part written test, but I think it gives you a sense of the breadth and depth of knowledge that candidates are expected to master. The exam’s structure reflects the need to understand not just wine but its entire commodity chain.

The first two papers deal with the production of wine.1)

Paper 1 will examine candidates’ knowledge and understanding of ‘Characteristics of the vine and wine’ up to and including ‘alcoholic and malolactic fermentation’.

Paper 2 will examine candidates’ knowledge and understanding of ‘Wine maturation, blending and bottling’ up to and including ‘quality assurance and quality control’.

The first half of Dr. Lewin’s book does a rather masterful job of covering the material for this part of the exam. Clear, organized, detailed, interesting and provocative – just what the doctor (or wine trade professional or aspiring MW)

ordered.

Getting Down to Business

The third MW theory paper is on wine business, which makes sense since so many MWs are in “the trade.”

Theory Paper 3: The Business of Wine. The purpose of this unit is to assess candidates’ current knowledge and understanding of financial, commercial and marketing aspects of the international wine industry. Candidates should demonstrate the ability to apply their knowledge to a range of business situations including marketing and investment strategies, financial decision making, supplier – customer relationships and strategies for identifying and meeting consumer demand. Candidates will require a broad background knowledge of wine industry structures around the world and how these relate to one another.

Dr. Lewin is not quite as comprehensive in this part of his book, which is understandable since this material will be of less interest to a general audience, but his analysis of global wine market trends and issues is still a very interesting and useful overview, even for the well-informed readers of the Journal of Wine Economics.

The fourth MW essay is on “contemporary issues” and I think Dr. Lewin does a fine job of raising and analyzing important issues throughout the book. As someone who writes and uses textbooks all the time, I appreciate that Dr. Lewin provides us with his opinions (not playing the old “on one hand, on the other hand” game), but he does so carefully, citing specific evidence after having outlined the issues clearly.

The final third of Dr. Lewin’s book is a world tour – an introduction to the regions, the wines and the relevant controversies, with special focus on Burgundy and Bordeaux, which is understandable given their place in the world of wine and especially because of Dr. Lewin’s particular interests and expertise.

Breaking with Tradition

I was initially surprised by the organization of the regional wine survey chapters. Traditionally the Old World comes first and the New World trails along behind. Dr. Lewin reverses the order. Why? I believe that it has to do with the theme of the book. The title, Wine Myths and Reality gives a strong hint of the book’s overarching argument.

The myth is that Old World wines are unmanipulated natural products and that New World wines are highly processed industrial output. Dr. Lewin argues throughout the book that all wine is manipulated – how could it be otherwise? Left to itself, wine is just a brief stop on the fluid road to vinegar. It is hardly surprising that Benjamin Lewin would take this stand on wine. He is a renowned cell biologist who understands better than most the role of science in wine. To dismiss “manipulation” is to ignore wine science, which seems like a foolish, ignorant attitude.

Embracing Dr. Lewin’s argument raises the true question – what do we want wine to be and how best can we achieve this goal? Everyone manipulates (or else makes spoiled wine) – the question is how, how much, why and to what effect? Telling the story of the New World first puts this argument in context and highlights the issues effectively.

This book is certainly worth a place on any wine economist’s bookshelf – even if you have to reinforce it to bear the extra weight!

Mike Veseth
University of Puget Sound and wineeconomist.com

1) Information about MW exam papers taken from a 2008/2009 syllabus posted on the Masters of Wine website (accessed May 4, 2011): http://www.mastersofwine.org/filemanager/root/site_assets/documents/ exam/syllabi/syllabus_2009.pdf.