Book & Film Reviews

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.

Wine books generally focus on the author’s personal wine experiences (Lynch, 1990), a grape variety (Kliman, 2010), a winery (Weiss, 2005), a wine region (Kladstrup and Kladstrup, 2006), or an event (Taber, 2005). Alternatively wine books often discuss the history of wine (Pellechia, 2006) or wine’s role in a socio-cultural event (Kladstrup and Kladstrup, 2001). While books about any of these single topics can make for a good read, when an author is able to combine the best of all wine book genres into one volume the book becomes a must read.

In Summer in a Glass, Evan Dawson has blended all these forms of wine writing into an entertaining, humorous, educational, and heartbreaking tale of wines development in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Dawson examines the Finger Lakes wine industry and highlights some of the most colorful and important figures that have shaped the region and pushed it toward making world-class vino. Not only does he tell a good story about a wine region he knows so well, but he makes the reader want to trek to see and taste Finger Lakes wine firsthand.

Each chapter in Summer in a Glass highlights different individual wineries and winemakers. Each chapter begins with a short back story on its main characters. These stories recount happy moments, heartbreak, and the risk that many winemakers and winery owners take to follow their dreams.

The book opens with the story of Johannes Reinhardt, who left his German winemaking family for the more open and experimental wine community in America. Reinhardt’s story is in some ways a typical immigrant story – he came to the United States to try something new, but he brought the old world with him. He makes German style Riesling in New York State.

Additionally, Reinhardt brought with him a cooperative attitude that is sometimes missing from winemaking in America. He is willing to breakdown the silos that can develop between competing wineries and is willing to assist his fellow winemakers. Because of his generous spirit, Reinhardt’s story is weaved throughout the tales of other Finger Lakes winemakers and the other winemakers do everything in their power to assist Reinhardt’s battle with immigration officials who continually deny him permanent status (p. 5).

While Reinhardt’s story is one of cooperation, the story of Tricia Renshaw, a single mother of two, who gave up her teaching job to pursue an interest in winemaking, is a story of risk and reward. Dawson recounts Renshaw’s decision to cold-call Peter Bell, winemaker at Fox Run Winery, and ask him if she could volunteer at the winery. Whereas, Renshaw had never made notes when tasting wine, Bell tested her with tasting a series of wine and making notes on the scents and flavors present in each glass, a task at which she excelled (p. 131).

Renshaw’s story is both idealistic and realistic. Many wine writers throw around fancy terms and flavors when describing wine. Tricia Renshaw represents a breakdown of the language barriers that often divide “regular folks” from wine snobs. She had a natural ability to detect flavors in wine and won herself a job by being honest about the smells and flavors. It is hard to imagine the meteoric rise Renshaw experienced in the Finger Lakes – from school teacher to assistant winemaker – occurring in virtually any other wine making region.

The final story, indicative of the spirit of the Finger Lakes and other small wine producing regions, is one of cooperation. While wineries certainly compete with each other, both for sales and accolades, some also cooperate in an attempt to make wine better throughout the region. The Finger Lakes, like many other East Coast regions, suffer from unpredictable weather that impacts the quality and types of grapes grown. In an effort to promote the image of Finger Lakes wines, Johannes Reinhardt brought together two other winemakers, Dave Whiting of Red Newt Wine Cellars and Peter Bell of Fox Run Winery, to collaborate on a blended wine called “Tierce.”

Tierce white, initially released in 2005, blended the best white wines from each winery. As the conclusion of the Summer in a Glass, Dawson recounts being invited to the blending sessions of a 2007 Tierce red. Each winemaker brought their best red wines from 2007 and set about to meld them into a something special. Dawson recounts the process of tasting numerous blends until the perfect match was found. Perhaps Dawson’s most poignant recollection from this effort sums up the value that each winemaker placed on equality among wineries and making the best possible wine to represent the Finger Lakes. “They could easily have wrapped up the blending hours earlier, but no one in that room was going to waste the best harvest weather in a generation by settling for an inferior wine. A historic vintage does not mean that making great wine will be easy. It means, that, with focus, a good wine can become great” (p. 255).

These individual stories and the picture they paint of a close-knit and open community in the Finger Lakes wine world make Dawson’s tales irresistible. Where once the Finger Lakes was considered to be a backwater location for making wines, today it is at the cutting edge of up and coming wine regions that is known for world class Rieslings and ever improving red wines. The descriptions alone make me want to visit and meet these extraordinary individuals, soon.

Jacob R. Straus
UMBC, Shady Grove

References

Kladstrup, D. and Kladstrup, P. (2001). Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest
Treasure. New York: Broadway Books.

Kladstrup, D. and Kladstrup, P. (2006). Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times. New York: Harper Perennial.

Kliman, T. (2010). The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine. New York: Clarkson Potter.

Lynch, K. (1990). Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France. New York: North Point Press.

Pellechia, T. (2006). Wine: The 8,000 Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Taber, G. M. (2005). Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine. New York: Scribner.

Weiss, M. (2005). A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table. New York: Gotham Books.

The dust jacket for the first volume of Thomas Penney’s excellent book A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition has a picture of a group of men and boys around a wine barrel pouring glasses of wine from unlabeled bottles. Several of the men wear period beards, moustaches and goatees. It’s a jovial group that looks as if they had just put in a hard day in the harvest. The caption on the back says they are “enjoying the sparkling wine for which the firm was noted.” The date given is 1906. The picture was taken at the Renault Winery in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey.

While much of the wine world thinks all American wine comes from California, Oregon, and Washington, it is now produced in every state in the union, including Alaska and North Dakota. That doesn’t mean Texas or Rhode Island wine is made from grapes grown in those states. Many wineries buy grapes, unfermented juice, or even finished wine from California and then simply finish the winemaking process, if necessary, and bottle it as their state’s wine. Shipping conditions have improved greatly since Dust Bowl days, when in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath the California produce was destroyed during transport after ice melted.

Bart Jackson has now written a useful tourist’s guide to the wineries of New Jersey, which calls itself the Garden State but has a much less glamorous reputation based largely on visitors’ transient impressions from the New Jersey Turnpike. The state is more than a toll road, and it didn’t get its name for nothing. This is the birthplace of Campbell’s Soup because good and abundant tomatoes grow there. It’s also home to some of the best blueberries in the country. One of the first American planned communities was Vineland in southern New Jersey, which was started in 1861. Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch lived there and founded Welch’s Fruit Juice Company with the goal of making a non-alcoholic wine.

According to Pinney, the first vineyards were planted in New Jersey just before the American Revolution. Inspired by monetary awards offered by the Philadelphia branch of the London Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce, farmers planted vineyards in the nearby province of New Jersey. Edward Antill put in his first French and Italian vines in 1764 near the present-day city of New Brunswick. Pinney says Antill later wrote the “first specifically American treatise on viticulture.” It was entitled, “An Essay on the Cultivation of the Vine, and the Making of Wine, Suited to the Different Climates of North-America.”

If truth were told, many of the wines made in the forty-seven states not named California, Washington, and Oregon are not very good. I have tasted many at wine competitions, but I didn’t sample many that I would buy. They are more interesting for their curiosity, and remind me of Dr. Johnson’s blatantly sexist remark about women preachers: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” I find Idaho or Arizona wines interesting because they actually exist.

Having lived in New Jersey for twenty-six years, I have tasted the state’s wines over a long time and watched their development from mostly bad to sometimes interesting and even quite good. Wine is made in the state from the very bottom near Cape May, which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, to the far northwest, where the climate in winter resembles New England. Nature is kindest in the area known as the Outer Coastal Plain, which goes east to west from the Atlantic Ocean to near Philadelphia on the west and from Cape May in the south to Asbury Park. It’s now an official American Viticultural Area. Wine is also made in Warren Hills and Central Delaware Valley further north.

Many fruits grow well in the Outer Coastal Plain, and some farmers unfortunately make wine out of everything but grapes. Consumers will find lots of products made from blueberries and a host of other exotic ingredients. Those are frankly not very exciting and usually sweet. Too many winemakers are also using hybrid grapes such as Foch that can survive the winters. I personally don’t like them.

A few New Jersey wineries, though, are making outstanding wines. The problem is that there are not enough of them. Perhaps the best of the over achievers is Amalthea Cellars in Atco. Founder Louis Caracciolo, who has an Italian heritage and a scientific education, planted his first grapes in 1976. He also owns a house in France and is a serious student of that country’s wine technology. Amalthea’s Legend wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, that are admitted copies of great French reds: Chaˆ teau Palmer, Chaˆ teau Margaux, and Chaˆ teau Latour. They can hold their own with the best in the world and have done so in blind tastings.

Wine tourism is a vital part of the business plans for all the wineries not located in California, Oregon, and Washington. Major distributors won’t handle minor brands, so they have to survive thanks to cellar-door sales and the few local stores that will carry them. That’s why Bart Jackson’s book is important because it may help bring in some wine tourists. The Wine Appreciation Guild, a San Francisco company that has a long list of wine books, distributes the New Jersey guide. I hope this will be the first in a series about visiting wineries in other states.

My only critique is that the author is too much of a gentleman and doesn’t give candid recommendations for wineries to visit from the point of view of either the quality of the wines or wine tourism. By careful reading between the lines, a visitor gets hints, but I hope future editions of this book and other state guides will include a Michelin-star system that tells the tourist that a winery is very good, worth a detour, or merits a special trip.

George M. Taber
Wine Writer
Block Island, RI

Written in disarmingly colloquial but fine, living German, Wein is a comfortable book, loose and casual as a pair of stretch-waist jeans and an extra-large Bundesliga jersey. A collection of 27 humorous short essays and 52 sublimely eccentric illustrations, Wein is about wine, of course, but it’s also a book about getting, and staying, relaxed. If your wine book collection resembles mine – a tannic row of the dutifully historical, aridly technical, ploddingly evaluative, and tediously politicized – it will gain balance from the addition of this juicy, hedonistic, and yet earnest volume.

Wein’s lead author, the much-awarded and much-maligned satirist Wiglaf Droste, has built a fine career from kicking sacred cows. Mostly a social commentator, he also keeps a watchful eye on German gastronomy, editing, with Wein coauthor Klink, a longstanding food and wine quarterly called Häuptling Eigener Herd (roughly, My Stove Is My Castle). Among his roughly 20 books, this is his first on wine. It was reprinted in November 2010 in paperback.

Here Droste aims his cleats at the human pretensions besieging wine and keeping it from flowing more freely in, around, over, and under our lives. Whether sending up bio-freaks, the demonization of alcohol, or a dinner host who wields boredom the way Freddie Krueger wields a bladed glove, Droste makes a consistently pomposity-popping point: there are too many spoilsports out there trying to take the fun out of his favorite drink. He goes about this business with a wicked grin, and for someone known for writing parody with a jackhammer, a surprisingly light touch. A seasoned snob like me comes away admonished, but laughing . . . and eager to test Droste’s adage that “the world looks better seen through a breakfast wine.”

Vincent Klink is a famous and talented chef and, to judge from his Stuttgart restaurant’s menu, a man who values a roasted veal hock over chilled tofu. Droste’s friend, he shares the satirist’s imperative to drink more and care less. He too has a deft feel for writing, mixing, as Droste does, the high with the low, and not shying self-parody, no matter how compromising. I was deliciously entertained by Klink’s deep-frying of his parents’ abysmal kitchen skills, and shamelessly amused by his steamed masturbation fantasy, involving melons, shrimps, a ham-hipped former classmate named Hilde, and a bottle of Giorgio Rivetti Barolo (“Viagra für die Frau”). There are also recipes.

They might have given either writer his own book, I thought, instead of braiding their sections together. But where the danger with Droste is a never-ending rant, with Klink, who rides a Moto Guzzi when he visits vintners, you risk a permanent midlife crisis. So, after all, it’s best to counterpose them this way. What unites the two is their love for wine. At bottom both are connoisseurs. They just don’t care to make a big deal of it. They might miss a chance to get drunk.

How do you illustrate a kitchen bull’s snorting autoeroticism without spoiling the innocent charm of the whole thing? You dig down deep inside your creative footlocker and pull up a painting of a wine bottle that walks on pigeon legs between which sway a pair of spike-haired human testicles. This is the work of graphic artist Nikolaus Heidelbach, Wein’s third contributer. If you were still having doubts, Heidelbach’s paintings will make finally clear how seriously, beautifully demented this book is. Golgotha in a wine bottle. Corks that dance and hump each other like dogs. Bizarre portraits of people, bottles, and animals, singly and sometimes all together. Heidelbach recalls the moods and talents of Maurice Sendak and Wilhelm Busch, often surpassing them. Even if German isn’t your favorite conversational tool, Heidelbach’s pictures are worth having on your coffee table, especially if you are skipping the coffee and pulling another cork. They make the visual joy of a children’s book re-available to grown-ups.

A sharp but loving dig in the ribs, Wein reminds wine lovers to smile as they sip and to adapt Oscar Wilde’s sage quip about art to their vinous concerns: Wine may be the only serious subject in the world, but the true wine fan is the only person who is never serious.

Peter Musolf
Yokohama

I stumbled over this book in New York’s Strand Book Store, read the first pages while still standing at the bookshelf, bought it, and devoured it in a few days. The author of An Edible History of Humanity is Tom Standage, the business editor of the Economist and author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses. And clear-cut, this is a book written by an economist from the first page to the last.

An Edible History of Humanity covers 150,000 years of cultural history and its relation to food. This is not a “happy foodie book.” Standage does not write about the cultural history of food, cuisines or table manners. Rather, this book is about the role food has played in social and economic development and as the foundation of entire civilizations. In twelve chapters, Standage describes how food and the search for it has shaped our economy and our lives. The book is structured by topics and cruises chronologically through human history. It begins with the invention of farming and the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer communities (Chapters 1 to 3) and closes with the Green Revolution of the 20th century (Chapters 11 and 12). But not all chapters are on farming. In between we read about the global spice trade (Chapters 5 and 6), food, energy and industrialization (Chapters 7 and 8) and food as a weapon (Chapters 9 and 10).

Here are some of the book’s ideas from the first chapters that, so my hope, should entice the reader.

Why did people switch from hunting and gathering to farming? The common answer is farming is more efficient and exhibits less volatile outcomes than hunting-gathering, and thus gave people more time to devote to artistic and technological pursuits. However, as convincingly laid out by Standage, the opposite is true. In addition to the fact that “being a hunter-gatherer was much more fun” than being a farmer, farming was less productive than hunting (measured in time spent per food produced) and yielded a less varied and less balanced diet. As a result, farmers were shorter in height than hunter-gatherers and enjoyed a lower life expectancy. So why did people switch? Drawing on a rich body of mostly anthropological literature Standage provides several possible explanations for the adoption of farming such as climate change, sedentism and population growth.

In some regions of the world, climate change appears to have played an important role; a warmer and less volatile climate was the necessary condition for farming. In other parts of the world people became more sedentary and spent most of their time at a single camp or even took permanent residency near a source of abundant wild food supplies. Nomadic hunter-gatherers have to carry everything – including children – from camp to camp increasing the cost of having many small children. Mothers in permanent settlements, on the other hand, are freed from this burden. Sedentism allows people to have more children and therefore may spur population growth, which, in turn, encourages supplemental plantings and agriculture.

In any event, the transition from hunting-gathering to farming was gradual. At no point did one person make a conscious decision to make a radical switch. The proto-farmer was rather guided by questions such as “Why be a nomad when you can settle down near a good supply of fish? If wild food sources cannot be relied upon why not plant a few seeds to increase the supply?” (p. 22).

Not only has farming led to greater changes in our natural environment than any other human activity, it has also changed our social lives. Food does not always bring people together, it can also divide them. While people settled down with farming, agricultural food surpluses allowed the social stratification of society and divided people into rich and poor. The concept of personal wealth is foreign to nomadic hunter-gatherers. The need to carry everything around limits the accumulation of personal property. Personal possessions are limited to a few clothes, tools and weapons. In addition, most items are shared among all group members. Bands in which items are shared are more flexible and have an edge over those who amass private wealth and jealously guard their status goods. Food is shared too; since not every hunter can be sure to kill an animal every day, sharing serves as an insurance against food shortages.

The egalitarian structure of hunter-gatherer bands has changed with the advent of sedentary farming. Since people don’t move around anymore the concept of private property and stratified social structures become accepted.

Standage then tackles the international spice trade from the 14th to the 17th century. Spices as “splinters of paradise” were sought after as status symbols. Cinnamon, ginger, white pepper, cardamom all were luxury items affordable to very few people only. “The conspicuous consumption of spices was a way to demonstrate one’s wealth, power and generosity. Spices were presented as gifts, bequeathed in wills along with other valuable item . . .” (p. 66). In this chapter, we learn about the European thirst for spices, the Arab trade cartel, and the need to look for new ways to India, which accidentally lead to the “discovery” of the Americas.

And, as Standage tells us in Chapters 7 and 8, there was new foodstuff coming from the Americas, mainly the potato and maize. Both substantially increased agricultural productivity or, as Adam Smith wrote about the potato, “. . . the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people and … population would increase.” (p. 123). But the potato was not welcome from the first day on; farmers were reluctant to plant the new tuber. In Prussia, King Frederick II ordered the cultivation of potatoes by royal decree in 1756, when in most countries the potato was only kept as a potted flower. The popularity of the potato increased sluggishly but once accepted, the dependency on it, with all its positive and negative effects, grew rapidly. The Irish potato famine of the 1840s is a dramatic extension of what Vincent van Gogh depicts in his airless, poverty-stricken painting The Potato Eaters. But in the end, Adam Smith was right. The dramatic increase in agricultural productivity was the base for the rising industrialization in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

Chapters 9 and 10 deal with food and its role in war. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in 1812, might not have happened had he had more canned food in his supplies. Preserved food, first produced in glass bottles by Frenchman Nicolas Appert in 1795, went on sale as a luxury item in Paris. In 1809, Appert demonstrated his new food to the French army and started the production of tin cans for military supply in subsequent years. Some soldiers on the battlefield of Waterloo in 1815 carried rations of canned food. However, not all of these soldiers were French; the smart businessman Appert also sold his invention to the archenemy England.

In 1948/1949, during the Berlin Blockade, food was used as a weapon against communism. At the height of the airlift, the U.S. Airforce and the British Royal Airforce (supported by aircrews from Australia, Canadian, New Zealand and South Africa) flew more than 10,000 tons of food per day into the isolated city. The Douglas company, whose C-54 airplanes were the backbone of the campaign, accompanied this with a poster headlined “Milk . . . new weapon of democracy.”

The last chapters of the book are devoted to the Green Revolution. When German chemist Fritz Haber demonstrated how to synthesize liquid ammonia from its constituent elements, hydrogen (from coal) and nitrogen (from the air), in 1909, the world of food changed for good. Haber joined forces with BASF chemist Carl Bosch and developed a large-scale ammonia production method that is now known as Haber-Bosch process. Synthetic fertilizer was born and the stage was set for stunning agricultural production increases in the decades to follow.

Each chapter of this book is a fascinating read by itself. Standage puts events into a larger economic context and augments the factual report line with intriguing background information (and a comprehensive reference section).

However, the strength of this book, i.e., the fact that each chapter stands on its own, is also its weakness. The chapters do not directly relate to each other and have little in common except for the word “food.” And in the end, isn’t everything about food? Or maybe food, power and sex?

The choice of a topic-oriented structure that at the same time also follows a chronological order is fairly restrictive. I miss a discussion of contemporary topics such as food safety

and food politics, the advent of processed food or the emergence of restaurants in the early 19th century. I would have liked to learn how past issues link to the present. For instance, “food as status symbol” did not end with the spice trade of the 17th century. Now we are enjoying specialty foods, gourmet temples and 100-Parker point wines.

Although the link to the status function of spices 400 years ago is evident, there is nothing on food and wine critics in this book. Due to the fact that food and wine are “experience goods,” i.e., their quality cannot be evaluated before consumption, people have relied on experts and guides. However, historically, the existence of professional food and wine “experts” is a rather recent phenomenon. The first restaurant guides were sold in the 1920s; professional wine critics entered the scene in the 1970s. Recent research suggests that consumers’ quality perception for food and wine is driven by expert rating and prices (e.g., Plasmann et al., 2008), just like the demand for spices 500 years ago. In fact, as reported by Bohannon et al. (2009), some people are not even able to distinguish between pâté and dog food.

One might think, “one more reason to rely on expert guidance.” Unfortunately, the expertise of experts is often founded on shaky grounds as well. Hodgson (2008) reports that judges at a California Wine Fair assign medals to wine virtually randomly. At blind tastings of identical wines, one pouring received a gold medal while another pouring was rejected as flawed by the same expert. But worse. Sometimes, expert knowledge is not only flawed but utterly made up. For instance, in 2008, after paying the entry fee of $250, a fictitious restaurant won the prestigious “Wine Spectator Award of Excellence” for its outstanding wine list (Goldstein, 2008).

In a similar fashion, traders justified the high prices for exotic spices. Standage cites Herodotus, the Greek writer of the 5th century B.C., who describes the process of collecting cinnamon. “The Arabians say that the dry sticks, which we call kinamomon, are brought to Arabia by large birds, which carry them to their nests, made of mud, on mountain precipices which no man can climb. The method invented to get the sticks is this. People cut up the bodies of dead oxen into very large joints, and leave them on the ground near the nests. They then scatter and the birds fly down and carry off the meat to their nests, which are too weak to bear the weight and fall to the ground. The men come and pick up the cinnamon. Acquired in this way, it is exported to other countries.” (p. 64).

Notwithstanding my wish of having a separate book on each topic, An Edible History of Humanity is an outstanding read. Wanting more after an engaging read is always a great compliment to the author. Standage keeps the reader captivated from the first to the last page. And one learns a lot.

Karl Storchmann
New York University

References

Bohannon, J., Goldstein, R. and Herschkowitsch, A. (2009). Can people distinguish pâté from dog food? American Association of Wine Economists, Working Paper No. 39.

Goldstein, R. (2008). What does it take to get a Wine Spectator Award? http://blindtaste.com/ 2008/08/15/what-does-it-take-to-get-a-wine-spectator-award-of-excellence/

Hodgson, R.T. (2008). An examination of judge reliability at a major U.S. wine competition. Journal of Wine Economics, 3(2), 105–113.

Plassmann, H., O’Doherty, J., Shiv, B. and Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 1050–1054.

Prohibition, that period between 1920 and 1933 when the manufacture, sale, import or export of “intoxicating liquors” was forbidden in the U.S., has produced a remarkable set of historical myths. Daniel Okrent’s inspiring new book reveals many of them. Here are some examples:

Myth 1—“Eliot Ness and the Untouchables put Al Capone out of business.” Well, actually, Capone’s bootlegging operation in Chicago was never shut down. Moreover, Ness, who died as a semi-drunken mess, had nothing to do with Capone’s final conviction, which was for income tax evasion.

One of the most interesting facts about Prohibition is that alcoholic beverage consumption and production continued during the entire period of its existence. Although Okrent refers to the work of Miron and Zweibel on alcoholic beverage consumption during Prohibition, his quite exhaustive research seems to have missed the main basis for their work: a truly remarkable book, The Economic Results of Prohibition, by Clark Warburton. This book, published in 1932, was Warburton’s doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. His advisors Arthur Burns, Wesley Claire Mitchell, Harold Hotelling, and Joseph Dorfman make up an all star economic team if ever there was one. The primary finding of the book, which is based on a careful examination of indirect indicators of production and consumption, is that alcohol consumption by the late 1920s was only about one-third below its pre-World War I high. From my reading of Warburton’s work, it is not even clear that consumption of alcohol was any lower by the late 1920s than it would have been absent Prohibition. For example, alcoholic beverage consumption declined by 40% in England and Wales and by 20% in Denmark in the same period, but there was no Prohibition in those countries. The use of modern methods of program evaluation might usefully be applied to reconsider this issue.

Myth 2—“It was illegal to drink alcohol during Prohibition.” Well, actually, it was never illegal to drink alcoholic beverages; it was only illegal to sell them. One of the most fascinating aspects of Prohibition that Okrent explains with care is that it was most successful when it was not enforced too rigorously, nor taken too seriously. To that end the framers of the 18th Amendment made it clear that penalties would be for the saloons, not their customers. Indeed, the Amendment was written so as not to go into effect until one year after its ratification, which permitted the distillers to sell off their stocks and their customers to fill their cellars for the coming dry season.

Myth 3—“The California wine grape industry was destroyed by Prohibition.” Well, actually, the California grape business never had it better than during Prohibition! The Volstead Act, which implemented prohibition, effectively permitted each family to make 100 gallons of wine per year legally. The result was a phenomenal boom in grapes produced to ship to the East coast. In fact, Warburton estimates, based on the dramatic increase in grape production during the 1920s, that the per capita consumption of wine actually increased by 65% as a result of Prohibition.

Despite the boom, Okrent also points out one key fact about grape production that had a very deleterious and long lasting effect on the California wine industry. Because the grapes California growers produced had to be shipped across the entire U.S., they specialized in the production of grapes that satisfied that purpose. Sadly, these grapes, typically the ubiquitous Alicante Bouchet, while suitable for the home wine makers back East, were not quite what wine connoisseurs had in mind. It took many decades, and the constant urging of people like Maynard Amerine, the distinguished University of California at Davis professor of enology, to move production to the quality wine that the state now produces.

There are so many other myths that Okrent reveals that it sometimes seems impossible to believe how bamboozled all of us have been. No, Joe Kennedy was not a bootlegger; Franklin Roosevelt was not a wet hero (as a young senator he sponsored a Prohibition bill for New York!); and Herbert Hoover regularly stopped on his way home from work in Washington for a drink at the Belgian Embassy!

In broad terms, Okrent makes a convincing case that the conjunction of women’s suffrage, the legalization of the income tax, and the U.S. entry into World War I set a congenial political environment for a change with unintended consequences that it took a decade to appreciate. The result was a disaster by nearly every measure possible. The proof of this lies in the evidence that living through the Prohibition ordeal actually changed the minds of voters and of their representatives. Of the 22 senators still in the Congress who had voted for Prohibition, 17 changed their minds and voted for its Repeal 16 years later. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic reversal of political fortunes. This book is an extraordinary accomplishment, both scholarly and readable.

Orley Ashenfelter
Princeton University

Disclosure: I am the co-author of The Wine Trials, another print guide to inexpensive wines. Our first edition was released the year before the publication of Parker’s Wine Bargains, and our second edition, The Wine Trials 2010, was released afterward. While this gives me a unique perspective, it also might be viewed as a source of bias. In the interest of fairness, the editors also offered Parker the opportunity to review The Wine Trials for this journal, and he declined. While no author can claim to be perfectly free from bias, I hope that you judge the integrity of my review on its merits.]

Even if the exaggerated style of winemaking championed by the critic Robert M. Parker, Jr., has fallen out of fashion amongst wine geeks these days, there are a hundred legacies that will endure for generations beyond the particulars of the man’s palate: his points.

Robert Parker was not the first wine critic to employ a 100-point scale, but it was he that etched the paradigm of attaching numbers to wine into the collective consciousness of the gustatory media. Parker’s leading competitors in America—Stephen Tanzer, Wine Spectator, Wine & Spirits, Wine Enthusiast—all currently use 100-point rating scales. Even the divergent foreign competition now gravitates toward other functionally numerical forms of secondary-school-test-mark mimicry: letter grades from A to F, points out of 10 or 20, glasses out of three, stars out of five.

If attaching numbers to wine turns out to be Parker’s main legacy, it’s a major one. A few decades ago, the wine writer’s primary role was merely to describe wines. But the purpose of the wine writer after Parker is to quantify their quality. The few prominent modern wine critics whose reviews don’t revolve around numerical ratings are in the minority, and they tend to be interpreted by some observers as an anti-Parker faction—even when they have no intention to be. You know that a framework has become canonical when anything in the field that doesn’t adopt it is understood as an attempt to refute it.

Canonization can have a stifling effect on the developing talent in the enterprise of writing. The literary scholar Harold Bloom has suggested that the canon can be a paralyzing force in the lives of up-and-coming poets, who struggle with the task of differentiating themselves from the same voices that inspired them to pursue poetry. Read too much, in other words, and you might convince yourself that there’s nothing new to write. The novelist Benjamin Kunkel, asked by London’s Observer whether he was influenced by the more famous novelist Dave Eggers, expressed that tension in a way that will be familiar to many writers: “Everyone I know has read him, but I don’t read very much contemporary fiction. I wanted very much to create my own sound, and I didn’t want to feel that I was either running to meet him or deliberately running away from him.”

Not reading Eggers is a choice that any fiction writer can make. But not reading Parker is hardly an option for the modern wine writer: the shelves of most upmarket wine stores are strewn with past and present Wine Advocate shelf-talkers, which function like permanent retrospective installations of Parker’s work. So we have no choice but to engage, and in so doing, we often divide: into those who run to meet Parker, perhaps with deference to Jacques Chirac and decades’ worth of popular wisdom from industry veterans; and the increasing numbers that run away from him, perhaps with complaints of global convergence on a big, oaky, high-alcohol style of winemaking, the marginalization of terroir, and maybe just a tinge of jealousy toward the man who made millions tasting wine.

If contemporary critics are split on the merits of Parker’s exaggerated palate, though, their revealed behavior of replication shows there to be supermajority support for his points methodology. Parker points were first imagined, in the spirit of Ralph Nader, as the guerilla ammunition for the consumers camping out in the vineyards, their last line of defense against wine bullshit. The funny thing is that the vision of independence from producers that originally inspired Wine Advocate seems to have been completely lost on the modern copycat magazines, many of which display full-page ads from the same producers whose wines are rated. Some even solicit application fees to be considered for wine awards. (Ashenfelter et al., 2010). Decanter, for instance, charges up to £103.70 or US$156 per bottle.

Meanwhile, to his great credit, Parker has more or less maintained his independence. He still doesn’t accept ads from wineries, and he still makes his money by selling subscriptions and books. Although, inexplicably, he doesn’t always taste blind—and although he was recently embarrassed by a lavish junket bestowed by the Argentine wine industry lobby (later documented by wine writer Tyler Colman) upon his right-hand man, Jay Miller— Parker’s core principles appear to be almost as unique in the industry as they were when first introduced 30 years ago.

Why, then, has he left behind his points system in his newest book and first foray into the world of inexpensive wine authorship, Parker’ s Wine Bargains, a 512-page tome whose mission is to reveal “the world’s best wine values under $25”?

The proximate answer might lie in the fact that the book doesn’t mention specific vintages but instead reviews each bottle in general terms. Readers are referred to the “Vintage Smarts” section at the beginning of each chapter for more specific guidance. But why not at least attach each wine to a point range, as Parker has often done with barrel tastings?

Are inexpensive wines simply not worthy of Parker points?

Or, perhaps, is the omission of vintages and scores, along with burying “Vintage Smarts” in the less-read introductory text, connected with the decision not to year-stamp the book’s cover, which, in turn, is a response by Simon & Schuster to the troubled bookstore industry’s current preoccupation with reducing inventory risk, one of its few levers of cost-cutting?

Another possibility, and a more sympathetic one, I think, is that Parker wanted his inexpensive wine guide to be more accessible to everyday wine shoppers, not just the sort of wine geeks that subscribe to his website and buy his 1,536-page Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide No. 7. Perhaps he saw the potential for the specificity of his 100-point scale (and maybe even his discussion of individual vintages) to be off-putting to the average consumer who is less in search of a wine priced in the hundreds of dollars that needs to be cellared for a decade, and more in search of a good, affordable bottle to drink with tonight’s meal—in other words, probably about 99% of wine drinkers.

Whatever the reasons behind the decision to leave out Parker points, I think it fair to assume that Parker’s Wine Bargains aims to be more accessible and useful to the everyday wine consumer than one of his monster tomes. The back cover calls the book a “handy guide to low-priced wines for both everyday drinking and special occasions.” It’s exciting, the prospect of the world’s most famous wine critic reaching out, for the first time, to an audience of unprecedented breadth. To what extent does the book achieve these aims?

Taken as a book to be read, not as a guide with which to buy wine, Parker’s Wine Bargains is an impressive tour through the landscape. More than 3,000 wines appear in the book, each with a short review of a sentence or two. That’s quite a number, and it makes for good browsing. So do the concise, helpful introductions to each region, most of which seem aimed at a very general audience, showing welcome restraint. If you know Parker and the critics that work for him, then you know more or less what to expect from the review writing: it’s always confident, often of a certain sternness, and generally laden with fruit and vegetable adjectives, some obscure, some not.

As for the coverage, although 178 pages of the reviews in Parker’s Wine Bargains— almost 40%—come from France, that’s to be expected. This is Parker, after all. I admire the fact that Argentina (29 pages), Germany (24 pages), Austria (18 pages), Portugal (13 pages), and Greece (7 pages) are given the treatment they deserve: not as passing novelties, but as regions to be taken seriously, especially in the realm of under-$25 wines. Washington State gets a surprising 11 pages, almost half as many as California’s 24; Oregon gets only three.

Spain is the most slighted region, with a disappointing 20 pages that include just six red wines from Rioja. I consider Rioja reds to be some of the best values in all of the Old World, particularly when it comes to bottle aging before release. It’s common to find fiveyear-old (or, in practice, even sixor seven-year-old) Gran Reservas under $25. Of course, is well established that Rioja is hardly Parker’s style. When he visited Logroño in November 2009 for the Wine Future-Rioja conference—the first time he set foot in Spain since 1972, according to his biographer, Elin McCoy—he chose to hold a tasting of 18 Grenache-based wines (only five of them Spanish), instead of the local Tempranillo for which Rioja is famous. McCoy wrote that this choice “angered local winemakers” so much that “some boycotted the event.”

While a preference for intense, heavy styles is to be expected from a Parker book, the marginalization of dry rosé cannot be overlooked in a guide to inexpensive wine. Even finding a rosé wine in Parker’ s Wine Bargains is a major challenge; so far as I can tell, there is no index or list of them, and in one of the book’s several major organizational flaws, you’re stuck flipping through 512 pages and keeping your eye out for pink shading (as

opposed to red or gray) in the tiny glass schematic next to the wine name.

Three-quarters of wine produced in Provence is rosé, so that chapter, written by David Schildknecht, might seem a natural place to start. But Provençal rosé is dismissed wholesale by Schildknecht as an “ocean of pink plonk,” whose “existence” is blamed largely on the “uncritical comportment” of the “tourists who flock there” (although the “natives” share some blame as well). As a result, only the “small upper echelon” of rosés is “interesting.” How ignorant, those vacationers on the seaside who gaze out at the waves and simply enjoy the refreshing local wine with their grilled seafood instead of complaining about how uninteresting it is!

Of the more than 1,000 French wines under $25 recommended in the book, just seven are rosés from Provence, and even these seem chosen for their un-rosé-like qualities: one displays a “white-wine-like personality”; one has “carnal undertones…impressively concentrated”; another is “meaty.” One wonders whether Schildknecht has sworn off bread and salad as “plonk,” too, and eats only boar and venison, even at the beach. It would behoove Parker to assign Provence to a critic who actually enjoys the region’s archetypal style: not “carnal” rosé, but rather crisp, thirst-quenching, rosé-like rosé, the savior of many a summer afternoon for the fishermen of Marseille, for the billionaires of Antibes, for the vacationing winemakers of Bordeaux and Burgundy. To everything, there is a season.

That principle is better embodied by one of Parker’s other critics, Mark Squires, who covers Portugal and Greece. Parker, like any good businessman tackling growth, has been delegating much of his work to an expanding cast of characters, and each of them writes differently. One of the benefits of this approach is the work of Squires, whose open-minded palate and minimalist prose turn out to be the most appropriate of anyone’s, including Parker’s, for a nonvintage guide to inexpensive wine.

Not only is Squires’ chapter on Portuguese wines versatile—for instance, rightly lauding both the complex concentration of Alentejo and the refreshing acidity of vinho verde— but it’s also relentlessly accessible. In 99 reviews, Squires cites only five specific fruit flavors (blueberry, grape, plum, lemon, and lime), focusing instead on basic properties like acidity, tannin, oak, and sweetness. Given that the review is supposed to be generalizing about several different vintages, this choice makes a lot of sense. Instead of communicating the details of his own experience of a given wine, Squires predicts what the reader’s experience of the wine is likely to be, even if the reader tastes a vintage that Squires hasn’t, and even if the reader doesn’t speak wine-speak. He writes, in other words, with the book’s purpose and constraints in mind.

Just as importantly, he also knows when to stop writing. Squires’ reviews average about 15 words, roughly half the book’s norm. Behold his entire review of Quinta do Ameal Loureiro: “Bright, somewhat mouthwatering, and delicate, as most Loureiros are.” Too obvious? Only to a real snob. Helpful, even to a wine geek? Absolutely.

Immediately following Portugal is South Africa, where Schildknecht surpasses Squires’ chapter-long specific-adjective count in a single review, his fourth of the chapter, which describes Backsberg’s Klein Babylons Toren as having a “rich, polished, barrel-enhanced mélange of tobacco, sealing wax, plum, blackberry, humus, iodine, underbrush, and sweetly floral notes, all suggesting a Bordeaux wine that would cost at least three times its price.” Ah yes, that unmistakable sealing wax-underbrush-iodine profile of Bordeaux costing at least $63. Maybe that’s what those ignorant tourists in Provence should be yearning for.

By the end of Schildknecht’s eighth South Africa review—we’re still only on the second page of the chapter—he has also mentioned quince, wet wool, lime zest, mulberries, sage, fresh green beans, apple, nuts, lemon, rose hip, more flowers, saddle leather, licorice, “smoky black tea,” vanilla, “lightly cooked blackberry and blueberry,” mint (twice), tobacco (twice), black pepper, sap, “dried black currants,” tar, (just plain) tea, baking spices, black olives, acacia, peach, cress, and white pepper. Later in the chapter, he identifies such pomposities as “salted grapefruit,” grapefruit rind, winter pear, “restrained gooseberry,” milk chocolate, roasted red peppers, “smoky Latakia tobacco,” beef jerky, soy, baked apple, tangerine zest, “salt-tinged nuts and grains,” and “tomato foliage.”

If the small size, friendly cover, and omission of vintages and point scores in Parker’s Wine Bargains invites in a new audience of everyday wine drinkers, then adjectives like that cast them right back out again. This spotty but persistent out-of-touchness with the mainstream audience is the central tension of Parker’s Wine Bargains. Consider, for instance, how little attention is paid to dry sparkling wine, a category much sought out by American consumers, whether as a dinner-party apéritif or for one of the “special occasions” mentioned on the book’s back cover. The past few years have seen an explosion of widely available méthode traditionelle wines under $25 from Spain, California, and Washington State. Yet of the 3,000 bottles listed in Parker’ s Wine Bargains, only 19 (0.6%) are dry sparkling wines, of which only three are Spanish Cavas and none are American.

But that’s not the worst of the out-of-touchness. Inclusions and exclusions are always debatable in a wine guide, but the disorganization and poor indexing of Parker’s Wine Bargains harm the book’s usefulness to almost any reader. Wines are categorized only by region, and within region, they’re alphabetized by producer. Nowhere are they indexed or listed by style or color, whether red, white, or rosé; by intensity or sweetness; or by any other metric of choice, other than one (puny) list of sparkling wines. These gaps would be problematic even in a book of 100 wines, but in a book of 3,000, they’re disastrous. Whether you’re shopping for wine to drink with oysters, grilled fish, steak, or dessert, it’s not clear how or where you should begin your search.

The natural thing to do might be to flip to the brief “Best of the Best” section, which appears at the book’s conclusion. But there, the editing is sloppy (Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay appears as one of the best “medium-bodied red wines”), and the holes in coverage are baffling enough to transcend the facially defensible subjectivity of the undertaking. For instance: although the Mâcon region is described as “effectively the world capital…of Chardonnay and arguably home to the world’s greatest values from that grape,” apparently that’s not good enough—not a single Burgundy, white or red, makes the “Best of the Best.” Of the eight Pinot Noirs in the section, one is French, but it’s from Aude, in the Languedoc, and seven are from the New World (mostly New Zealand).

No Beaujolais—neither village nor cru—makes it into the “Best of the Best” either, even though in that chapter’s introduction, Schildknecht writes (now inexplicably sounding like an Italian translating his native language into English) of the region’s “sensational quality-price rapport.” In fact, the only two red subdivisions of “Best of the Best” are “medium-bodied” and “full-bodied.” Here, as in Provence, the message is clear: lightbodied just doesn’t cut it, and the best bang for your buck comes not from the styles and regions that are naturally inexpensive—Provençal rosé, red Beaujolais—but rather from New World imitations of more expensive, concentrated styles of wine. Squires’ dissident voice is lost in the chorus, and the “Best of the Best” is plagued by imbalance.

The sloppy editing of that section points toward a broader sloppiness throughout the book. For example, one wine—the Cuvée Alexandre Apalta Vineyard Merlot from Casa Lapostolle, a well-known Chilean producer—is accidentally listed in Parker’s Wine Bargains twice, once in the Chile chapter and once in the Argentina chapter, with two completely different reviews. It’s described on page 84 (Chile) as having an “expressive bouquet of smoke, pencil lead, spice box, black cherry, and black currant,” while it’s described on page 14 (Argentina) as having “an attractive nose of black currant, blueberry, vanilla, and clove.” Only the black currant appears to have made the trip over the Andes.

Certainly it’s puzzling how Jay Miller, author of both of these chapters and an expert on both regions, could not have caught this mistake. But rather than overreacting to that fact, we should focus instead on the larger implications of the differences between the two reviews: not only is the whole business of attaching fruit adjectives (never mind point scores) to wines problematic in the intersubjective sense (i.e. what you smell and taste might be unrelated to what I smell and taste from the same wine), it’s even problematic in the limited subjective sense: the same person—even a renowned wine expert like Jay Miller—smells and tastes different things in the same wine from one day to the next (Goldstein et al., 2008). This is a problem whose treatment is insufficient in all of Parker’s literature, and indeed, in most wine literature. Richard Quandt’s “On Wine Bullshit” and Raffi Khatchadourian’s fascinating New Yorker article on commercial flavor factories, “The Taste Makers,” are both important pieces of reading for anyone who still takes most of these fruit adjectives seriously.

But the biggest flaw in Parker’s Wine Bargains lies not in its poor organization or arbitrary adjectives, but rather in the fact that many of the wines reviewed in the book are unavailable in the marketplace. It’s not clear whether or not there’s a production or breadth-of-distribution minimum for inclusion—none is mentioned in the introduction— but a good portion of the recommendations turn out to be practically useless, even to the savviest of Internet-ordering readers. Take, for instance, the listing of Veldenzer Grafschafter-Sonnenberg feinherb, a Riesling from a Mosel producer named Günther Steinmetz. If this wine is currently available for sale at any store in the United States, this reader, at least, was unable to locate it after an exhaustive search, which included a lot of time on Google and an inquiry with Mosel Wine Merchant, Steinmetz’s importer, who told me that 2007 was its last imported vintage, of which only 21 cases were distributed, all of them in Oregon and Washington State.

Some of the 100-point cult wines in Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide No. 7 may be famously elusive, but if wines recommended in Parker’s Wine Bargains, whose stated mission is to recommend bargain wines for “everyday drinking,” are impossible to find, even in America’s largest cities, it brings the book’s central function into question. What is Parker’s purpose, exactly?

Certainly his longstanding success does not derive from his ability to catalog the current inventory of your local supermarket, nor does it derive his ability to pick out blackberry or tobacco from a wine’s bouquet. It does not derive from the consistency of his observations, from his stated purpose of sorting out the good wine from the bad, or from any other of kind consumer advocacy. It comes, rather, from Parker’s talent for escapism, from his confident use of superlatives to capture the sensory imagination.

For most readers, flipping through an issue of Wine Advocate and reading about 100point wines is like flipping through an issue of Motor Trend and looking at pictures of a Lamborghini: it’s an act somewhere between aspiration and entertainment. You’re not really considering whether the Diablo’s 5992 cc of displacement would be sufficient to get you where you’re going quickly and comfortably. You’re not even looking to buy a car. You’re reading the magazine because imagining yourself behind the wheel of a Lamborghini recreates the seventh-grade psyche of perfect possibility that is still buried somewhere in your weary folds of cortical memory.

Teenagers feel immortal, people always say. They think the finish really lasts forever.

It is the mix of idolatry and attainability that make Parker’s prose so compelling: these wines that win 100 points are described as Platonic forms, yet they’re also physical objects with real molecular structures; they’re liquids that can, at least in theory, come into contact with your mouth. Your local wine store doesn’t have the object of worship, and you couldn’t afford it anyway, but that’s hardly the point. It’s the ontology that matters: the idea that some wines really do win 100, that it is concretely possible to taste perfection, is irresistible. The very thing that invalidates Parker’s writing as nonfiction is what redeems it as fiction: his topic isn’t wine. It’s human contact with the divine.

Many of the people within the wine world that have become increasingly disgusted with so-called “Parkerization”—the tinkering with a style of winemaking to bring out more fruit, more oak, and more alcohol in hopes of improving a Parker score—would paint the celebrated critic as a power-hungry dictator with designs on reshaping the wine world just to please his palate and fortify his wealth. But to adopt that view is to misunderstand the fundamental human mechanics of Parker’s vast appeal. Winemakers may feel obliged to please him, but consumers are under no obligation to follow him. If you want to understand

Parker, look in the mirror.

Robert Parker is no dictator. He is a storyteller. The magnetism of his prose is that of J.K. Rowling’s, too: you’re first presented with a set of familiar facts and situations, and then, slowly, you’re seduced into suspending reason and believing in the perfectly impossible. Escape into a Parker review, and for a few sentences, there you are, back in junior high, the great critic’s palate—and yours, too—cured of its nagging mortality. In this counterfactual place, there is no perceptual bias, just perception. There is no confidence interval, just confidence. Parker’s 100-point wine is Gatsby’s green light, the orgiastic ghost of taste’s future, the tongue a sudden lattice of infinite resolution, the nose a sudden instrument of preternatural whiff.

Take away the Parker points—a slight disturbance that might at some point have seemed merely cosmetic to the book’s editors, like a font change—and that alternate reality suddenly slips away, like the memory of a dream in the seconds after you awaken. All that’s left in the sober morning light is an iterating network of fruit-adjective configurations in black and red type violating 512 sheets of white paper.

It’s not easy to be a wine writer after Parker. This fact, even Parker must face.

Robin Goldstein
Fearless Critic Media

References

Ashenfelter, O., Goldstein, R. and Riddell, C. (2010). Do expert ratings measure quality? The case of restaurant wine awards. Mimeo. Presented at Summer Micro Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Goldstein, R., Almenberg, J., Dreber, A., Herschkowitsch, A. and Katz, J. (2008). Do more expensive wines taste better? Evidence from a large sample of blind tastings. Journal of Wine Economics, 3(1), 1–9.

Merritt, S. (2005). Welcome to the political world: interview with Benjamin Kunkel. The Observer, 20 November.

Khatchadourian, R. (2009). The taste makers. Annals of science. The New Yorker, November 23, 86. Quandt, R.E. (2007). On wine bullshit: some new software. Journal of Wine Economics, 2(2), 129–135.

Like previous editions, Goldstein and Herschkowitsch’s The Wine Trials 2010 would be a valuable addition to any casual or serious wine drinker’s bookshelf. The pithy descriptions of the 150 best wines under $15 provide information about each wine that, quite remarkably, is not collated elsewhere in a convenient usable format.

If such descriptions of good value wines were all that this book accomplished, the book would probably not merit a review in this journal. However, this book also has considerable interest to economists. The source of this interest is two-fold. First, this book convincingly describes how consumers’ lack of information about individual wines may generate social welfare losses and argues that blind tasting is the best way to eliminate this information problem. Second, the book follows its own advice and reports data on the best wines collected using modern methods that should be familiar to any economist doing empirical work today. The ultimate result of Goldstein and Herschkowitsch’s efforts may be no less than a fundamental shift in the way the wine market operates to an environment in which value, as measured by taste rather than perception, is paramount.

In the first section of the book, the authors eloquently detail how today’s wine industry actively encourages consumers to pay far above marginal production costs to drink wines that simply do not taste any better on average than inexpensive wines to most consumers. They provide evidence that the information consumers have about wines prior to purchasing them is largely controlled by the wine industry. More expensive wines are rated higher by industry publications like Wine Spectator even when blind taste tests reveal no significant relationship between price and taste for everyday consumers (Goldstein et al., 2008). Even self-proclaimed wine “experts” do not find the more expensive wines to taste much better. The authors exposit that much of the reported enjoyment consumers derive from drinking wine has nothing to do with its taste but rather the perception that they are drinking a good wine. Because they are stuck in an environment that rewards flash and marketing over taste, even small producers have a disincentive to produce wines with the best taste, thereby perpetuating the problem. Ultimately, the book’s first section is a critique of the wisdom of drawing welfare conclusions from revealed preference data in an environment with asymmetric information. The authors’ critique of the wine industry should apply equally to other consumer products that feature many closely substitutable varieties about which information is scarce to the consumer.

The wine reviews themselves, which make up the bulk of the second part of the book, are written by the authors based on reports of blind taste testers. This amounts to a one-page report on each of the 150 highest ranked wines one by one including useful suggestions for food pairings. Most interesting to a general (wine-neutral) economist audience is how the underlying data points are collected. The authors randomized 450 wines into numerous blind tastings and selected the 150 best for the book based on the resulting data using reports filled out by testers. The fact that the resulting data set captures individuals’ preferences for only the taste

component of the wine drinking experience across wines leads to some intriguing questions.

Subject to the technological constraints of the human palate, the authors do a commendable job of data collection. The blind tastings organized by the book’s authors successfully achieved random allocation of wine attributes not observed by tasters (like price) across the tasting population. This facilitated successful isolation of preference relations over taste not conflated with other attributes of the wines. Assuming that individuals’ wine preferences are not perfectly idiosyncratic, something that could be tested with the blind tasting data, the same preference relations also exist on average out of sample, meaning that the book contains valuable welfare-enhancing information for the rest of us. Elsewhere in the economics literature, the closest that one comes to this sort of exercise are the speed-dating experiments conducted by Fisman et al. (2006, 2008). However, the Wine Trials authors are in some sense more ambitious. Rather than simply report on the attributes of wines that people prefer, they come to normative conclusions about inefficiencies in the wine market that crucially depend on the underlying model of behavior that generates the data.

Two mechanisms come to mind as potentially important in rationalizing the claim that pricier wines are not more enjoyable. Kamenica (2008) formalizes a model in which the choice set contains information about the (unobserved) quality of each choice. In this context, his model would argue that the authors are essentially correct, that people do not drink more expensive, heavily marketed, or cute-label wines because they actually like them better but because in the face of costly information acquisition, they have some evidence that these wines are popular. The fact that the popularity is a choice of the wine industry itself is either lost on people or an accepted second-best outcome for risk-averse consumers because it at least indicates that the wine they are buying is not God-awful. In this environment, the $14.95+tax cost of this book is a small price to pay to improve one’s wine selections and the Wine Trials series clearly has tremendous social value for it breaks the wine industry’s near monopoly on information.

A competing explanation is that the utility most people derive from drinking a glass of wine is actually a function of both the taste and the prestige, which is increasing in price, marketing, cuteness of label or experts’ or peers’ ratings. This is akin to the “warm glow” effect demonstrated to be an important component of charitable giving (Karlan and List, 2007). To be clear, suppose that the wine drinking component of utility has the production function V(T,R(p)) for Taste and Prestige, which itself is increasing in wine price p. Therefore, we can express utility as U(V(T,R(p)),y-p). Based on evidence in Goldstein et al. (2008), assume that T is not a function of p. Given some continuous distribution of income y in the consumer population, wine producers will sell wines at all points in the optimized price distribution. As is argued in the extensive hedonic literature going back to Rosen (1974), consumer heterogeneity means that the equilibrium price function is likely to be steeper than the marginal willingness to pay function for better “quality” wine, as measured by V or prestige. That is, pricier wines are “better” in the sense that they deliver a higher R, but not as much better as the price difference implies because of positive sorting on income.

As a benchmark, assume that producers are perfectly competitive and all have access to the same technology. If they are pricing at marginal cost, it must be that the inputs into producing expensive wines are more costly. Evidence reported in the book demonstrates that the marketing costs of prestigious wine producers are indeed much greater than those of producers of table wines. But there is an inherent inefficiency here in that the equilibrium price-prestige relationship is pinned down by consumer preferences. Therefore, achieving high prices given perfect competition necessitates high marketing costs assuming wine production costs vary little with prestige. One way of interpreting the authors’ lamentations about the current state of the wine market is thus not that people have preferences over prestige per se, but that prestige is increasing in price and thus is also increasing in marketing. If a superior rating in independent publications such as The Wine Trials establishes itself as an alternative marker of prestige, then this relationship will be broken and preferences reduce to become a function only of taste. However, if prestige is truly a structural function of price then there is little scope for welfare improvements. While it may be theoretically possible to engineer non-distortionary lump-sum rebates back from producers to high price paying consumers, this is probably not practical.1

My first explanation for the current state of the wine market leads the question as to why a market for better information heretofore has not been well developed. In some sense, one may argue that The Wine Trials is a solution to such a market failure. Since information about wines’ quality is a public good, there might have been under-provision by the market. If the second model is more accurate, one may ask why wine producers do not establish their prestige by using means other than price, allowing them to undercut their competitors. One answer is that there is no incentive to shift this equilibrium because they would all make 0 profits either way. The only difference would be that in the current environment the rents go to promoters and in the alternative environment most of those rents would go to consumers. If it is costly to shift the equilibrium, no producer would find it to be a privately worthwhile investment, even if it may be socially worthwhile. Once again, in this environment The Wine Trials could be the conduit through which the primary marker of prestige changes.

In the beginning of this review, I stated that The Wine Trials would be a valuable resource for the expert wine drinker as well as the casual one. My claim is in contrast to Eric Asimov’s criticism in his “The Pour” blog posting from April 22, 2008, a piece also discussed in the book. Asimov’s central argument is essentially that wine aficionados have enough experience that they know what they are doing, and by revealed preference they therefore must be doing things right. His claim is that the wedge between experts’ opinions and the blind tasting results is attributable to the setting. While this argument may be correct, meaning that non-taste attributes are important, I submit that it is still important for people who claim to be wine experts to actually think deeply about the attributes of the wine drinking experience that lead to their enjoyment and to non-experts’ enjoyment. Otherwise, they cannot truly be experts. The authors’ introduction to The Wine Trials provokes such deep thinking and self-reflection. It may additionally be the case that while experts do not find more expensive wines much tastier on average, they know wines well enough to only drink the expensive wines that they themselves find tastier. Data from The Wine Trials may provide valuable new insights into this selection process.

The accuracy of the authors’ claims of inefficiency in the wine market does ultimately rest on whether price enters directly into people’s preferences, or whether price is just an indicator of status or a perceived indicator of taste. If price enters directly into utility, one can legitimately argue over the authors’ assertion that people would be better off if it did not. The debate over endogenous preferences is well beyond the scope of this review, but it is a serious debate with valid points on both sides. It may be true that we would all be better off if we did not care directly about the price of the wines we drink, but such a claim is probably not empirically testable. However, it does seem that it would be feasible to empirically distinguish between the preference relations over price, information and prestige in wine tastings for future editions. In future tastings, Goldstein and Herschkowitsch may wish to additionally randomize over listed prices and another measure of prestige to distinguish whether people enjoy drinking higher price or higher prestige wines more, independent of taste, ultimately recovering the V function. In addition, it would be instructive to have versions of the trials in which there is full disclosure about the wines being tasted to serve as a baseline control set. In any case, The Wine Trials is an interesting, provocative and eminently useful book that through its mere existence has the potential to fundamentally improve the functioning of the wine market.

Nathaniel Baum-Snow
Brown University

References

Asimov, E. (2008). A closer look at the ‘Wine Trials’. The Pour Blog, April 22, The New York Times.

Goldstein, R., Almenberg, J., Dreber, A., Herschkowitsch, A. and Katz, J. (2008). Do more expensive wines taste better? Evidence from a large sample of blind tastings. Journal of Wine Economics, 3(1), 1–9.

Fisman, R., Iyengar, S., Kamenica, E. and Simonson, I. (2006). Gender differences in mate selection: evidence from a speed dating experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 673–697.

Fisman, R., Iyengar, S., Kamenica, E. and Simonson, I. (2008). Racial Preferences in Dating. Review of Economic Studies, 75(1), 117–132.

Kamenica, E. (2008). Contextual inference in markets: on the informational content of product lines. American Economic Review, 98(5), 2127–2149.

Karlan, D. and List, J.A. (2007). Does price matter in charitable giving? Evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment. American Economic Review, 97(5), 1774–1793.

Rosen, S. (1974). Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition. Journal of Political Economy, 82, 34–55.

1) Alcohol taxation is the primary mechanism by which such rebating already occurs, though unlike lump-sum transfers it is likely to involve deadweight costs.

Benjamin Lewin is a scientist who is the founding editor of Cell, a leading biology journal, as well as the author of several books on science. He also is a Master of Wine, a title granted to less than 300 worldwide by the Institute of Masters of Wine in London. His skills in both areas enabled him to provide an in-depth investigation and analysis of the topic of the pricing of Bordeaux wines.

My interest in this book stems from my background as a scientist and a grape grower in the Outer Coastal Plain AVA in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

As we learn from Lewin, much of the wine produced in Bordeaux is relatively mediocre and inexpensive, yet Bordeaux wine at its best is rarely equaled and is one of the most coveted luxury beverage items. How can wine from Bordeaux range in price from under $5 a bottle to over $1000? While What Price Bordeaux? by Benjamin Lewin is not an economics text, it does illuminate how the Bordeaux wine market functions and how such price differences occur. It is particularly focused on the high end of the market where the current price is still related to a classification system that was constructed in 1855. To give us unprecedented insight into the pricing of Bordeaux wines, Lewin relentlessly pursued the facts from records and archives and spoke with countless chateau proprietors, negociants and others inside the wine trade. He has assembled and presented this information quantitatively in this excellent book which includes 117 figures comprised of pie charts, bar and line graphs, rankings, maps and other illustrations.

From a grape growing viewpoint, Bordeaux is a “cloudy climate” region like our MidAtlantic as opposed to the “sunny climate” regions of California or Australia for example. While cloudy climate regions generally produce less powerful and less fruity wines than the sunny climes, the wines often are of greater elegance and finesse. Terroir has been the basis by which the French approach and appreciate wine. Elements of the ecosystem known as terroir include the climate, soil, grape varieties grown and the technology that man uses to grow and produce the wines of a given area. While there is no ideal terroir for all grapes, one can define goals for growing grapes and making wine to produce wine of the highest quality. That is one of the functions of an appellation system.

Lewin makes several important points about wine pricing in Bordeaux as it has evolved over time in relation to the fundamental concepts of terroir and the appellation and classification systems that help define the market.

First, some of the elements of terroir in Bordeaux have changed dramatically over the past several centuries. One of the most important man-made changes has been the draining of the marais (marsh areas) of the Medoc by the Dutch beginning in the 17th century. Good drainage is one of the most important aspects of soil in the production of high quality wine, especially in a cloudy climate region like Bordeaux. Gravel mounds, consisting of topsoil on sand on top of a gravel bed with underlying layers of clay and sand, and “deep” soils where there is no restrictive layer to limit root growth, are some of the good grape growing soil characteristics one can find in the better growing regions of Bordeaux as well as our Outer Coastal Plain AVA.

The importance of the weather during the growing season gives rise to the use of the vintage year on the label. Weather and soil drainage contribute much more to wine quality than other aspects of the soil nutrition of the vine. Yet, as Lewin points out, due to the unpredictability of the weather, crisis is the rule rather than the exception in the Bordeaux region. In 1956 winter cold temperatures killed many of the vines necessitating replanting of vines that should have a life expectancy of over 50 years. Bad weather increases vineyard costs and may decrease the quality and the price of the wine in a poor vintage. Recouping the loss in a poor year requires especially high prices during good years. While it is unclear that the frequency of “great” growing seasons will change, the climate in Bordeaux is warming and there is less rainfall at harvest, both of which can contribute to better grape ripening and lower likelihood of rot.

The grape varieties grown in Bordeaux have changed from a preponderance of white grapes to over 90% red. The red grapes grown include Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Carmènere and Malbec. While Carmènere and Malbec are rarely grown and Cabernet Franc plantings have declined, the proportion of Merlot grown has seen a steady rise. The reasons for this are manifold and include the earlier drinkability of Merlot-dominated red wines due to lower amounts of tannins and more supple tannins than Cabernet Sauvignon and the increase in sugar content at harvest which yields higher alcohol wines. Most Bordeaux reds are a blend of two or more of these varieties. This has the advantage of adding sophistication, complexity and roundness which a wine made from a single variety may lack. The disadvantage is that the consumer may not be familiar with the blend of a chateau. It was as recently as 2005 that the INAO allowed the mention of the grape varieties on the label, something that Americans are quite familiar with and look for in choosing a wine.

According to Lewin, grape growing and winemaking techniques have benefited greatly by scientific advances over more than a century. Diseases such as powdery mildew, phylloxera and downy mildew invaded French wine growing regions in the 19th century and eventually were brought under control in the century’s latter half. Pasteur’s elucidation of the role of yeast in the process of fermentation put winemaking on a scientific basis. Lewin points out some of the 20th century contributions which the great French enologist Emil Peynaud made to our understanding of the production of high quality wine including the importance of malolactic fermentation and the need for barrel replacement. Another aspect of wine culture which is mentioned but perhaps is underemphasized, is the importance of wine in the lives’ of so many of the Bordelais since grape growing was established in Bordeaux in Roman times. Bordeaux is the largest grape growing area in France. There are currently 10,000 producers and 13,000 grape growers with 310,000 acres under cultivation in Bordeaux along with some of the best institutions for the study of viticulture and enology. Its history and vast size make the wine growing culture associated with this region second to none in the world in wine knowledge and experience.

Lewin excels in his description of the wine market system in Bordeaux. There are 3 billion Euros in sales of Bordeaux wine annually, making Bordeaux second in sales in France only to Champagne. 70% of those sales take place in the system of wine professionals known as the Place de Bordeaux. This system is comprised of three groups whose roles and relative importance have changed over time. The two main groups are the proprietors of the chateaux and the negociants. The negociants are wine brokers who may serve as the distributors in France and importers to foreign countries. The third group is the courtiers who serve as intermediaries. The system is set up to smooth out price fluctuations in the market such as those that occur between poor and good vintages. Yet the system does not prevent the wine lake of nearly 20% of the wine which cannot be sold and often winds up at the distillery, or the huge gap in prices of the lower versus upper end wines. Comparatively little is done in the promotion or advertizing of wine and relationships between proprietors and negociants are rarely cordial and often adversarial.

Lewin devotes a large amount of material to a critical examination of the 1855 classification in which a five-group hierarchy was established for the best wines of the Medoc based on price. He points out the major differences in the wines and winegrowing at the time of the classification compared to now and brings into focus the issues related to current pricing. Based on the average prices in the Medoc over the past decade, only one-third of classed growths would be in the same group today as in 1855. It is clear from his arguments that there are so many factors that have changed that this classification is outdated. While this is not a new concept, it has never been as well supported.

What role do the critics play in the pricing of Bordeaux wines? The topic is examined here, at least for the high end wines, by a quantitative look at critic’s scores. The low correlation (only 40% to 60%) between critic’s ratings and the release price that Lewin finds is disconcerting. In this consumer driven industry, information about wine is often through the wine critic’s interpretation or the reputation of the chateaux rather than by the consumer actually tasting the wine. Lewin shows that a more important factor in the release price of the wine is the price of the previous vintage. Since this question has been well examined by economists and others, some references to their work would have greatly improved the presentation of this topic.

Lewin assails the current system of selling future wine production known as en primeur. In this system wine is sold in the spring of the year following the harvest. The wine will not be bottled and released for nearly 2 years or more after being sold, so the quality and ultimate demand for the wine is unknown. The price of the wine that is sold is based on barrel tasting, market hype and the reputation of the chateau. While Lewin gives excellent arguments and facts regarding the folly of what he terms as the “en primeur game “ it is surprising that he omits recent important economic analyses of the process. Such analyses support his position in that they show the lack of correlation of the en primeur price and the market price and further demonstrate that the market price is better correlated to the growing season of the vintage.

This book is an excellent addition to a wine library as it provides the consumer with an important foundation of information regarding the history, function and constraints of the wine market in Bordeaux. It is particularly informative regarding the pricing of high end wines and describes (albeit without economic rigor) market efficiencies in producing and selling these benchmark wines. It examines the changes in Bordeaux grape and wine production that have occurred which should inform the consumer that the use of the 1855 classification in determining wine price is fraught with problems. The book has a section entitled Wine as an Ultimate Luxury Item, which was relatively well written but also was a lost opportunity to present important economic publications addressing this subject. It would have been better to have included this topic in a chapter on wine investment that addressed such issues as investing in wine for portfolio diversification and the real return from collecting wine.

It is surprising that the author omits much of the wine-relevant economic literature. Furthermore, despite his presentation of a good deal of information on supply and demand issues and changes brought about by competition from sunny climate regions, he fails to mention the production of wines of similar style and elegance from cloudy climate regions which likely will be a future source of competition that could alter the supply demand relation.

Lawrence R. Coia
Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association

A reworking of his 2007 Le goût et le pouvoir, Mondovino director Jonathan Nossiter’s book Liquid Memory is a rambling combination of travelogue, memoir, and politico-philosophical analysis of wine and its place in our consumer society. Nossiter offers his book as a fresh take on the subject of his memorable and provocative film. For me the content and approach are about the same, and produce roughly the same reactions: an occasional nod of agreement, the suspicion the documentary tone is a cover for a one-sided, convenient agenda, and a good deal of head-scratching over what his theoretical ideas mean. As reality-bound as the books I’ve just discussed but not nearly as carefully expressed, by the end Liquid Memory had me on the run back to the hardheaded world of the scientists.

Nossiter once more casts himself in the lead, in the familiar, creaking guise of Don Quixote. Again he wanders a fragile, threatened world of wine (Paris, New York, Rio, Madrid), talking to greater and lesser of its denizens, seeking affirmation for his unpersuasively literal view that wine is a form of human memory and for the drastically phrased thesis that it is “our only safeguard against the devastating lies of marketing and the cynical exploitation of global markets, culture, and politics.” An additional defense, one he urges every wine drinker to forge, is taste, “the coherent relation of … preference to one’s own conduct, to an ethical relation to oneself and to the world.” What he means in plain language is learn not to drink cheap, overly sweet, mass-produced wine because you are cheating yourself, screwing the small producer, damaging the environment, ruining the chances of your children to drink good wine, and generally messing up society. If that strikes you as news so stale even a Miami Beach retiree with her Yellow Tail on an intravenous drip knows it (and it’s not stopping her), that’s because it is. Nevertheless: “The moment you abdicate responsibility for your own taste is the moment you voluntarily abdicate your freedom.” High-minded, patronizing, optimistic, embattled, nostalgic: Nossiter has a style all his own. (As you can see, his book is also a fine example of how badly expressed leftist ideas morph instantly into righteous-sounding Tea Party talk.)

Crucial to Nossiter’s ideas is terroir, like wine itself, a slippery subject. Wine is not just chemicals, of course, and terroir is not just rocks and weather. Yet trying to take the definitions past this point gets tricky. Nossiter is undeterred, and predictably terroir is many things to him: “where you come from and where you are going”; “this notion of claiming a heimat [homeland], without the heimat claiming you”; “the beauty of a specific identity, a specific culture”; an expression of “individuality”; “identity”; “diversity”; “an act of generosity.” At the same time, “terroir has never been fixed, in taste or in perception”; and “because neither terroir, nor nature, nor men are fixed … a wine of terroir is by its nature an ultimately indefinable, unquantifiable agent of memory.” And yet: “Bearing witness and preserving memory [of cultural terroirs] is the bedrock of civilization.”

I am happy to agree that terroir is open to definition. But if it is, then it can’t have an intrinsic identity, right? Nossiter hems and haws, finally abandoning his reader in this loop, forcing us to have our Zind-Humbrecht and drink it too. His bothi-ness of reasoning is the book’s most confounding element, muddling his discussion of taste, which must somehow be democratic and nonjudgmental, as well as his definition of wine. On one page he celebrates the likeable idea that wine “is a curse for relentless rationalists, unrepentant pragmatists, and all the busy codifiers of this world, anxious for absolutes.” Yet on another he goes the opposite direction(s): “The specific subjectivity of the wine-drinking experience became clear to me, though it didn’t mean that taste and perception were infinitely relative. That’s a postmodern position as fatuous as the eternal adolescent notion of applying definitive judgments.” Hand-wringing and cage-circling like this are characteristic of the book and tiring reading.

Other topics include wine words, fancy restaurants, wine retail in Paris, the rape of Spanish wine, interviews with leaders of the younger generation in Burgundy. Of these the interviews have the most value. Nossiter on wine words is a study in smirking selfcontradiction. He ridicules those who use them, uses them himself, and offers no plausible alternative. He also disregards the brain science pointing toward verbalization as an inevitable mode of understanding (summarized by Jamie Goode in Questions of Taste). If you enjoyed Nossiter’s treatment of Michel Rolland in Mondovino, you will approve of his drive-by on eminent chef Alain Senderens. Elsewhere Robert Parker, Jr., reprises the purple punching bag. He’s been an easy target for myopic sarcasm and the acidity police for too long. When is someone going to give the Parker phenomenon the nuanced attention its complexity and significance deserve?

Liquid Memory? Redolent of barnyard.

Peter Musolf
Yokohama

Reference

Goode, Jamie. (2007). “Wine and the Brain.” Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. Edited by Barry C. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press.

Leave on your lab coat and safety goggles. Reims physicist Gérard Liger-Belair’s Uncorked: The Science of Champage is another techie read, this one taking a microscopically close look at a tiny, surprisingly interesting topic, the bubbles in effervescent wine. Uncorked is good fun in the Horatian sense, useful and charming, not unlike the beverage itself, I suppose. It presents its topic with patience and simplicity, benefiting greatly from its author’s easygoing tone and a generous number of instructive illustrations and photographs.

Facts are a poor substitute for wit, of course. But while not all of us can be witty, many of us can remember a few things. If you suspect you are a dud on the rug, listen up. This is a list of Liger-Belair champagne wow-formation.

Removing a champagne cork disturbs the thermodynamic stability reigning inside the bottle. Bubbles appear as the formerly dissolved carbon dioxide rushes like kids going on recess toward a new equilibrium, with the atmosphere outside the bottle.

An average bubble measures 500 micrometers across. In a flute of champagne, two million of these would form if you didn’t have the brains to drink it before something as explicable as that happened. (By the way, the champagne coupe may not have been modelled on Marie Antoinette’s breast. As Liger-Belair points out, it could have been Madame de Pompadour’s. Its own anatomical parallel aside, a champagne flute is in any case preferable. It extends the flow of rising bubbles and concentrates the flavors and aromas the bubbles transport.)

Bubbles do not form on tiny scratches in the crystal of your glass. The scratches are too small for that. Instead, the bubbles “nucleate” in cavities in the fibers of paper or cloth that will still be in your glass no matter how well you wipe it.

A photograph of something really little is called a micrograph. Uncorked presents micrographs of fibrous “bubble nurseries.” The busiest ones produce thirty bubbles per second, three times more than beer, dude.

Between birth and death champagne bubbles grow in volume by a factor of one million. They grow because they continue to take in dissolved carbon dioxide on their way up, up, up.

Organic compounds in champagne partially insert themselves into the surface of a rising bubble, stiffening it. This collection of surfactants, as the fragrant and flavorsome bits are known, would slow the ascent were the ongoing growth of the bubble not continually enlarging the clean surface. The surfactants end up at bubble bottom, acting like a rudder and keeping the path of the bubble straight.

Bursting bubbles launch aromatic, 100-micrometer jet drops into your nasal nocireceptors. That’s why you don’t need to swirl your flute. Interestingly, nocireceptors are there to sense noxious, potentially damaging stimulation. It’s not just buying champagne that’s masochistic.

Champagne crackles rather than producing steady white noise because popping bubbles set off chain reactions of more popping: avalanche behavior!

Bubble rafts, bubble caps, flower-shaped structures, violent sucking: Liger-Belair has plenty of pictures of stuff like this. If you are turned on by fractals, you will probably like these.

Surfactants tend to gather on the surface of the champagne, first around the rim. This eventually makes it difficult for bubbles to burst, which is why they tend to hang around longer if you are not drinking up.

Fat molecules (potato chips; lipstick) tug at the bubble membrane, and the bubble pops faster than it would otherwise.

Long-lived bubbles degas without bursting. Their carbon dioxide just seeps out in a silent sigh.

Finally, if you don’t drink your champagne but go on staring at it, you will see your bubbles revolving in little galaxies, vortex patterns determined by your cup’s circular rim. Of course, if you are drunk, the same thing may happen, which proves drunks sometimes make sense, I think.

Like Hervé This, Liger-Belair is into lifting the veil, revealing the face of an enthralling mystery. This is science, impulsively voyeuristic, typically human. Champagne, thankfully, has the power to preserve its mystique. For though I know now what Liger-Belair knows, like Faust, I feel I’m basically as clever as I was before. Champagne is still champagne, with plunging depths, euphoric velocities no camera will catch. We may be able to describe it, that is, but short of making a pact with the devil, I suspect we’ll never understand it. Champagne is chaos, true, irreducible complexity.

Peter Musolf
Yokohama

If you are new to the phenomenon of Hervé This, Building a Meal may be the best place to start. The book, one of at least ten by the redoubtable French chemist and cofounder of molecular gastronomy, gives a survey of its author’s interests while retaining the advantages of variety and brevity. The book is arranged around six recipes, and with one exception (a futuristic chocolate mousse), they are basic to the repertoire. In presenting these familiar foods, leg of lamb, for example, or lemon meringue pie, This expands on his fundamental interest, the chemistry of cooking processes. The lamb leads to a discussion of grilling, braising, and the behavior of collagen. The pie chapter gets into meringue as an example of the physics of crack propagation. Building a Meal also includes photographs, boxed-text digressions, and interviews, all of which help make this short book friendlier reading than, for

* No official endorsement of the views in this paper by any agency of the U.S. government is intended or should be inferred.

example, his more technical Molecular Gastronomy. Yet it’s not all chemistry. Cooking’s social and artistic aspects are also on the menu; philosophy, history, art, love—it’s all you can eat, in a usually accessible but occasionally jargon-basted, excitable style. “[C]lassical cuisine has now been superceded,” This tells us, by culinary constructivism, molecular gastronomy’s applied form. “Tomorrow we will eat what we invent today.”

Researcher, educator, television personality, blogger, Hervé This is on a mission: to test some twenty-five thousand traditional beliefs he has gathered from the fatted corpus of French culinary literature. Is it true, for example, squid are tenderer cooked in water containing burned matches? Pursuing this goal has led neither to indigestion nor madness. Rather, it’s generated a large, often fascinating amount of information on kitchen chemistry. Emulsions, foams, gelling agents. Liquid nitrogen, Maillard reaction (browning), inhibited polyphenol oxidases (to keep your beans green). That a scientific understanding of terms like these has found its way from lab bench to restaurant, where it has encouraged more experimentation and discovery, owes much to This’s efforts. The ambitious aim of all this activity is to put the usually willy-nilly transformation of culinary practice onto a rational basis, while giving practical advice to home and professional chefs.

You may not cook a great deal of squid, but what about boiling eggs? Ask five people how to make a good hard-boiled egg, and you’ll likely get ten answers, a fair indication this is a complicated question. Similarly, bouillon. It seems straightforward, but when you start taking the task apart into pot choice, cut of meat, temperature, time, water depth, lid, no lid, lid partly open, and so on, you realize you are sailing uncharted depths. Hervé This wants to nail this business down, and the popularity of his work is a strong signal many sympathize with his determination, believing if not life in its grander dimensions then at least cooking would be more pleasant if we could clear up some of our quotidian uncertainties.

I for one have removed a measure of randomness and anxiety from making French fries thanks to This, and I know how I did it. Cut 12 mm wide sticks. Rinse them to remove free starch granules, which will burn otherwise. Dry them, so the water doesn’t drop your oil temperature, which is 180 degrees C. Crust the surface starch by immersing the potatoes in the oil for seven minutes. Remove and pat dry within one minute, while internal steam pressure is still preventing the fries from absorbing oil. Reheat oil to 200 degrees. Fry the potatoes again, crisping them now until golden. Drain and dry. This recipe makes consistently good, healthy fries. They are so light and dry I dress them with olive oil. (Use enough frying oil to cover the amount of potatoes you are cooking. Most of this recipe is in Building a Meal. I had to turn to Molecular Gastronomy, though, for the cooking times. In neither place does This discuss choice of potato and oil, or the challenging geometry of cutting rectangles from a sphere. Cooking is complicated!)

Owing largely to kitchen chemistry’s popularity, the French Academy of Sciences has created a Food Science and Culture division to encourage culinary science nationwide. A cadre of culinary engineers is emerging, trained to seek out and use innovations like fibrés (artificial meat and fish) and conglomèles (artificial fruits and vegetables) across the food industry. Le maître seems earnest in his concern for healthier, happier eaters. One can only

hope all the hard work doesn’t simply lead to cheaper Yoplait.

Since its genesis in 1992, the culinary scientific dalliance has spawned a delightfully lurid trend in luxury restaurants. By 2006, alarmed at the public perception their cooking had become the mere pursuit of novelty, mol gast luminaries Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adrià, Thomas Keller, and writer Harold McGee found it necessary to issue a statement distancing themselves from the movement. “‘Molecular’ makes it sound complicated, and ‘gastronomy’ makes it sound elitist. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous vide, dehydration and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking,” they say. “Our cooking values tradition, builds on it.”

I’m all for accuracy in pleasure’s preparation, and for proper tools, both causes This champions in his struggle to wrench kitchen practice from what he understands as its medieval backwardness. And I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed if leading chefs (with the exception of This devotee Pierre Gagnaire) are losing their enthusiasm. Yet like them, perhaps, I’m wary of cooking—and of science, too—becoming so well comprehended it’s clinical, dead. Doesn’t even chemistry involve a little unpredictability and improvisation, the occasional thrill of flying blind?

Peter Musolf
Yokohama

Reference

Goode, Jamie. (2007). “Wine and the Brain.” Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. Edited by Barry C. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press.