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It is a journey through five-and-a-half decades recorded contemporaneously, one can fancy, by your favorite old English uncle by marriage, during which the world of fine wine expanded from a handful of European countries to the entire globe. With wit, wisdom, and warmth, Johnson chronicles these changes in an annotated collection of his columns, excerpts from books, and even something found in his desk drawer, written between 1960 and 2016. Refreshingly, his approach to wine is at variance with what he claims is his nation’s forte: “Britain is right in front … in critical author- ity” (p. 162). He eschews, however, the label of critic: “Critics are obliged to be objec- tive in their assessments. … Which is why ‘critic’ is a term I have never accepted. ‘Commentator,’ certainly” (p. 189).

Our commentator began writing about wine in December 1960 for Vogue. The section on the 1960s opens with his first column, “Old Money” (p. 12), which wrestles with the issue of what to drink with turkey. “Unless you have a strong preference for white wines with all food – and there is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t – you will probably find that red is more suited to the rich meat” (p. 12). Wine economists should enjoy the prices for the venerable burgundies and clarets listed at the end of the piece. In “The Case for White” (p. 274), first published in Decanter 54 years later, Johnson elaborates on his unusual de facto bias hinted at in his first article: “This is a curious household. We open more bottles of white wine than red. … [P]erhaps most of all we … drink more white because we eat quantities of fish and seafood … , the whole healthy and so-called Mediterranean diet” (p. 274).

During his early years, he wrote columns for various periodicals, including the Sunday Times under aliases Giles and John Congreve to avoid the wrath of his employer, Condé Nast, which did not want its employees contributing to any publi- cations they did not own. The introduction of his first book, Wine, published in 1966, is included in this section (pp. 20–21), the first of many “tastings” of his longer works and of his prefaces to those of others that appear throughout the book.

The introduction to Johnson’s The World Atlas of Wine begins the section on the 1970s. Unwaveringly true to his Albion origins, his annotation justifies the premature inclusion of England and Wales: “In 1971 this was pretty optimistic; I was being patriotic, I suppose” (p. 31). In 1973, the Sunday Times Wine Club was formed, and Johnson became what is turning out to be President for Life. This and all sub- sequent sections contain many selections from its newsletter, Wine Times. Another milestone during this decade was the publication of the first Pocket Wine Book in 1977. The foreword (or Agenda, as he started labeling it in 2002) to this and several subsequent versions, including the 40th anniversary 2017 edition, appear in the appropriate decade’s section. Each gives a glimpse at the proliferation of regions producing noteworthy wines.

In the section devoted to the 1980s, Johnson is already proclaiming “the Golden Age of one of life’s great pleasures. … There never was a time when more good wine, and more different kinds of wine, were being made” (p. 54). And while he admires the progress being made in the New World, he remains unequivocally British in his preferences.

“Vintage Port” (pp. 71–72), first published in Wine Times in 1985, is four para- graphs that pay homage to the isles’ quintessential postprandial moistener with Britishisms, humor, guilty iconoclasm, and concision – the distilled essence of Johnson’s style. The section ends with an eye to the next decade, “Into the Nineties: A Spot of Prophesy” (pp. 94–99). It is a gutsy piece that forecasts with parlous specificity: “Pinot Noir will become the flagship wine of Oregon in the north- west” (p. 98). So far so good. “But it is in the state of Washington that it will blossom” (p. 98). Whoops. How does Johnson think he did overall? He awards himself a somewhat generous score of 8 out of 10.

n the section on the 1990s, Johnson takes on Robert Parker in a review of his The Wine Buyer’s Guide (pp. 112–113). Here is one of the barbs: “Its [sic] funny, isn’t it, that the man who invented the world’s fastest wine-measuring system is so insensitive to overwriting” (p. 112). He continues his attack in “And the Score Is …” (pp. 129– 130): “(In Parker’s scale … , 0 = 50 and vice versa. Jonathan Swift would have based a whole fantasy kingdom on it.)” (p. 129). He offers instead the Johnson System “that reflects with inescapable honesty the enjoyment (or lack of it) that each wine offered at the time it was tasted or drunk” (p. 130). It rates the wine by how much one is willing to consume, ranging from one sniff to the whole vineyard. He exhorts us to “[l]ove them for themselves; don’t give them marks out of a hundred” (p. 170).

When he was 84, 62 years Johnson’s senior, André Simon became his patron and mentor. His life is sketched in “By Request” (pp. 140–143), which first appeared in Wine & Food in 1998: “When he chose, described and explained wine it was the same: directness, no more than was necessary” (p. 142). Johnson learned well and even went beyond. The elegance of his writing is not sacrificed to an economy of expression.

The 2000s is the longest section, made so by numerous articles from Wine Times, Decanter, The World of Fine Wines, and Agendas from most of the decade’s editions of Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book. About one-fifth comprises a sampling of Johnson’s memoirs, Wine: A Life Uncorked, which appeared in 2005 (pp. 186–206). The topics are contemporary and nostalgic. Australia’s output is admired, while old Bordeaux and Burgundies are venerated. Although a lover of claret, Johnson is realistic about the dramatic increase in the prices of classified growths, especially since the beginning of this century, which has left them unaffordable by all but the wealthiest. “[D]oes my Château Batailley or Cantemerle (₤240 a case each) … taste any less deliciously satisfying because there are sleeker models with more horsepower on the road” (p. 246), he asks.

The 2010s section begins with a plea to reconsider Riesling and ends with the Agenda from the 2017 edition of the Pocket Wine Book. Best to stop here lest I further deny the reader the pleasure of discovery. Because the Table of Contents only lists the major sections, the reader must rely on the three-column, five-page index to navigate the book. Unfortunately, not each entry captures all appearances. For example, the entry for Oregon only lists page 98, omitting pages 16, 138, and 266.

Throughout this charming compilation, Johnson’s palate exhibits characteristic British “tasteoir”: “If there’s a more conservative wine-drinker than I am, I’d like to taste from his decanter” (p. 232), he admits. He loves Champagne, his favorite, but also port, claret, and sherry. His go-to white is Chablis. But he also sings the praises of Napa Valley Cabernet and bottlings from Australia and New Zealand. Reversing a comment he made about traveling to the latter (p. 227), reading this compendium is like going all around the Old World and eventually finding yourself in the New.

Johnson’s selection of subjects reflects quaintness dappled with the realization that the world has moved beyond just port and claret. Even the contemporary binding to which a burgundy (or is it claret?) ribbon bookmark is attached manifests an earlier sensibility. So do the pencil drawings by the late Paul Hogarth that grace the begin- ning and end of every section. Each is an understated yet complete thought, like the text it adorns.

Johnson reminds us that in his country, “[m]ore wine books and better magazines are published here than are in all the rest of the world” (p. 162). On Wine is a deli- cious way to sample the works of this commentator, one of the most prolific and archetypical contributors to that impressive output. It is also compelling evidence that on matters vinous, we should drink broadish but read British.

In an interview with the Santa Barbara Independent, Comiskey describes how he set out in 2007 to compose a guide to US Rhône wines and producers. The purpose of the book shifted after he became enthralled by the outlandish histories of the Rhône Rangers, and how they came to make the wines that define them. There is a certain parallel here with how many of the key characters in the book become similarly enthralled by the Rhône varietals, often by unintended and fortuitous means, but then choose to make them their lives’ work. The approach taken by the Rangers rein- forces the perception of them as mavericks, from ignoring the disdain for the simple idea of imitating French wines in the United States to the illicit importation of cut- tings. A sense of the steadfastly individualistic, entrepreneurial psyche lends a con- spicuously American flavor to this book and its characters. The power of “one-bottle epiphanies” to infuse people with a singular zeal runs beneath the surface, illustrated by Mat Garretson’s dogged pursuit of John Alban. Not knowing he is phoning a modem line serving a weather station in the middle of a vineyard that only has a handset connected intermittently, he phones at all times of day and night for 3 months before his persistence bears fruit; their meeting gives birth to the Hospices du Rhône (p. 223). Similarly, graduate student Gary Eberle (p. 80) decides in 1972 upon tasting a Saint-Julien from Ducru-Beaucaillou that he no longer wishes to pursue a promising career as a geneticist but just wants to drink; it is safe to assume that many others have had similar thoughts after a particularly nice bottle, but few have made the career change stick.

In his opening lines, Comiskey qualifies himself as a writer who fell in love with wine, as opposed to a lifetime oenophile who embraced writing. He has enjoyed success using the writer’s toolbox of vocabulary and metaphor to describe what he is tasting and how it makes him feel. This skill comes through in his descriptions of people and places, from dusty wine retailers to foggy mountain vineyards. His use of language creates a visceral sense of place and engages the senses. The story balances a depth of information not possessed by the Rhône Rangers themselves, with an approachability that does not preclude the book from wider consumption, fulfilling his self-prescribed duty to “bring people closer to these experiences” (p. xiii).

It is pleasing that the author does not fall for any unrepresentative romantic description of the Rhône. Having cycled Lyon-Camargues, we find his description of a working river used for industrial transport to be accurate and rightfully dismis- sive of the idea that it is idyllic. This description applies specifically to the northern part of the Rhône valley and the prestigious appellations of Cotes Rôtie and Condrieu. However, a lack of maps of California or the Rhône makes it difficult for readers who are not familiar with both regions. While we are familiar with the Rhône valley, we find that California’s geography is not as easily deciphered without visual aid. This book would have been enhanced by the inclusion of tables summarizing changes in such topics as area under vine or volume of produc- tion, placing elements of the rather fragmented story in context.

The book engages well with modern scientific approaches, including DNA tracking of varietals. Previously, these enigmatic varietals have largely been lost to anonymity in field blends or misidentified in the vineyard. Chapter 2 is particularly dense with information, but most gets lost quickly. A table summarizing the different characteristics of each variety, plus how and where it is used in wine production, would assist the reader as he or she progresses to later chapters.

Given the relative freedom of US winemakers to experiment, some may have the perception that winemaking has stood relatively still in the Rhône during this period, but it has not, and a small summary to this effect would have been beneficial. The same could be said for the production of Rhône varieties in other prominent parts of the world. Development of the AVA system in the United States happened during the timeline of this book but is not spoken of, yet it could point to more European influence on the administration of wine production. Material is sufficient to yield a separate (and possibly dull) book on its own, but some links are needed. Perhaps this information could be presented in a condensed and separate appendix.

Because of the Rangers’ geographical isolation and the uniqueness of their dreams, the importance of bringing them together in such places as Chez Panisse and at such events as Hospices du Rhône is justifiably emphasized. The book mirrors the Rhône Rangers’ organization in making people who do not embrace the public eye in a conventional way thoroughly likable and sharing their very human enthusiasm for replicating at home the vinous French idyll they have fallen for. Most Rhône varietals have a US history that predates that of the Rangers, but this group’s efforts brought the allure of these wines to the mass market in the 1990s. In the process, they showed US consumers that red wine does not have to offer a chocolate and vanilla experience –a world of savory, gamey, meaty, and spicy flavors is available. The boom of interest in new varieties and flavors saw them conquer the wine world and beyond; in 1992, asteroid #4934 was named “Rhôneranger” in honor of the subversive Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Winery (p. 116). This boom was not to last, and the author describes current winemaking and -selling challenges in later chapters. The mavericks are underdogs who valiantly have made their way in the shadow of Napa Cabernet and growing corporatization, yet the book does not pay much attention to the Rhône underdogs of today. In his latest article for Wine & Spirits Magazine,2 Comiskey looks at Vermentino, Grenache Blanc, and Picpoul. This examination would have brought the narrative full circle, especially given the current demand for light, dry white wines. It may have also provided a sunnier element to the conclusion of the book, which does not enthuse the reader about thoughts of following in the Rangers’ footsteps. While writing these few lines we could not resist pouring ourselves a native Rhône and a Californian with similar blend. Our humble international tasting panel (with no French or American member) came up with some tasting notes that seem to fit the stereotypes. The Lirac (2014 Vignoble Abeille; Chateau Mont-Redon in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, 14.5% ABV) keeps its balance and offers a sincere mixture of red fruits without being too bombastic. The Cotes du Crow’s 2014 Morgan (Monterey, Morgan Winery Salinas, 14.2% ABV) delivers a more vanilla/chocolate experience. Although it is a fine product, its initial splashes of cherries and oak are unable to hide a certain platitude. Does this ridiculously small sample confirm the clichés regarding American/French palates? More tastings are needed, surely. Plenty of material for sequels exists, so this Canadian/Australian pair look forward to another quaffable and entertaining read from the author.

Varietals of Capitalism defies simple description. Its theoretical framework, depth of research, and interdisciplinarity would seem to have required Herculean tasks from no fewer than three scholars. Of course, this is not a coincidence. In fewer than 250 pages, Xabier Itçaina, Antoine Roger, and Andy Smith, all affiliated with Sciences Po Bordeaux, have put together a richly complex account of the European Union’s (EU’s) 2008 regulatory change that, in theory, allowed participants in the European wine trade to compete more successfully in the global wine market. Rooted in the exist- ing literature of economic change, Varietals of Capitalism utilizes a diverse range of primary source material, including interviews and documentary evidence, from four key EU wine-producing countries: France, Italy, Romania, and Spain.

The authors take as their starting point the generally agreeable position that indus- try change can only be understood with an ear and an eye toward politics. Employing the concept of structured contingency, an amalgamation of institutional thought, field theory, and multiscalar politics, the authors argue that the simple explanations offered by most commentators for the necessity of the 2008 change (i.e., growers were forced to meet the demands of a new globalized consumer) do not hold up against a deep reading of the relevant source material. More generally, the authors reject an economically or intergovernmentally reductionist view of EU pol- icies and focus instead on the “complex set of contingent political work conducted in the economic, scientific, and bureaucratic fields” (p. 7). Although this final goal may prove too ambitious, Varietals of Capitalism also seeks to shed light on the relation- ship between individual actors, social structures, and institutions that constitute contemporary capitalism outside the wine industry.

Varietals of Capitalism is broken into three parts. Part I explores the existing liter- ature and approaches to change in the wine industry and economies more generally. This first section also spells out the authors’ notion of structured contingency, and with it the idea of how actors build, maintain, dismantle, and destroy the very insti- tutions that serve to confine, confound, and restrict them (in other words, socially structured actors).

Part II dials back on theory (although not entirely) and pushes forward into the actual debates that led to the 2008 policy change. Avoiding the simplistic and soph- istic arguments that many in the trade use to explain change, the authors present a dense account of how science and academia (including this very journal) helped conceptualize the production and implementation of a new approach to the EU’s governing of the wine industry. What becomes clear is that the regulatory change of 2008 has a deeper and more complex history than what most readers (myself included) would have assumed. European anxiety of falling behind the New World, in wine and in other sectors, was just one factor in the evolvement from supply-driven to demand-driven EU wine laws.

Part III may feel the most relatable to practitioners involved in the wine trade. Here, the authors break down the successes and failures of the first few years of implemen- tation of the 2008 law. It sought to drastically reduce the EU’s interventionist policies of vine grubbing and distillation subsidies and instead focus on supporting producers and merchants in their attempts to present wine to consumers. These changes, however, do not represent a clear victory for neoliberalism and its supporters. Rather, the authors suggest that “microeconomic support” offered to growers and regions formed the “heart of the reform agenda” (p. 192). This fascinating and con- vincing point runs counter to what may seem like surface-level neoliberal reforms.

As with most books that attempt to challenge conventions, nitpicky criticisms manifest themselves quite readily. At times, the reader is left feeling as though the authors’ primary goal is not explication of the 2008 law but rather the challenge of putting the notion of structured contingency into action. Whereas this reader expected the theory to support the empirical study, I finished wondering whether the empirical study was there to support the theory. Second, although the authors go to great lengths to historicize the 2008 change (and are explicit in doing so), they are prone to simplify other, equally complex historically phenomena, including the creation of the system of appellations d’origine (pp. 64–69).

These minor quibbles should not detract from what is otherwise a thoughtful, academically driven piece of research. The book speaks to a broad range of acade- micians, including economists and political scientists, although it may appeal less to wine-trade participants who do not have an interest in the scholastic side of their live- lihoods. Whether the concept of structured contingency will have any enduring impact outside the wine trade, or within it, remains to be seen.

Of all the books that aim to “pair” wine with food, or with geography, or with prices, or with taste, or with history, or with any other variable, Gisela Kreglinger’s new book on wine is a statistical outlier: the author pairs wine with spirituality. The Spirituality of Wine is a book about wine and the Christian faith, as the author describes it: “The Christian spirituality I espouse in the pages of this book is rooted in Christian Scripture and nourished by the wisdom of the rich Christian tra- dition of our ancestors, those who have gone before us in the faith” (p. 1). Kreglinger has the theological chops and the family experience to write such a book: she holds a Ph.D. in historical theology from the University of St. Andrews, and she grew up in a family whose business has produced and sold wine for generations.(1)

If a reader comes to this book knowing nothing about the Christian faith, or about wine, those deficiencies will be remedied. Indeed, a thesis of the book is that the Christian faith cannot be understood and appreciated without knowing its nexus with wine. The connection Kreglinger makes between Christianity and wine is not only historical, such as Jesus’s first miracle being the changing of water into wine. The deeper connection is theological: the very divinity of Christ and the nature of salvation itself is tied to the blood of Christ, which the Christian faith connects to wine. Thus, The Spirituality of Wine can be read as a primer on the tenets of the Christian faith. But the book also can be read as a primer on how wine is made, in what manner wine is to be consumed, and the reason wine is the most special of all beverages.

Kreglinger divides her book into two parts: Sustenance and Sustainability. The first tilts toward theology; the second tilts toward the production and consumption of wine. What is especially satisfying about the book is the way the author weaves the narrative of the Christian faith with the narrative of wine making and wine consumption. The word “informative” comes to mind—but so does the word “inspirational.”

Many sermons have been given about Jesus’s turning water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana (John 2). Kreglinger goes beyond this familiar story to explain how wine appears in the Christian scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. Noah is the first vintner (Genesis 9:1), producing a beverage the Bible describes as bringing glad- ness to the human heart and comfort during times of distress (Psalm 104:15; Proverbs 31:6–7). Noah also is the first person in the Bible to become drunk, and Kreglinger describes not only the joy that wine consumption can bring but the tragic consequences that overconsumption can cause. Other Old Testament figures whose lives connect with wine include Abraham (Genesis 14:18) and Isaac, who gives his son the eloquent blessing, “May God give you the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine” (Genesis 27:28, 37). When Moses sends out scouts to survey the promised land, they report seeing a “valley of grape clusters,” which signals the goodness of the promised land (Numbers 13:21–27). At the time of Israel’s rule under Solomon, the scriptures record that the people of Israel lived “each under his own vine and fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25). This was a time of peace and flourishing—and wine helped make it so.

Indeed, so fundamental is wine in the Bible that the nation of Israel is often com- pared to a vine or a vineyard. In Psalm 80, Israel is described as a vine brought out of Egypt to be transplanted in the fertile soil of the Promised Land. As Kreglinger out- lines the connection between God’s chosen people and wine, important parallels include “the need to stay rooted in God’s garden; their dependence on God the vintner for pruning, watering, and protection; and their calling to become a fruitful nation and a blessing to others” (p. 26). The parallel between Israel and viticulture continues when the prophets, bemoaning times of Israel’s wickedness, describe Israel as a “wild vine” (Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:2). The Bible verse displayed at the United Nations plaza is drawn from Israel’s connection to wine: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4). The pruning hook is the most fundamental tool of the vintner.

In the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly makes references to wine—and assumes his audience is familiar with viticulture. Jesus enjoys wine—indeed, one of the charges leveled against him by the Pharisees is being a “glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 15:19–20). Jesus regularly illustrates his parables with references to viticulture and wine. In the “I am” statements by Jesus, he says of himself: “I am the true vine; God the father is the vine-grower; and his disciples are the branches” (John 15:1–6). So fundamental is viticulture to the Christian gospel that the apostle John maintains that followers of Jesus are to “abide” in Christ—in the same way that a branch must “abide” in (or be connected to) the vine to bear fruit.

According to Kreglinger, the relationship between wine and the Christian faith culminates in what Christians call “the last supper,” where Jesus takes a cup of wine and compares it to his blood, which will be shed for the sins of the world. From this mysterious mingling of blood and wine is derived the sacrament where Christians consume wine—following the same instructions that Jesus gives to his fol- lowers at their Passover meal: “this do in remembrance of me.” No six words have done more to increase the consumption of wine than these six words of instruction from Jesus to his disciples.

For generations, millions of people have consumed wine each Sunday in accord with this teaching. Roman Catholics believe that the wine they consume at Mass actually is the blood of Christ. Protestants believe that the wine they consume at communion represents the blood of Christ. In each case, wine provides the vehicle for “communing” with Christ in recognition of what Christians (of all stripes) believe to be the atoning death of the Son of God.(2) If the sacrament of the Lord’s supper were not enough to establish the crucial connection between the Christian faith and wine, Jesus tells his followers that when they are with him in heaven, there will be a feast—and on that day, Jesus will drink wine “new with you in my Father’s Kingdom” (Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25; Luke 21:18).

Of particular interest to readers of this journal will be Kreglinger’s account of the role of Christian monasteries in the production of wine. Monasteries in England, Ireland, and as far north as Denmark have produced wine, some of them becoming highly skilled in viticulture. Monks in the Cistercian Order cleared the land and planted the vines that produced the highly regarded Clos de Vougeot of Burgundy. Kreglinger’s favorite movie, referenced several times in the book, is Babette’s Feast, a film that celebrates the spirituality and gladness of consuming superb food and wine. The wine served in this cinematic feast? Clos de Vougeot.(3) Dom Pérignon is the name of the Benedictine monk whose oenological genius led him to produce the now famous champagne of that name. Years later, Franciscan friars would see the potential of viticulture in what is now northern California, a geo- graphic focal point of the wine industry.

In an enlightening portion of the book that discusses wine and the Reformation, Kreglinger makes a persuasive case that the Reformers never counseled abstinence even as they contended that being drunk from wine was a sin. Kreglinger quotes Calvin: “By wine the hearts of men are gladdened, their strength recruited, and the whole man strengthened, so by the blood of our Lord the same benefits are received by our souls” (p. 57). The Reformers were united on the doctrine of sola scriptura—the Bible was central to their faith. Zwingli compares the Bible to “a good strong wine.”

Joy, Kreglinger maintains, is to be part of the Christian experience. Her chapter “Wine and Communal Feasting” is a biblically based ode to the joy of wine con- sumption. The chapter also is a theological brief for wine as God’s gift to gladden human hearts and enhance family and communal pleasure by consuming the fruit of the vine. Christians who believe in abstinence will find little ammunition in this chapter. According to Kreglinger, “Christian feasting becomes a place where we embrace and cultivate this posture of gratitude and joyful celebration.” And wine is to be part of the feast. Blending precepts from the Bible with the narrative of Babette’s Feast, Kreglinger explains that wine, properly used, “allows us to experi- ence God as the lavish giver” (p. 88). It is not just a sip of wine that is being pre- scribed here; Kreglinger uses the term “gentle intoxication” to describe the heart gladdening that wine is to foster.(4)

In Part I of her book, Kreglinger contends that the practice of viticulture once was a spiritual exercise as well as an agricultural endeavor. She argues this should still be the case: “If the vintner participates in crafting wine that is both God’s gift and the work of human hands, his or her vocation has profound spiritual meaning” (p. 121).

Kreglinger interviews several vintners as to whether they have a sense of “calling” to their work. Some affirm a spiritual dimension—a cooperating with God the creator—in crafting a good wine. The stories of Father Hufsky, a Catholic priest who tends a personal vineyard, and Sister Thekla, the vintner at the Abbey of St. Hildegard, illustrate the kind of connection Kreglinger longs to see in a human partnership with the Lord of the vineyard. Kreglinger is saddened by the vintners of today who do not understand or acknowledge this connection, and she laments those who have commoditized wine and produce only for the sake of profit. Yet she leaves room for the promise of an inherent spirituality, even for secular vintners.

Part II of The Spirituality of Wine delves further into the wine-making process itself, exploring the connection between God’s place (or what some would call nature’s place) and the role of humans in contemporary wine production. Informed by her discussions with vintners around the world, Kreglinger contends that wine loses its distinctive value and becomes “degraded into becoming just another generic drink” when producers seek profit over quality and variety (p. 147). The author worries that modern technologies enable shortcuts that discon- nect vintners from the spiritual nature of crafting wine. For Kreglinger, technology separates wine—that mysterious fruit of the vine—from the vineyard itself.

In a well-researched (if somewhat disjointed) chapter on the health benefits of wine, Kreglinger draws from Christian and non-Christian sources. Even before modern medicine, the apostle Paul instructs Timothy to treat an upset stomach with wine (1 Timothy 5:23). Hippocrates used wine as a potent antiseptic. But to my mind, the author devotes too much space to modern medicine. She plainly believes that wine’s physical benefits complement the spiritual, but Kreglinger’s strong suit is that she grew up in a vineyard and studied theology—she did not grow up in a vineyard and study medicine.

Proverbs 20:1 states: “[W]ine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” Kreglinger would agree. She gives unvarnished attention to the potential for alcohol abuse in a chapter subtitled “Rescuing Wine from the Gluttons for the Contemplatives.” Here, Kreglinger repeats her position that wine is not meant to be consumed mindlessly; it is a good gift, but, as with every gift, it has an intended use. The Bible also describes wine as a reward: “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine” (Proverbs 3:9–10). Thoughtfully addressing the complexities of substance abuse, Kreglinger does not shy away from the fallen nature of the human relationship with alcohol, but she is adamant that wine “was meant to draw us nearer to God and each other rather than alienate us even further from his loving and healing presence. In the words of the German proverb, ‘To drink is to pray, to binge-drink is to sin’” (p. 198).

Weaving insights from today’s vintners with New Testament metaphors, Kreglinger concludes by challenging modern notions of identity and community. In drawing the strands of the book together, she writes: “Christ invites us to see one another … as branches held together and nourished by Christ, the vine, and tended by a caring vintner, God the Father” (p. 202). Although Kreglinger some- times strays into secondary concerns, such as consumerism and virtual media, that distract from the book’s theme, she successfully explains—through the palatable prism of wine—that “[t]he Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).
1 As a baby, Kreglinger was placed in a playpen in the vineyard because her mother was working there. As a little girl, her job was to crawl into the wine vats and scrub them clean from the inside. The Kreglinger family vineyard is neither a hobby nor a tax dodge.

2 This is how Kreglinger describes the sacrament and its connection to blood, wine, and a supper: “The Lord’s supper becomes a place where we cease to strive and we learn to receive the person of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, and eternal life… . This is something that Christ does and will continue to work within us until the end of days. We eat Christ’s body and drink his blood. As we take into ourselves his living presence [through the wine and the bread], he mysteriously forms and grows his very own life in us personally and communally” (p. 72).

3 Kreglinger quotes the wine writer Hugh Johnson, who accords this encomium to the Cistercian monks: they made Clos de Vougeot “the laboratory of their pursuit of perfection” (p. 50).

4 Her words are worth repeating: “The intoxicating effect of wine is often seen as purely negative. But Babette’s Feast is a moving example of how gentle intoxication can enhance our festive play before God and allow us to let go of our defenses and embrace a life of greater vulnerability and transparency with God and with each other” (p. 99).

Kenneth G. Elzinga
University of Virginia
elzinga@virginia.edu

doi:10.1017/jwe.2017.6

Much has been made of the massive scale of this book, which reviews the origins and wines of nearly one hundred of Napa Valley’s several hundred wineries. Printed in China on super-heavy paper stock, it is difficult to actually lift. Apart from being unwieldy, the connection of the author to the wine and beverage industry has led some to call the book a vanity project. It is published by Leslie Rudd, for whom Kelli White is the sommelier (along with her fiancé) at PRESS, the St. Helena steak house (there is no other word for its menu) that Rudd operates. Indeed, a brief section of the book is devoted to a discussion of the wine list at PRESS. To top matters off, the HoseMaster of Wine has provided a hysterically funny blind book review (yes, he reviews the book without reading it—think blind wine tasting) at  www.hosemasterofwine.blogspot.com.

Like the HoseMaster of Wine, I did not read the entire book, and I doubt the author would expect anyone to do so. After offering a brief history of early wine pro- duction in the area, Napa Valley Then and Now becomes a series of well-researched vignettes, with a few photos of bottles and vineyards thrown in for good measure. Each vignette provides a brief history of a winery, its vineyards, and some tasting notes on wines from the property to which the author has access. These tasting notes focus mainly on the aging of the wine; a symbol indicating whether a wine has started to show its age is assigned to each, which some wine collectors may find especially useful.

I found the winery vignettes I did browse through to be accurate and sometimes very interesting. I learned that the Scholium Project, whose oddball name I always wondered about, was started by a former professor from St. John’s College in Annapolis who just extended his sabbatical indefinitely. And the School House Vineyard, which has a rather long and tortuous history, is a kind of microcosm of the Napa Valley story itself.

The book has brief prefaces written by Leslie Rudd and Robert Parker, each of which reads like a book jacket’s advertising blurb.

However, the book has one enormous problem: its size and weight make it so ungainly that it is nearly impossible to read the entirety of many entries. Merely folding the pages over becomes a serious task, and searching the book for an entry (the entries are alphabetical, which helps) is ridiculously time-consuming in the Internet age. This book truly needs to be uploaded to the Internet, where it could be easily searched, where the font size could be adjusted, and where it would weigh no more than a simple tablet.

Orley Ashenfelter
Princeton University
C6789@princeton.edu

doi:10.1017/jwe.2017.5

I have read many “wine books,” some casual, some pedantic, and many happily informative. But Bianca Bosker’s book stands out as being spectacularly successful in teaching us about wine, in making us love wine, and in presenting a tone of unfail- ing good humor. It is cast in the form of an autobiography over a period of one year in which she decides to learn about wine, taste, and especially smell and which ends with her passing her examination to become a certified sommelier and finally getting employed as one.

There is no tasting without smelling. It is fair to say that olfaction is “in,” as shown by some recent attention from canine ethologists (see Alexandra Horowitz, Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, Scribner, New York, 2016, 336 pp., ISBN 978-1-4767-9599-7 [hardback], $27.00). In fact, dogs’ noses are so much more sensitive than ours (with a few hundred million olfactory bulbs versus our just a few million) that I have wondered whether they could be trained to distinguish in blind tastings between, say, Château Latour and Château Lafite.

Bosker starts her career as a “cellar rat,” continues with tastings, trails established sommeliers in famous restaurants, gets endless advice from friends and other aspi- rants to wine greatness, visits experts from California to Dresden, gets periodically bawled out by bosses, and (assisted by a thousand flashcards) crams endlessly for the forthcoming three-part exam consisting of blind tastings, the theory of wine, and service. Service is crucial; you must be dressed just right and follow specific rules: Don’t pour men before women, don’t pour the host before the guests, don’t pour more for one person than another. And God help you if you drip. Don’t pick up the glasses to pour, and don’t take more than two pours to fill one glass. Don’t empty the bottle the first go- around. Don’t forget to wipe the bottle’s lip on each pour, and before you pour. Don’t ever block the label with your hand. Don’t look awkward. Don’t fidget. Don’t pour from the left. Don’t walk clockwise. Don’t ever swear. Don’t make the guest ask you the vintage. Don’t look so eager. Don’t look so serious—you don’t want to be a funeral director, do you? Don’t be so shy. Don’t say “um.” And for the love of God don’t look so nervous. (p. 80)

In one of her early exposures to the “real thing,” a droplet of Madeira rolls down the stem of the glass she has just poured: “It was like a turd smeared on a wedding gown” (p. 79).

Most importantly, perhaps, Bosker trains her nose with a 54-sample kit (Le Nez du Vin) of fragrance essences that she sniffs daily. Interestingly, Horowitz (of canine fame) also religiously sniffs Le Nez du Vin and agrees with Bosker that one must verbalize the smells to retain them in the brain; however, she seems to be less successful than Bosker, learning the smells of essences in the kit but not dis- tinguishing wines more successfully as a result. Bosker takes issue with the frequently held view that humans’ olfactory bulbs have shrunk and hence animals have a stron- ger sense of smell, because in humans, the brain provides a strong assist in smelling. But dogs are special, because their noses have a vomeral cavity, a second smelling organ that humans lack. There are some minor disagreements between Bosker and Horowitz: the former maintains that pheromones may be important in bringing humans together (p. 97), whereas the latter states that people do not seem to detect pheromones at all (p. 88).

Part of the sommelier’s job is to sell wine, and to do that, she needs to know what the guest wants. There is clearly an art to figuring out what the guest really wants, and Bosker’s description of how sommeliers see through guests is almost scary, making the reader think that when one goes to a restaurant, it is akin to unwittingly landing on a psychiatrist’s couch; at a minimum, guests are subject to keen observations (“She wore … a ring the size of a shi tzu” [p. 152]). She provides good advice that amateurs can benefit from, such as how to tell alcohol or acid or sugar content in a wine and what makes a quality wine (or a bad wine), although some of her colleagues would prefer to preserve some of the mystery in wine by leaving these questions unanswered.

She describes the research lab of Treasury Wine Estates, with its philosophy that wine should be developed like fast food with market research, tasting panels, focus groups, and the like. That poses an interesting question: what have you really accom- plished if you manage to create a laboratory-designed wine that tastes just like Château Margaux? As Bosker puts it, “But for wineries that want to keep prices low and production high, nature no longer gets the final say on flavor” (p. 187). Laboratory-created wines may well fool people, just as “A Portrait of Gentleman,” putatively by Frans Hals, fooled art lovers (for a while); but as soon as it becomes known that such a work is not the real thing, its price will drop. As in art, we

Book Reviews 107 need authenticity, which is one good reason why the Rudy Kurniawans of this world

will not replace the real McCoy.

Has Bosker been able to train herself (that is, her brain) to recognize and identify wines? There is really only one way to tell—medical technology. Functional MRI (fMRI) is used in a variety of circumstances to examine changes in the brain under various stimuli. Dogs have been subjected to fMRI to identify the changes that occur in their brains when they are exposed to their beloved masters (Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, 272 pp. [hardcover], ISBN 978- 0-544-11451-7, $25.00). That study was difficult to carry out, because dogs in the experiment had to be trained to lie absolutely still in the MRI machine, despite its substantial noise output. Bosker, in turn, sips some wines through a tube in the MRI machine and concentrates on identifying them. Sure enough, the fMRI shows her brain responding in the predicted manner, proving conclusively that her yearlong sniffing practice has altered her brain and that trained sommeliers are not just blowing hot air but really have knowledge that the rest of us lack.

As Bosker’s year of learning and apprenticing comes to an end, she has her exam- ination, which elicits moments of tension, nerves, and fear. In the blind-tasting part of the exam, she has to identify two wines; a white, which she calls a Chablis (1–3 years old), and a red, which she identifies as a California Cabernet (1–3 years old). She nails it. The other parts of the examination go equally well, leading to her designation as a Certified Sommelier. The final chapter deals with her getting a job from Paul Grieco as sommelier in his wine bar, Terroir, which had been named the World’s Best Wine Bar. It is a worthy, richly deserved culmination of her anxiety- and work-filled year.

It is amazing just how much “stuff” this book contains about wines, tastes, smells, production, service, tastings, sommeliers, customs and wine lore, successes and screw-ups, and much, much more. Most importantly, Bosker communicates to the reader on every page the abiding love she has for wine and for the activities that wine professionals undertake. It is a “must-read” for everybody who loves wine or would like to reach that point.

Richard E. Quandt
Princeton University
requandt@gmail.com

doi:10.1017/jwe.2017.4

The Business of Wine Making is a comprehensive book that covers all aspects of grape growing, wine making, wine marketing, and business in 360 pages of tightly packed information related to science, viticulture, enology, economics, and business.

Let me begin with my conclusion. This is an outstanding dual-purpose book. On the one hand, it is very practical and may serve as the perfect reference guide for the beginning or advanced grape grower, winemaker, or wine marketer. On the other hand, it is theoretical and very useful for every wine aficionado who wants to know more about wine and its production, at a profound level.

It was only after I had read the first 30 pages that I noticed the biography of the late Jeffrey Lamy (1938–2014) on page 349. After a long illness, he passed away just after finishing the final update on the manuscript of this book. An obituary published online by the Oregonian on May 9, 2014, (http://obits.oregonlive.com) Oregon Wine Press sketches the main stations of his life: “Lamy was a 1960 graduate of Yale University with degrees in industrial administration and mechanical engi- neering. He later earned an MS in business.” After working in the aerospace indus- try, he became the manager of the Chamber of Commerce of Moscow, Idaho. Later on, he was the director for economic development for the Eugene, Oregon, Chamber and was subsequently appointed to the Pacific Northwest Regional Commission. In the late 1970s, he moved to the Portland, Oregon, area to become a vineyard and winery consultant and sought-after speaker and lecturer. As general manager and winemaker, he guided Montinore Vineyards, then Oregon’s largest vineyard- winery (400+ acres), from feasibility study to national prominence.

Lamy also was a regular contributor to the website Enobytes.com (http://www. enobytes.com). His posts include analyses ranging from issues related to terroir and technology to urban wine markets. His contributions go in length, depth, and thoughtfulness substantially beyond what is currently considered a blog post and will fascinate every wine economist.

The Business of Wine Making appears to be the quintessence of his professional life and his passion. It is divided into 19 chapters plus a 10-page appendix. In addi- tion, there is no shortage of synoptical support. The book contains 104 tables and 110 figures!

Lamy begins his book by describing the market place, supply and demand side (chapters 1 and 2), trends in the number of wineries, by size and region, and their production differentiated by region and kind of wine, cost and price trends, demand, and market conditions. Interestingly, aside from the three western states of California, Oregon, and Washington, he also covers New York, Virginia, and Michigan and their grape varieties including many French-American hybrids.

Chapters 3 to 7 are about the grape and its growing conditions. Here Lamy devotes more than 20 pages to solar radiation (some parts of chapter 3 and all of chapter 4). For various orientations, slopes, and latitudes he provides figures with hourly incoming solar radiation just like Orley Ashenfelter and I did for German vineyards (Ashenfelter and Storchmann, 2010). Lamy also provides the mathemat- ical link between radiation and temperature and details how planting and pruning can optimize the solar energy influx; this is fascinating and meticulous work. He goes on by describing the outline of a vineyard and how it should be maintained including various spraying regimes, and finishes with a financial analysis.

In chapters 8 and 9, Lamy sheds light on the winemaker’s role. First, “what does a winemaker cost? (p. 123)” As we learn, in 2012, in California experienced winemak- ers earned between $90,000 and $105,000 per year. In addition, “Profit-based bonuses seem to be gaining popularity with eastern wineries.”

He then continues with describing the technicalities of wine making, from the determination of titratable acidity, over various fermentation methods, yeasts, filtra- tion, and cyroextraction (for eiswein) to bottling. Everything is covered in great detail and supported with ample figures and tables. There is a lot to be learned here. Carbonic maceration, for instance, is always used on Beaujolais wines: “The usual procedure is to fill a tank with whole clusters and seal it up except for a relief valve. The weight of the grapes crushes some at the bottom of the tank. Yeast fermentation starts spontaneously in the juice from the native yeast on the grapeskins. CO2 production drives the air up and out, so intercellular fermentation can begin. … The process metabolizes some of the malic acid, softens the wine’s tannic edge, gives it a fat mouthfeel and imparts a taste dimension that distinguishes Beaujolais wines” (p. 138).

In “Does the Wine Sell Itself?” (chapter 10), Lamy discusses various ways to market the wine produced such as winemaker dinners (he adds in bold: “The diners expect to meet the winemaker” [p. 198]), tasting rooms and in-store wine tast- ings, weddings, and wine-related merchandise. Here, he also gets to the legalities of direct shipments and wine clubs accompanied by a section entitled “Distributors Control Your Marketing Destiny.” This chapter is not just relevant to the practical winemaker, Lamy also raises the larger issue of U.S. alcohol regulations and partic- ularly considers the economic implications of the three-tier system.

Chapters 11 to 13 are devoted to bookkeeping issues and the capital stock (i.e., winery equipment and the winery itself). Typical for this book, Lamy often moves from the big picture down to the smallest detail. For instance, what crush pad equip- ment is needed? How do the various crush models work? What are the best brands? There are many tables that detail the cost effectiveness of various destemmers, pomace pumps, and presses. Lamy also presents numerous winery design outlines and floor plans depending on the desired capacity.

Chapter 14 deals with winery revenues and expenses and is mainly a spreadsheet exercise. For wineries of different sizes in growing regions as different as Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, or Washington, Lamy lists all cost components including taxes and makes inferences about the yields and grape/wine prices needed to meet certain profitability goals. This analysis is aug- mented by a scale economy study (chapter 16). For both grape growers and wine- makers, Lamy sets a minimum size needed to at least break even.

Assessing the profitability of a winery is also important for acquisitions (chapter 15) to make sure the old joke: “How do you make a small fortune in the wine indus- try? Answer: start with a large one” (p. 303) does not come true. In two short chapters (chapters 17 and 18), Lamy describes various management issues and “where to get the money” (p. 323).

The book concludes with a case study, written in dialogue style, that wraps up the book with a few business questions he leaves to the reader to decide.

Overall, this is a fascinating book, densely packed with information. Those who want to learn more than is already documented in this book can consult other sources. After each chapter, Lamy lists the most important references, oftentimes classics by authors such as Maynard Amerine, Emile Peynaud, or Albert J. Winkler.

I utterly enjoyed reading this book, and I learned a lot. The Business of Wine Making is a must for anybody who grows grapes or/and makes wine or ponders doing so in the future. Due to its comprehensiveness I would also recommend it as a textbook for Wine MBA courses, that are currently sprouting everywhere, par- ticularly if they have a multidisciplinary focus. In addition, it will serve as an excel- lent reference for the nonproducing consumer who wants to learn more about his or her favorite beverage.

Karl Storchmann
New York University
karl.storchmann@nyu.edu

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.35

The Economics of Chocolate is—like an upmarket chocolate bar—rich, dense, and satisfying. Its editors, Mara Squicciarini and Johan Swinnen, are both at the University of Leuven in Belgium, a country that has deep and historic connections to chocolate and a country where “the idea of producing a book on the economics of chocolate comes naturally,” the editors write. The work was also “inspired by the rapidly growing field of the economics of wine, another luxury product, and the eco- nomics of beer, another Belgium specialty with sometimes surprisingly similar eco- nomic characteristics as chocolate.”

The book is about economics in its widest sense; its 22 chapters by various authors cover “history and economic development, demand and supply, trade and invest- ment, geography and scale economies, psychology and politics, technology and inno- vation, health and nutrition,” (p. v) and so forth, the editors explain. There is even a chapter on how to encourage people to eat less chocolate.

Given my job as chief agricultural officer at Mars Incorporated, a company that turns a lot of cacao (as the crop that becomes cocoa is known) into chocolate, I have strong views about this commodity, views that will surface in this review. I also coed- ited an almost 1,000-page book on the history, culture, and heritage of chocolate, a fact I mention only so that I can add the confession that “economics of” does not appear in its index, demonstrating the timely necessity of The Economics of Chocolate. It is timely and necessary because of the watershed on which the com- modity sits.

Many cacao growers in Africa, the main producing region, Latin America, and Asia live in deep poverty. They do not have enough land to grow enough cacao to escape that poverty. Thus, many are moving into cities or into other crops, such as rubber and palm oil.

As emerging markets appear, their appetite for chocolate is growing rapidly. Demand is likely to double over the next 20 years, yet the current production capac- ity is crumbling. Cacao is an underdeveloped crop, still in the early stages of domes- tication, threatened by pests and viral and fungal diseases that have serious effects on production. Political and economic instability in areas where it is grown is another threat. So the chocolate industry is predicting a shortage of 1 million metric tons of cacao by 2020. That is a big shortfall in a little time.

However, this book is largely the product of a conference attended mainly by econ- omists and social scientists, rather than agriculturalists. So this stark reality is not captured strongly enough among chapters with titles such as “From Pralines to Multinationals” and “Chocolate Brands and Preferences of Chinese Consumers.”

Christopher Gilbert, looking at the “Dynamics of the World Cocoa Price,” hero- ically constructs a chart of U.S. dollar cocoa prices back to 1850, concluding that “the effects of demand-side shocks are more persistent than those of supply-side shocks (p. 307).” Writing in late 2014, he predicts that the International Cocoa Organization’s cocoa price average, $2,439 per ton in 2013, would rise steadily toward $5,000 by the end of the decade, but higher prices would cause more cacao plantings and “prices will drift back toward current levels in the following decade.” Given the pressure on cacao, the major chocolate companies are not nearly as calm as Gilbert.

William Clarence-Smith begins his chapter on chocolate consumption from the sixteenth century until the early twentieth century by claiming chocolate is “slightly addictive” (p. 43) and ends by noting that “debate still rages over whether chocolate is physiologically addictive (p. 62).” However, between these statements he offers a fascinating account of cocoa consumption around the world and its competition with the likes of tea and coffee (and the fact that for long periods cocoa beans were used as currency in parts of Latin America, keeping demand high).

Cocoa was consumed as a liquid for much of its social history, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a perfect storm of events coalesced to create the “great choc- olate boom.” The invention of milk powder and ways to get the fat out of the solids led to smooth chocolate bars, and other new technologies created the possibility of great product diversification. Even new techniques in advertising played a role in the boom.

However, lest chocolate consumption rise too high, Sabrina Bruyneel and Siegfried Dewitte offer a chapter entitled “Health Nudges: How Behavioural Engineering Can Reduce Chocolate Consumption.” They were moved to do this work based on the “observation that chocolate not only provides immediate utility but also contributes to the rise of obesity and, in its wake, a host of preventable diseases (p. 167).” They define nudges as “subtle rearrangements in the decision environment that support con- sumers in adapting welfare-enhancing behaviours, like choosing healthy food options (p. 158).” For example, bowls of chocolate were placed within “close proximity” (20 cm) of test subjects and “within reach” (70 cm). Results showed that the “probability of consumption and the number of chocolates consumed decreased significantly when the distance to the chocolates increased from 20 to 70 cm.” (Now if I can just get someone to move that bowl of chocolates “within reach” …)

Heike Alberts and Julie Cidell offer a look at chocolate consumption, manufactur- ing, and quality in Europe and North America. American mass-market chocolates tend to have more sugar and less cocoa than their European cousins. American choc- olates are not rolled (“conched”) as much, if at all, so they tend to be grittier. Chocolate manufacturers in the United Kingdom have always substituted palm oil, coconut oil, and so forth for cocoa butter, whereas Americans have resisted this. As for “quality,” well, it is subjective. The authors describe taste tests in which “chocolates sold in discount grocery stores performed very well, and among milk and dark chocolate received better marks than more expensive brands, many of which customers believed to be of particularly good quality (p. 131).”

Other chapters look at consumption in emerging markets. The traditional Chinese diet contains few sweet items, according to Fan Li and Di Mo, but the growth rate of China’s chocolate market has accelerated between 2004 and 2010 by 10% to 15% per year, more than five times the growth rate of the global chocolate market. (This growth rate is spurred by what the chocolate industry likes to call “emerging chocolate lovers”!)

Russia is “one of the most promising emerging chocolate markets in the world,” (p. 400) according to Saule Burkitbayeva and Koen Deconinck. Russians are consuming more chocolate and “are increasingly switching to more expensive choc- olates, causing the market to grow even more strongly in value terms. Observers expect growth to come from new product development such as healthy snack alter- natives or the introduction of new flavours and shapes (p. 416).”

Not to be outdone, India is the fastest-growing market for chocolates in the world. Africa, the world’s major supplier of cacao beans, has not been a consuming region because few people there have been able to afford such luxuries and because most imported chocolate brands, especially in the tropical regions, “do melt at local ‘room temperature.’” Despite these issues, “the growth rate of chocolate consump- tion in both North Africa and SSA [sub-Saharan Africa] is comparable with that of China and India, and is even higher per capita wise than the latter two countries (p. 453).”

There is much on the sustainability of the industry: both environmental sustain- ability (cacao growing is a great cause of deforestation and the loss of biodiversity) and social sustainability (issues of poverty and child labor). However, the picture is a bit too rosy, with emphasis on what companies are doing rather than what the indus- try is not doing. This rosiness is best captured in one chapter title: “From Small Chocolatiers to Multinationals to Sustainable Sourcing.”

There is also perhaps too much optimism that a few Western NGOs such as Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and UTZ can lead remote farmers into sustainability through certification systems that set farming and employment standards. Certification is certainly a part of the solution (and Mars will by 2020 use only “certified sustainable” cacao), but companies and governments need to do much more.

I began by saying the book is “satisfying,” and it is. This old chocolatier reviewer found insights on every page. However, it is only the beginning of a dialogue that must move rapidly forward so that it can be part of the saving transformation of this threatened industry. I have some suggestions for the second edition.

Let us take a harder look at the future, as many chocolate companies are moving toward intense production on irrigated cacao plantations, a move that would drive many present farmers out of cacao and would certainly change the economics of chocolate, not to mention the agricultural economies of countries such as Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Indonesia.

Let us also take a harder look at the past. The history passages of The Economics of Chocolate start with cacao in what is now Central America. In fact, cacao origi- nated in the Morona, Nangaritza, and Zamora River valleys in what is now Ecuador. It must have developed some economic value there, or its seeds and/or seedlings would not have been transported so far north and east.

Let us stop confusing cacao and the chemicals it contains with “chocolate,” which is a combination of cacao with things not particularly good for one in large concentrations, such as sugars and fats. This confusion leads the authors of the chapter on chocolate’s nutritional and health effects—Stefania Moramarco and Loreto Nemi—to write that “we focus on ‘unadulterated’ chocolate, that is, dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa solids (p. 134).” Something that its 30% “other” is hardly “unadulterated.”

This confusion leads the same authors to refer to “the beneficial effects of choco- late on CVD” (cardiovascular diseases) when speaking of the Kuna Indians’ habit of drinking “three 10oz servings of homemade cocoa beverages per day” (p. 140) and suffering little or no CVD. However, these drinks were almost pure cacao, with no added sugar or fat. They were not chocolate.

I feel strongly about this because over the past 20 years, Mars scientists have pro- duced some 150 peer-reviewed studies in scientific journals on the health benefits of some of the ingredients of cacao without ever claiming that chocolate is good for you. Whiskey contains a great deal of water, but one would be ill-advised to source one’s hydration needs from whiskey.

The book also makes the standard error of claiming that cocoa flavanols have an antioxidant effect. Some of the work by Mars has shown that they do in the test tube but have little antioxidant effect once they get into the human body.

However, the slowly emerging, but astonishing, health benefits of cocoa flavanols may have a huge effect on the economic future of cacao, if not chocolate. An article on the front page of the New York Times in 2014—too late to be included in this book— reported: “In a small study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, healthy people, ages 50 to 69, who drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months performed better on a memory test than people who drank a low-flavanol mixture.” It quoted the study’s senior author, Dr. Scott Small of Columbia University, as saying that on average the improvement of high-flavanol drinkers meant they per- formed like people two to three decades younger on the study’s memory task, and about 25% better than the low-flavanol group. It quoted another researcher as saying, “An exciting result. Look, it’s chocolate. Who’s going to complain about chocolate?” Note that even the New York Times thinks that flavanols are antioxidants, and a leading researcher thinks that “it’s chocolate.” No, it is not chocolate; it is flavanols.

Much more work must be done to set the economics of cacao and chocolate straight. However, Squicciarini and Swinnen have made a valiant start. Let the research, reporting, and dialogue now accelerate.

Howard-Yana Shapiro
Mars Incorporated and University of California, Davis
Howard.shapiro@effem.com

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.34

I paused after the first four pages. It just seemed a bit too artsy for a real-life crime story. For example, the following sentence did not set the hard-boiled tone I was expecting: “At moments like this, surrounded by the sublime splendor of the vine- yards before harvest, the Grand Monsieur sometimes thought of the French masters – Pissarro, Renoir, Monet” (p. 2). However, as I pressed on, I realized that this was a different kind of read and one to which I would eventually take.

Journalist Maximillian Potter updated and greatly expanded his May 2011 Vanity Fair article, “The Assassin in the Vineyard,” (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/ 05/vineyard-poisoning-201105) into this book, which first appeared 3 years later. Unconstrained by word count, Potter was able to complete the story of a pathetic extortion attempt in January 2010 aimed at the owners of two extraordinary vine- yards in Burgundy. He does so by interleafing the details of the crime with about a thousand years of history of the more famous vineyard, Romanée-Conti. What happened at the second, Musigny, owned by Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé, merits only a couple of pages.

The protagonist is Aubert de Villaine, the Grand Monsieur, co-gérant of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC), with a member of the Leroy family serving as the other manager. His story, parsed out across the 17 chapters, dominates the narrative. Though not always in linear fashion, de Villaine’s life is recounted from his birth through a tasting on March 7, 2013 of the 2010 vintage, the year of the crime. Despite being born into the family that had acquired Romanée-Conti in 1869, de Villaine initially was not sure he wanted to go into the business. His time in California’s wine country beginning in 1964 led him to his decision: “Everywhere he turned, everyone he spoke to… looked with envy to France’s rich winemaking history for guidance. Everyone … told him how fortunate he was to be a part of such traditions at the greatest Domaine in all of France” (p. 166). On a call to his father, he asked for a job at DRC when he returned home.

A second key player is Louis-François de Bourbon, the Prince de Conti, much favored blood cousin of King Louis XV and namesake of the vineyard. Conti’s story encompasses intrigue and his likely involvement in the aborted Protestant uprising in France in 1757. The account of his acquisition of La Romanée under the nose of the king’s former mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and what he chose to do with the wines made from it is a delicious tale of spite.

The crime, the destruction of a handful of vines and a threat to poison hundreds more in the two vineyards if a significant sum of money was not paid, represented an attack on a sacred French institution. However, the resolution of the affair was so mundane that in and of itself, it would not have merited expanding the original article into a book. As a result, Potter wanders across time and space to fill the pages. In chapter 10, for instance, we are taken to California in the late 1840s for a history of the Almaden winery, which segues into profiles of Burgundy importers Frank Schoonmaker and Frederick Wildman and then goes on to detail de Villaine’s visit to the winery and his meetings with Professor Albert J. Winkler and Robert Mondavi. Individual taste will dictate how much these digressions will amuse or irritate the reader. Most of the time, I found them engag- ing if not always necessary.

One excursion that should be of interest to wine economists is the discussion of arrangements for pricing and distributing DRC wines in various countries and what happened when a gray market emerged. Chapter 15, Quelle Pagaille, recounts this event that led to a serious rift between the two managers of the Domaine and the dismissal of Lalou Bize-Leroy.

While I was reading the book, I was touring Champagne with an importer who also brings in Burgundies. He had been in the Côte d’Or at the time the events described in the book were unfolding. When I asked his opinion of the book, he was initially quite negative, especially about the writing and some errors. Later, he softened his criticism, admitting that many of the inaccuracies would probably only be noticed by hard-core and particularly knowledgeable Burgundy geeks. Nevertheless, his plaint, “Dude, do your research,” would seem to be the least we should expect from a journalist.

Another oddity that calls into question Potter’s attention to detail is the following: “Born on August 13, 1717, into a family with Burgundian roots … Louis-François studied philosophy and the arts, having a particular fondness for Mozart” (p. 38). The good prince was clearly ahead of his time as the composer was born in 1756.

If I was given to pause at the beginning, the conclusion of the final chapter was partially redeeming. Potter admitted to having his first taste of Burgundy while cov- ering the story of the crime for Vanity Fair in 2010. Until then, he wrote, “when I found myself reading a bit of a wine review, it struck me as pretentious to the point of being worthless” (p. 269). He went on to cite a review of “1987 Romanée- Conti by Allen Meadows, the self-appointed Burghound” concluding that “for con- noisseurs, this sort of review might be useful. It didn’t seem especially helpful for me” (p. 269). Paradoxically, in the acknowledgments, the author thanked Meadows who “answered many of my elementary questions” (p. 278). He also wrote, “I am deeply indebted to the work of many authors but these books were invaluable source mate- rial … The Pearl of the Cote by the ultimate Burghound, Allen Meadows” (p. 279). Perhaps one can attribute this change of heart to the epiphany Potter experienced when he tasted the 2008 La Tâche: “It is like divine, liquefied Pop Rocks that make me feel lightheaded – the kind of happiness that I felt after I first kissed my wife” (p. 272).

Like the author, the intended reader is not required to be an oenophile. As an unabashed one myself who has visited Burgundy and Champagne, where the crime and its resolution took place, I did not expect to add to my knowledge of wine, though I did learn a bit about DRC. However, I found Conti’s story more intriguing than de Villaine’s. The crime and its aftermath, which Potter describes as “unbelievable because it was all so remarkably unremarkable” (p. 240), left me more sad than satisfied. Nevertheless, despite its somewhat uneven writing style and the specter of inaccuracy, the book, which according to Potter’s LinkedIn page is now in development for a movie, made for an agreeable diversion.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.33

Burgundy is the most terroir-oriented region in France if not in the whole world. The focus is on the area of origin, as opposed to Bordeaux, where classifications are producer driven and awarded to individual chateaux. A specific vineyard (climat or lieu-dit) will bear a given classification, regardless of the wine’s producer. The main levels in the Burgundy classifications, in descending order of quality, are as follows:

–  Grand cru wines are produced from a small number of grand cru vineyards in the Côte d’Or and make up 2% of the production at 35 hectoliters per hectare. There are 33 grand cru vineyards in Burgundy.
–  Premier cru wines are produced from specific vineyards that are considered to be of high quality, but slightly lower than grand cru. They make up 12% of production at 45 hectoliters per hectare.
–  Village appellation wines are produced from vineyard sites within the bound- aries of 1 of 42 villages. Village wines make up 36% of production at 50 hecto- liters per hectare.
–  Regional appellation wines are wines that are allowed to be produced over the entire region or over an area significantly larger than that of an individual village. These appellations can be divided into four groups: The new Coteaux Bourguignons appellation covers wines made throughout the greater Bourgogne region, from the Chablis region in the north to and includ- ing the Beaujolais region in the south. Bourgogne is the standard appellation for wines made anywhere throughout the region excluding Chablis and Beaujolais; these wines may be produced at 55 hectoliters per hectare. Subregional appellations cover a part of Burgundy larger than a village; exam- ples are Hautes-Côtes de Beaune and Mâcon-Villages. -Wines of specific styles or other grape varieties include white Bourgogne Aligoté (which is made with the Aligoté grape), red Bourgogne Passe-Tout-Grains (which can contain up to two-thirds Gamay), and sparkling Crémant de Bourgogne.

Simply Burgundy: A Practical Guide to Understanding the Wines of Burgundy by Mark E. Ricardo, a practicing attorney, a registered investment advisor, and the founder and president of Trellis Fine Wine Investments, focuses on exactly that— the classification of Burgundy. With 45 pages plus three appendices, it is about the same number of pages as the Burgundy chapter in Karen MacNeil’s popular Wine Bible. I would call Simply Burgundy a booklet.

Although the Wine Bible provides a good introduction to Burgundy, Simply Burgundy: A Practical Guide to Understanding the Wines of Burgundy is not an intro- duction to Burgundy, but an introduction to the classification of Burgundy. Furthermore, it does not go deeply into the ins and outs of the Burgundy classifica- tion but stays with the essentials, leaving aside details and aspects of lesser impor- tance of the classification.

The structure of the booklet is as follows: After 1 page on “Regions and Grape Varietals,” the author explains in 7 pages the concept of the Burgundy classification. This is followed by reviews of the classification region by region: Chablis (3 pages), Côte d’Or (23 pages), Côte Chalonaise (2 pages), Mâconais (3 pages), and Beaujolais (3 pages). Yes, the booklet includes Chablis and even Beaujolais, which in many books about Burgundy are excluded.

An essential part of the Burgundy classification is the system of climats, which I would have liked to be more developed by the author. Climat is a term for a specific vineyard site of a few hectares. The system of climats in Burgundy was granted World Heritage Status by UNESCO last year. Although the author never uses the word climat, he refers to the climats with grand cru and premier cru status but leaves all the other climats aside (village climat). You can find the latter regularly on Burgundy labels, more in Burgundy’s export than domestic market. Interestingly, the new German wine classification system, which is modeled after the Burgundy classification system, does not allow winemakers to indicate climats on labels that have neither grand cru nor premier cru status.

There are practically no numbers in the booklet. One does not find anything about the size of the various regions, subregions, and vineyards or yield restrictions at the various levels of the classification, to name a few areas, where numbers would have been helpful to understand Burgundy.

At the lowest level of the classification, the regional level, the booklet is silent on most categories. That may have been motivated by the thought that the targeted readers of the booklet would mainly be interested in the upper levels of the classification.

Looking beyond the classification, the Burgundy lovers agree that although the classification is important to ascertain the quality of a wine before opening a bottle, equally important, if not more important, is who produced the wine (i.e., the winemaker). The famous Clos Vougeot, for example, is owned by about 80 dif- ferent vignerons, and they all put exactly the same text on the label of their wine bottles, while the quality of Clos Vougeot (and price) varies widely among the range of producers.

The author touched on this issue by adding a list of top producers for each region. The effort is commendable, but I would have appreciated some background informa- tion on the producers, such as annual production, négociant (that buys the grapes) and/or domain (that grows its own grapes), and price range.

Continuing to look beyond the classification, there is, of course, nothing in Simply Burgundy: A Practical Guide to Understanding the Wines of Burgundy on the history of Burgundy, nor is there anything on the structure of the industry.

The origins of Burgundy’s classification can be found in the work of the Cistercians who were able to delineate plots of land that produced wine of distinct character. The Roman Catholic Church had an important influence on the Burgundy classification. As the power of the church decreased, vineyards were sold to the bourgeoisie. The Napoleonic inheritance laws resulted in the continued subdivision of many vineyards so that some winemakers hold only a row or two of vines.

In terms of the structure of the industry, the role of négociants, who do not own vineyards, is not referred to at all. Négociants play a vital role in the Bourgogne. Négociants sell wines at all quality levels, including grand cru.

To sum up, this is a very small book (a booklet) with the objective of providing “a practical guide to understanding the wines of Burgundy.” The author is concen- trating on one aspect—the classification of the wines of Burgundy—and leaves many other aspects that are equally important to “understanding the wines of Burgundy” aside. On the aspect he covers (i.e., the classification), he does not explore the ins and outs of it but focuses on the essentials.

I like the booklet very much as a reference. For the next edition, I would love to see more maps in the booklet. In the current one, there is only an overall map of the Burgundy region with its five subregions.

Christian G.E. Schiller
International Monetary Fund (ret.) and Emeritus Professor,
University of Mainz, Germany
cschiller@schiller-wine.com

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.32

One of the many parallels explained in this fascinating book is that between wooden boats and wooden barrels. Barrels were required to store all sorts of things (food, booze, water, and nails) on ships as soon as the technology of boatbuilding became sufficiently advanced to undertake long sea voyages. Barrel makers (coopers) and ships carpenters plied a trade that was almost entirely interchangeable, using the same tools (axes and saws, wedges or froes, broadaxes and adzes, and many more), working with the same materials (wood, mostly), and adopting the same tech- niques (bending wood with heat, making the vessel watertight when required). So the association between barrels and ships is a long one, even though these days ships and storage units are no longer made of wood, and the apogee of using barrels for storage and packaging was in the late nineteenth century.

The book is divided into 14 chapters, starting with the simple question, why wooden barrels? In addressing this, the reader learns the origins of gathering around the office water cooler and the etymology of the terms scuttlebutt, pork barrel, and scraping the bottom of the barrel; why barrels are round; and why barrels taper from the middle outward. So barrels were the preferred means of packaging because they were secure, mobile, adaptable, and cheap and easy to make—the process of making them having hardly changed in centuries. Of course, when made of the right wood they imparted flavors to fine wines and whisky, whiskey and bourbon.

Chapters 2–5 then take the reader through the history of barrels, from the age of the Celts, who started out with amphorae to transport olives and wine and then slowly developed the prototypes of the barrels that were to become so ubiquitous in later times. The Celts passed the baton to the Romans, who gave us the early asso- ciation between barrels and wine. By the Middle Ages, barrels had become common- place in the ancient wine-growing regions such as Bordeaux, where there was a desperate need for an efficient means of transporting wine to markets near and far (especially London). By this time, cooperage had become a recognized trade, one of only about 40 designated crafts in Britain and Europe.

Chapter 6 traces the parallels between boats and barrels, and their making, mainte- nance, and functions, in more detail, and chapter 7 provides more detail about the chang- ing organization of coopers: from guilds to cooperages. Chapter 8 then turns to the modern barrels: the near monopoly of oak wood for aging wines and spirits, with French oak (Quercus rober) favored for wine and American oak (Quercus alba) largely used for aging whiskey and bourbon in the United States; the geography of the produc- tion of oak trees; how these barrels are crafted (chapter 9); and how aging in oak actually works (chapter 10). Of particular interest is the role played by oxygen in softening the wine; the types of flavors that the wood imparts to the wine, both naturally and through the toasting of the wood; and the different designs and styles of the modern barrel. Some of these issues are then revisited in more detail in chapters 11–14.

This is an accessible, interesting, and stimulating book that tells a compelling story about the origins of one of the most important (and expensive) parts of the modern making of fine wines.

Nick Vink
University of Stellenbosch
nv@sun.ac.za

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.31

The Hudson Valley is in many ways the birthplace of viticulture in America with a grape-growing history that extends back to the 1600s. Its wine-growing history is full of pioneering efforts in grape cultivation and hybridization. The home of the oldest commercial winery in the United States (Brotherhood Winery, 1839), it is a beautiful and fruitful valley with many similarities to European wine regions, especially those of Germany like the Rhine Valley. With its southern border just 20 miles from the George Washington Bridge, the region is in close proximity to the huge wine market of New York City. It is one of the three major wine-growing regions of New York State, which also includes the Finger Lakes and eastern Long Island. In this book, Casscles succeeds better than any other in describing the many facets of grape growing in the region and how its past can be a guide toward a prom- ising grape-growing and wine-making future largely through close examination of interspecies hybrid grapes and other cool-climate varieties.

The author writes with first-hand knowledge of the grape-growing and wine indus- try in the Hudson Valley. He has been growing grapes there since the 1970s, metic- ulously observing and managing many grape varieties. His helpful insights are excellent practical guides for the grape grower of cool-climate grapes. He also has been a winemaker for a commercial winery in the region since 2008. Casscles is a government attorney for the New York State Senate and has authored more than 22 laws related to the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages. His extensive background in law and grape growing provides the framework for his clearly written and well-referenced history of the region and description of the grapes grown and the wine made there.

This 250-page paperbound book is quite attractively composed and intelligently assembled. The black print is of easily legible font size, and there are topics and headings in shades of red, which enhance and distinguish sections and subsections. Black-and-white drawings, photos, and illustrations of important historical figures, grape varieties, and grape-growing and harvesting scenes are among the many pleasing visual items that help transport the reader through the past several centuries of grape growing in the Hudson Valley. There are 27 color photos grouped toward the middle of the book that feature the mature grape clusters of 23 important hybrids as well as four stages of grape growth. There are two useful maps placed prior to chapter 1, which show the fruit-growing areas of the Hudson Valley and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cold hardiness zones of New York State. An innovative section on how to use the book is also available to the reader prior to chapter 1. In this section, the author introduces a clever icon system, which helps the reader quickly recognize five important characteristics of the grape described. These characteristics include winter hardiness, fungal disease resistance, vigorous- ness, productivity, and wine quality. Descriptors such as harvest dates and winter hardiness are specifically related to the Hudson Valley.

Hybridization is key to developing grapes that are best fitted to the environment, and no one understands or explains this better than Casscles who devotes an entire chapter to the concepts and benefits of hybridization. He states: “As the Earth’s global population continues to grow … the development of new genetically superior grape varieties and agricultural crops will be critical in enhancing the ecological and economic well-being of the human race worldwide” (p. 21). This book is an outstand- ing and fascinating description of the history of grape hybridizing. It includes histo- ries of the early (1875–1925) and late French hybridizers, the pioneering hybridizers of the Hudson Valley, the Geneva hybridizers, and those from the successful Minnesota program. Highly detailed descriptions of the parentage of the grape hybrids are included as well as the author’s thoughts on the best techniques for man- aging the variety and its potential for the Hudson Valley and similar climates.

As a grape grower in the mid-Atlantic region, I am primarily a grower of Vitis vinifera varieties, but I am also familiar with and grow hybrid varieties and appreciate their contributions to cool-climate viticulture. In viticulture, “hybrid varieties” are generally considered crosses between species (e.g., Vitis vinifera × Vitis riparia). In a broader sense, all grape varieties are hybrids in that they readily crossbreed among varieties and even in the wild can cross between species. In my opinion, too much emphasis is placed on whether wine is made from a hybrid variety, and not enough emphasis is placed on the taste of the wine and the sustainability of growing the grape. With his excellent descriptions of the wine taste and the capabil- ities of growing the grapes and producing the wine in the Hudson Valley, Casscles’s book allows the reader to focus on these important concepts like no other book. He does cover the Vitis vinifera varieties that may be successful in the region, such as Grüner Veltliner and Lemberger, and “classic” varieties, such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but he is careful to emphasize that “the cultivation of grapes should not be a static pursuit that allows only for the propagation and growing of a few select ‘classic’ grape varieties such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Riesling” (p. 208).

Besides serving as a review of grape growing in the Hudson Valley, the book makes original contributions with its extensive research of the history of grape growing in the region. The sections on grape hybridizers include their intentions, methodologies, and results and are among the best I have seen on these topics. There are several chapters of value as introductions to the reader unfamiliar with grape growing or wine making. Chapter 3, “Basic Principles of Cold Climate Pruning and Vineyard Management,” is an excellent chapter with great illustrations. Chapter 5, “The Principles of Winemaking,” is a short primer on wine-making fundamentals. There are useful notes at the end of each chapter as well as an extensive bibliography, an index of major and minor grape varieties, and a general index.

This book will be a pleasure to read not only for anyone with an interest in growing grapes or enjoying the wine of the Hudson Valley, but also for those who want to understand about the history of grape growing in the region or the develop- ment of the hybrid grapes and the hybridizers who developed them. It should also interest those who wish to explore this part of the diverse world of wine and all of its nuances. Other recent books on grapes and wines of New York and the East, which may be of interest, include Hudson Cattell’s Wines of Eastern North America and Richard Figiel’s Circle of Vines: The Story of New York Wine. One useful book I highly recommend to the grower of grapes in the East is the Wine Grape Production Guide to Eastern North America by Tony Wolf et al. (2008). No book, however, will replace Grapes of the Hudson Valley for its ability to describe the importance of that region as the birthplace of viticulture in the United States as well as to direct attention to the region’s present and future in sustainably growing quality wine grapes.

Lawrence R. Coia
Chairman, Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association
njwineman@comcast.net
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.26

I immensely enjoyed reading this book, not so much because its author cites one of my articles, but mainly because he quotes Vladimir Nabokov, one of my favorite writers, who starts his Lolita with words that could apply to a wine when you taste it: “the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap at three on the teeth.”

The preface sets the scene: “As I gained experience in the world of viticulture, I found that some of the received archetypes were incongruous with elementary crop science. For example, there is a long-standing argument that one cannot both irrigate vines and produce fine wines (yet rain and irrigation water are the same to grapevines)” (pp. ix–x). It is followed by four chapters debunking four false truths: (a) wine quality is determined by low yield and small berries; (b) vine balance is the key to fine wine grapes; (c) there is a critical ripening period, and vines should be stressed; and (d) terroir matters. I will try to deal fairly with all these issues, but it will come as no sur- prise to those who know me a bit if I spend more time on terroir.

Professor Matthews argues that these myths are all about getting ripe fruit, but they are no longer needed today, because “we have become skilled in grape growing [that is, more skilled than in the past, when these myths were invented] and in many regions, ripe fruit are generally attained [without relying on mythology].”1

Matthews is serious and supports his claims with statistical observation and exper- iments. However, he also knows the difference between correlation and causation (which should please economists), though he suggests that “as long as one can count reliably on one easy observation (yield, for example) to predict another more difficult to resolve phenomenon (fruit and wine quality), vines can be managed accordingly, whether the correlation is causal or not.

The first chapter kills the high yield–low quality (HYLQ) and the big bad berry (BBB) false truths. Both in Europe and California, historical data show that good weather, high yields, and quality often come together. Matthews sug- gests that HYLQ is artificially used to limit production and increase prices, but not to produce better quality: “when limiting the acreage of an appellation was insufficient to secure a decent price, rules grew to also include a crop yield” (pp. 22–24). Matthews and Guinard launched an experiment to test the HYLQ hypothesis (pp. 56–58), changing the yield by using two common prac- tices: pruning and cluster thinning. Irrigation was used in a different experiment with the same Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. They found that these three common practices resulted in different wine sensory profiles under identical yields. For instance, vines pruned to higher yields were less veggy and fruitier, but higher yields produced the inverse result under irrigation conditions. The obvious con- clusion is that sensory profiles cannot only be explained by crop load, as the HYLQ myth would have it.

The BBB myth (p. 69) that small berries produce better wines is problematic as well, because the low yields praised in the HYLQ myth produce big berries. Thus, the two myths cannot be true simultaneously (p. 69). The real story is a bit more complicated, but the essential message is that “in the large context of comparing vintages, yield and quality are not mutually opposed in any robust or fundamental way” (p. 22).

In chapter 2, Matthews refers to many meanings that describe vine balance, ranging from the aesthetic pleasure when looking at a vineyard (which may indeed change the quality of the wine, especially if you are drunk) to metrics such as ratios of yield/leaf area or yield/pruning weight (Y/PW). I will concentrate briefly on the Y/PW ratio. In a figure on page 103, Matthews shows that for Cabernet Sauvignon (grown in almost all wine regions of the world), the relation between Y/PW (horizontal axis) and wine score (vertical axis) is flat: a wine score between 10 and 15 can be generated by a Y/PW that varies from 2 to 9.5. A “subtle” econo- metrician who would discard one of the 15 observations as an outlier could even show that the slope is positive, but then, why is this ratio considered attractive and used? Because, Matthews writes, it is “convenient to measure” (p. 112).

What he refers to as the critical ripening period in chapter 3 is indeed critical: “the fact that ripening is occurring,” writes the author, “is what justifies the period as crit- ical” (p. 127). Reaching maturity requires more days at low temperatures than at high temperatures (as expected), and early season conditions may be important for the wine, even if the ripening rate remains unaffected (p. 123). In short, no critical ripening period has ever been identified under normal growing conditions (p. 142). Vine stress- ing stems from playing with temperature or light, or reducing the water input, the three conditions needed to grow any plant. Temperature and light are both out of the wine- maker’s control (except at the time of buying his ground). In addition, there now is a growing realization that fine wine can also be produced on irrigated vineyards because vines cannot tell whether they are getting their water from irrigation or from rain. In Australia and California, vines would die without irrigation, and non irrigation rules are slowly but surely disappearing throughout the world. What remains true, however,

is that the amount of water and the timing are essential (p. 138).

Chapter 4 on the terroir explanation is just great. It starts out with a long digres- sion on the history and the various meanings of the word itself, and concludes with a quote by Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756–1832), a distinguished French chemist and agronomist who “revolutionized the art of wine-making in France.”2 Chaptal referred to “the repulsive and very strong and unpleasant taste of terroir” (cited by Matthews, p. 162).

Winemaker Krug (1800–1866) genuinely pointed out: “a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate.”3 No terroir is involved, unless the “gentleman” represents it.

These are two serious departures from the contemporary view supported by Tinlot (2001), a former director general of the Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin in France: “There is no wine region in our world that does not try to value its vineyards and their output without reference to the character that they inherit from the place where the wine is produced. Consumers who visit producers are par- ticularly sensitive to the beauty of the landscape, to the architecture of the villages and to any other element that belongs to the region of production” (p. 10).

Vines indeed look at the landscape now and then. If they like what they see, they grow properly; if they do not, the wine will be bad. Tinlot adds that, more recently, “there is even a tendency to extend the notion to human factors, such as know-how and traditions of the local population, that are influenced by the natural, social, political and, why not, religious conditions that prevail in the region” (p. 10). Oh, yes, vines also look at God, choosing the exact moment when he shows up in a cloudy sky. This is consistent (or is it inconsistent?) with what Michel Feuillat, the director of the Institute of Vine and Wine at Université de Bourgogne, reports about the reasons why Burgundy winemakers are not keen on having their terroir studied: “They say, ‘You are going to demystify everything. If you start saying a grand cru means such and such a percentage of clay and limestone, such and such a slope and nutrition of the vine—it will lose all its sacredness.’”4

Matthews then moves on to the question of whether the flavors in wine come from the soil (pp. 175–185): “Soils do have profound impacts on grapevine growth and fruit development” (p. 184) and need mineral nutrients, but these “have no estab- lished contribution to flavor” (p. 180). But then, do flavors really exist? Not accord- ing to Weil (2007, p. 137): “Wine words used by critics to convey analogy to fruits, vegetables, minerals, and odors have no value.”

He also points to economic forces in the use and renaissance of the concept of terroir and evokes two instances (pp. 185–191). The first is that after phylloxera destroyed French grapes, they had to be replanted (or grafted) using American grapevines. French winemakers needed to find a good argument to differentiate themselves from America, and thus was French terroir reborn, this time, and since Chaptal died in 1832, with a positive connotation. The second instance followed the increase in competition after the Judgment of Paris,5 in which Californian wines came out better than French wines. Patriotism is now also part of terroir.

Matt Kramer, who also wrote a review of the book, claims6 that “when scientists assert there’s no evidence of terroir, Matt Kramer says the proof is on the palate.” Much has been written on the palate that shows that blind as well as nonblind tast- ings are close to, if not complete, “bullshit,” in Frankfurt’s sense. Several articles in the Journal of Wine Economics have debunked the myth of wine tasting as well. Hodgson (2009a) analyzes the results of 13 blind-tasting wine competitions includ- ing 4,167 wines, of which 375 were tasted in at least 5 competitions. Judgments were so inconsistent that a statistical test carried out using the 375 often-tasted wines shows that those that received gold medals could also have been chosen randomly. Cardebat and Paroissien (2015) study the correlations between the grades given to a common set of wines including 15 vintages (2000–2014) by 12 famous experts.7 The average coefficient of correlation between pairs of judges over the whole period is 0.60, but it may get quite small between some pairs (0.14 between Robinson and Galloni). Hodgson (2008, 2009b, p. 241) shows that judges not only disagree but are also inconsistent: often, a judge cannot repeat his or her scores on identical wines. However, this, Kramer will certainly argue, is science and not tasting: it is the palate that matters.

Let me conclude by praising the book. It is beautiful, useful, serious, and also highly entertaining, especially the parts on the history of wine myths, but (there must always be a but) it is not always easy to understand by economists who, like me, know little about wine growing but still love wine.

Victor Ginsburgh
Université Libre de Bruxelles
vginsbur@ulb.ac.be
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.25

There are approximately 47,000 hectares planted with Riesling worldwide. Germany—with 22,500 hectares—accounts for about half of the total. From a global perspective, Riesling is a niche grape variety, accounting for less than 1% of world wine production. From a global perspective, it is the fruity-sweet style (with the fermentation stopped so that the wine remains sweet and the level of alcohol low) and the rare noble-sweet style (lusciously sweet wines due to noble rot or frost in the vineyard) that are receiving the attention of the connoisseurs of premium wines. Dry Riesling has played a minor role in the world of wine, but this is changing. The Rieslings from Alsace and Austria, both considerably smaller producers of Riesling than Germany (Alsace produces approximately 15% and Austria approximately 7% of what Germany produces), have always been in the dry category (although the Rieslings from Alsace have shown a trend toward an increasing level of remaining sweetness in the wine over the past decades), and, importantly, Germany, the dominating Riesling force in the world, has undergone a major trans- formation in the past 40 years: The fruity-sweet Rieslings have been crowded out from the wine lists in Germany, while the “dry wave”—“Trockenwelle”—has swept the country. When you go to a wine bar, wine store, or restaurant in say Frankfurt, Berlin, or Munich, it is very difficult to find a fruity-sweet Riesling. The wine lists are dominated by dry Riesling.

It is against this background that John Winthrop Haeger has written Riesling Rediscovered: Bold, Bright and Dry. There is nothing in the book on what some of my wine friends in the United States consider the best Rieslings of the world: the low-alcohol Kabinett and Spätlese wines from such iconic winemakers as Egon Müller, JJ Prüm, or Forstmeister Zilliken from the Mosel. Rather, it is all about dry Riesling, and the only Mosel producer included in the description of the world’s top dry Riesling producers is Clemens Busch, who makes outstanding ultra- premium dry wines in Pünderich.

In 350 pages, Haeger provides a comprehensive account of what dry Riesling is all about. The style of the book shows that the author is a researcher and not a journalist (Haeger is a China scholar). The book is not an introduction for a newcomer, but a solid piece of research work for somebody who is familiar with the subject. The book combines academic rigor with a passion for dry Riesling.

Unfortunately, the book covers only the Northern Hemisphere, omitting in partic- ular such important producers of dry Riesling as Australia and New Zealand, but also countries like Chile, Argentina, and South Africa.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a wide-ranging discussion of dry Riesling. Haeger brings together a wealth of information on various aspects of dry Riesling, including the history, the styles, the clones, the culture, and the habitats. He addresses the issues of the definition of dry Riesling and the balance in dry Riesling in useful boxes. The section on the dif- ferent Riesling clones is the most thorough and complete write-up on the issue that I am aware of.

Haeger provides a detailed review of the shift from dry to sweet Riesling (the Trockenwelle) that has happened in the past 40 years in Germany. He underpins his reasoning with fascinating details such as the change on the wine list of the trendy restaurant Ente in Wiesbaden that one could observe over time. Chef Klaus-Peter Wodartz of the Ente was one of the leaders in the Neue Deutsche Küche (New German Cooking) movement in the 1970s in Germany, which is cred- ited with being a driving force in the Trockenwelle. Other factors are climate change, a spillover effect from Alsace, and the desire by the young winemaker gen- eration, led by the late George Breuer of Weingut Georg Breuer in Rüdesheim, to produce premium dry Riesling that can compete with the best white wines in the world.

As we all know, wine is normally dry. Riesling is the only noble grape variety in which the wine can be dry, fruity-sweet, or noble-sweet. I would have loved to see a clear delineation of dry Riesling from the other categories, in particular from the fruity-sweet style. The German Kabinett, Spätlese, and Auslese wines are not sweet because Mother Nature was more generous with the grapes, but because of skillful intervention of the winemaker in the cellar. Without the winemaker inter- rupting the fermentation, all these wines would be dry. In this context, a discussion of the widespread view that generally dry Riesling is inferior to sweet Riesling would have been useful.

The second part is a detailed study of the best vineyards for dry Riesling in the (northern) world and an in-depth description of the key producers of dry Riesling in these vineyards and their wine-making approaches. Haeger identifies 89 superior sites and groups them under five headings: Rhine Basin (with Alsace and German Wine Regions), Danube Basin: Lower Austria, Adige Basin: Alto Adige, Eastern North America, and Western North America. Haeger provides most interesting descriptions of these top sites.

The reviews of the winemakers and their wine-making approaches are com- prehensive with many interesting details. I found each one of them fascinating to read. However, I would have preferred a greater number of reviews, each with a shorter text. Quite a number of leading producers of dry Riesling, at least in Germany, are not mentioned in the book. The Franken area, an early producer of bone-dry Rieslings, is completely left out. Other obvious omissions include Dönnhoff, Schäfer-Fröhlich, Sybille Kuntz, Klaus Peter Keller, Franz Künstler, Karthäuserhof, and Immich-Batterieberg, to name a few. That Dr. Loosen is not mentioned is because the major dry Riesling ini- tiative of this producer is too recent. Still, many of the big players in Germany are discussed.

The book is very different from many other wine books in that it does not take a fresh look at a subject that has been treated before by other authors. This is the first book about dry Riesling. It has a bit of the character of a doctoral dissertation in that it covers new ground—and it does so in a detailed and comprehensive manner. For somebody like me who grew up with dry German Riesling, it was a great pleasure to read, but really, anybody interested in the story of dry Riesling will enjoy reading this book.

Christian G.E. Schiller
International Monetary Fund (ret.)
Emeritus Professor University of Mainz, Germany
cschiller@schiller-wine.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.24

Craft beer is booming. From humble beginnings in 1970, when there were 49 macro- breweries and 2 craft breweries, to 2012, when there were 19 macrobreweries and 2,347 craft breweries, craft beer has grown by leaps and bounds (Elzinga, Tremblay, and Tremblay, 2015, p. 245). Craft beer started when Fritz Maytag, heir to the Maytag fortune, purchased the struggling Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco—a brewery that made an odd style of beer, steam, which few outside of its limited distri- bution network within the city had ever tasted. Today, the industry generates millions of dollars and has reached every state and multiple countries.

Tom Acitelli, in his well-written, well-paced, and downright intriguing book, The Audacity of Hops, tells the complicated, fraternal, and heart-wrenching story of craft beer’s pioneers. Starting at the beginning, with Maytag’s purchase of Anchor, Acitelli walks through the development of the craft beer movement with an emphasis on the individual producer, “Big Beer’s” attempts to dominate the marketplace, and the cooperative nature that has allowed craft beer to pro- liferate. Several themes permeate both the book and the history of the craft beer movement: risk-taking, cooperation, competition, rule breaking, and consolida- tion. Without each of these elements, which roughly correspond to each phase of craft beer’s history, craft beer would not be as successful or as threatening to “Big Beer.”

Fritz Maytag and other craft beer pioneers were at heart risk-takers. They were willing to invest both time and money in an industry that had become centralized since Prohibition. They saw the potential not necessarily for profit, but for better tasting beer that was enjoyable to drink. Although Maytag is considered by many as the forefather of the craft beer movement with his small, professional brewery, Jack McAuliffe initially took the opposite path and founded his brewery—New Albion in Sonoma, California—in an “old fruit warehouse” where he used his back- ground in the navy, which had taught him to be resourceful, and knowledge of home brewing to put together a unique homemade brew house that “took advantage of Northern California’s contracting dairy industry and salvaged a lot of discarded milking equipment” (pp. 44–45). McAuliffe’s entrepreneurial spirit and ability to embrace risk allowed him to successfully produce beer whose demand was greater than its supply. Although New Albion no longer exists, McAuliffe’s legacy lives on through the risks that many craft brewers continue to take to bring their ideas to fruition.

Being willing to take a risk has always been important for craft beer, but unlike other industries, craft beer producers often choose to cooperate with each other instead of hiding secrets and ideas from potential competitors. In fact, many would-be brewers were given tours of Anchor by Fritz Maytag and were positively influenced by individuals like Fred Eckhardt, considered by many to have been the foremost expert on home brewing, and Michael Lewis, who at one time was the only “full professor of brewing science” in the United States (p. 21). Although the relationship that Eckhardt and Lewis had with the brewing community was formal, many brewers also had informal relationships with each other that over time have resulted in numerous collaborative brewing efforts (i.e., in 2010, Dogfish Head, Victory, and Stone all collaborated on Saison du BUFF, a saison brewed with the same recipe—featuring parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—in each brewery over a several-year period; Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, 2016).

Even though craft brewing is generally a cooperative and collaborative industry, it does not mean it is not competitive. Acitelli does an excellent job of describing the origin and current status of the largest beer competition, the Great American Beer Festival. From humble roots with “forty-seven beers available from twenty-four different breweries” in 1982 (p. 91) and an emphasis on home brewers being able to talk directly with commercial brewmasters, to “forty-nine thousand people tasting twenty-two hundred beers from 455 breweries” with medals awarded “in seventy-nine style categories” in 2010 (p. 332). The growth of the Great American Beer Festival illustrated both the willingness of brewers to help each other and the importance of competition to push the envelope of what defines good beer and what styles are most popular with the brewers and the public.

The advent of the Great American Beer Festival and the changing palate of the American beer drinker have encouraged craft brewers to revive old-world styles and to invent new ones. At its core, beer is water, grain, hops, and yeast. It is what the brewmaster does with these ingredients (and what he or she might add) that is the rule-breaking part of craft beer. Perhaps the quintessential American beer is not the lager that “Big Beer” has made so popular, but the Double India Pale Ale (DIPA or Imperial IPA) that was created to explore what was possible with hops, IBUs (International Bittering Units), and alcohol volume. Likely invented in the early 1990s by Vinnie Cilurzo at the Blind Pig, his Temecula, California, brewpub, the Double IPA is an intensely flavorful and potent drink (p. 300). This extreme brew has gone mainstream. Sam Calagione’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewery is famed for its uber-hopped 60-Minute, 90-Minute, and 120-Minute IPAs.

The final tale of The Audacity of Hops is consolidation. As the number of craft brew- eries has expanded, the opportunities for “Big Beer” to buy craft breweries (i.e., Anheuser-Busch InBev buying Goose Island, Blue Point, and Breckenridge) and for craft breweries to form alliances and marketing partnerships (i.e., the Craft Brew Alliance of Widmer Brothers, Redhook, Kona Brewing, and Omission) has expanded. As Fortune magazine stated in an article on Anheuser-Busch InBev’s purchases, they “are meant to add faster-growing beers to AB InBev’s massive portfolio, which already includes Budweiser and Stella Artois. Because the craft brands are tiny in comparison, they won’t move AB InBev’s sales needle much – though the deals give the craft brewers vast distribution potential” (Kell, 2015). As Acitelli plainly establishes throughout the book, this new consolidation phase echoes past consolidation (pp. 324–329). It will be interesting to see where craft beer is in several more years as new breweries are established and existing entities merge, sell, or close.

Jacob R. Straus
University of Maryland Baltimore County
jstraus@umbc.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.23

The beer industry has had a spate of informative books appear since the start of the new century. Several represent portrayals of particular firms. These include Dan Baum, Citizen Coors: An American Dynasty (2000); Julie MacIntosh, Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an American Icon (2011); Bill Yenne, Guinness: The 250-Year Quest for the Perfect Pint (2007); and Ken Grossman,

Beyond the Pale: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (2013).

Some of these books have a particular focus on the craft beer segment. Worthy of mention are Tom Acitelli, The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution (2013); Sean Lewis, We Make Beer: Inside the Spirit and Artistry of America’s Craft Brewers (2014); and Steve Hindy, The Craft Beer Revolution: How a Band of Microbrewers Is Transforming the World’s Favorite Drink (2014). Kenneth Elzinga, Carol Horton Tremblay, and Victor Tremblay, “Craft Beer in the United States: History, Numbers, and Geography” (2015), is an up-to-date journal article study of the craft beer segment.

For how beer is made, Charles Bamforth’s Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing (2003) provides a good tutorial that goes down smoothly. For how beer is consumed, Ken Wells’s Travels with Barley: A Journey through Beer Culture in America (2004) offers a spirited description.

Bob Skilnik’s first book, Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago (2006), pairs the production of beer with the Windy City; his second, Beer & Food: An American History (2007), pairs the consumption of beer with food.

For economists, the go-to book on the economics of the beer industry in the United States is Victor J. Tremblay and Carol Horton Tremblay’s The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis (2005). A more recent economic treatment, with an eclectic worldwide perspective, is Johan F.M. Swinnen’s (editor) The Economics of Beer (2011).

Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer (2006) offers a light but satisfying history of beer in the United States. In contrast, Jeff Alworth’s The Beer Bible (2015) provides a hale and hearty worldwide perspective on the industry. As the title suggests, Roger Protz’s World Beer Guide (2009) also has worldwide per- spective. However, Protz’s guide is more like a catalog of information, whereas Alworth’s contribution, chock-full of pictures and interesting sidebar anecdotes, is the most full-bodied book about beer on this list.

For anyone whose opportunity cost is too high to read all or most of these new books about beer, but who wants to be informed about the industry, the optimal book may well be William Bostwick, The Brewer’s Tale: A History of the World According to Beer (2014). Bostwick, who is the beer critic for the Wall Street Journal, knows the science as well as the art of brewing. He also knows the history of the industry—and travelled to distant lands to draft this book.

The Brewer’s Tale: A History of the World According to Beer is not really a history of the world. However, the organization of the book, like the title, is both clever and substantive. Bostwick presents a history of the beer industry by hanging the story of beer on several human “pegs” that have shaped the history of the world.

The pegs are worth listing, if only because they draw in the reader: the Babylonian, the Shaman, the Monk, the Farmer, the Industrialist, the Patriot, the Immigrant, and the Advertiser. Each of these characters forms a chapter in the book. Bostwick argues that individuals in each of these categories have shaped the beer industry—and, in doing so, have shaped the world. How Bostwick substantiates his argument is what The Brewer’s Tale is all about. Readers can decide for them- selves whether Bostwick pulls this off, though I believe he does.

Bostwick’s book is only 245 pages long (with a very good index); the book never drags because Bostwick can write. Here is how he describes himself: “I’m a beer critic. … That means when I drink I’m on duty. My job is to translate flavor to prose, not to wonder why but to describe, clearly, what. … My palate is sensitive, my thesaurus well thumbed. I can flag a dirty tap line, I can distinguish tropical Calypso hops from citrusy Cascades. To me, beer is more than dry or sweet, strong or light. Not simply dark, but smoky like a camp-fire in a eucalyptus grove. Not just fruity, but tropically spiced like a papaya ripening in pine boughs” (p. x). I would characterize Bostwick’s writing style as delicate, with very little bitter- ness, marked by lots of sugar and a hint of rum-soaked raisins. He could make the widget industry interesting.

The Brewer’s Tale: A History of the World According to Beer is more than telling the reader what a beer tastes like. As Bostwick puts it, his objective is to explain: “Why does beer taste the way it does? … Where did those styles, those flavors – where did beer itself – come from in the first place?” (p. x). To do so, he encounters the Babylonian, the Shaman, the Monk, the Farmer, the Industrialist, the Patriot, the Immigrant, and the Advertiser.

In this review, I will only briefly touch on each of these pegs. To review them in detail would be like revealing the denouement of a mystery novel.

In the chapter “The Babylonian,” Bostwick travels to Egypt (along with Sam Calagione, of Dogfish Head craft brewing fame, and a film crew) to discover and re- create beer recipes from the geographic genesis of beer’s invention. More than a trav- elogue, the chapter is an account of potable archaeology and dogged determination to learn how the Babylonians turned grain into a malt beverage. In the narrative, one also gains insight into the creative juices of craft brewing in the United States.

The history of craft brewing in the United States is further fleshed out in “The Shaman”: personified today in Brian Hunt, the man behind Moonlight Brewing Company. From his encounter with Hunt, Bostwick takes the reader back to ancient Rome and the spread of beer through Europe. Here Bostwick explores the religious rites associated with beer in the Roman Empire and with nomadic tribes that settled Scotland and Scandinavia. In this chapter, we also learn what beer receives Bostwick’s imprimatur as the best beer in the world (today). I will not conceal this. Bostwick’s highest encomium goes to Moonlight Brewery’s Pliny the Younger, “often cited as the best American IPA, if not the best American beer, if not the best beer, period” (p. 28).

“The Monk,” as the title suggests, is about the history of religious orders and their contribution to the production of beer—and to improvements in the quality of the product. What Brian Hunt is to the chapter on the Shaman, Saint Sixtus Abbey is to the chapter on the Monk. Saint Sixtus brews the Westvleteren brand of Belgian beer. The marketing of “Westy” is a case study in price and nonprice allocation. Westy is available only at the abbey, prospective customers queue up to purchase a limit of four dozen bottles, and they must promise not to resell what they buy (not all these promises are kept).

Bostwick uses the chapter “The Monk” to explain the key role that monks played as innovators in the brewing process. Monks not only prayed for good beer; they worked at it. The beer they produced was not just good for the spirits; it was good for the health of its consumers: a form of liquid grain at a time when pure water and healthy food were in short supply for the masses. Economic historians will find fascinating Bostwick’s description of how the introduction of hops into the brewing process led to the production of beer outside the abbey and into the world of medieval commerce and trade. This chapter also has some of the best tech- nical writing about beer production in the book.

“The Farmer” is about two kinds of farmers. One grows hops, and in this chapter, Bostwick uses a particular hop farmer in Newport, Oregon, to tell the tale of how hops changed the history of beer and, in Bostwick’s narrative, the history of the world. However, the farmer in this chapter also is someone who brews what Bostwick calls “farmhouse beer.” Farmhouse beer is based on what the farmer has available—as a by-product of his agricultural endeavors. It could be pumpkins or whatever grain might be around the farm at the time. Farmhouse beer was once the beer of colonial America. Each batch was different because the inputs differed depending on what crop was available.

Today, farmhouse beer is the domain of some craft brewers and home brewers. Bostwick compares this kind of brewing to fly-fishing: “wading into nature’s chaos to pluck one glimmering bit of perfection from under its roiling surface” (p. 112).

“The Industrialist” tells the story of beer crawling “out of the henhouse” (or small- scale production) into the world of mass production. Bostwick ties this to the spread of the British Empire as the Brits discovered the commercialization of porter and devel- oped the scale and logistics to supply this malt beverage throughout the known world. From porter to India Pale Ale, Bostwick traces (again) the prominence of hops in the development of beer. Bostwick also puts a spotlight on the water. The sandstone strata west of Burton gave the water calcium sulfate–rich gypsum that led to Burton IPA becoming a “clear, sparkling, Champagne-like beer” (p. 143). British explorers took British IPA to the Artic, writing back home that it was “as nourishing as beefsteak” with “sustaining qualities … far greater than those of wine or spirits” (p. 145).

“The Patriot” initially is about George Washington, a founding father with a per- sonal affinity for beer (or perhaps ale). Washington brewed beer at Mount Vernon (as did Thomas Jefferson at Monticello). Bostwick uses the chapter’s description of home brewing in colonial America as a segue to craft brewing in the United States today. He describes attempts to use the recipe for beer that George Washington used at Mount Vernon to produce a refreshing malt beverage today. Bostwick cannot tell a lie: the attempts have not always been successful.

Bostwick’s penultimate chapter is “The Immigrant,” a paean to the Germans who brought the taste of lager beer to America—along with the requisite skills for its pro- duction. Busch, Schlitz, Pabst, Heileman, and others: these were Germans who found America a welcome place for their entrepreneurial endeavors and their talent at turning water and grain into beer.

Out of this Germanic stock, four generations later, came Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Brewing Company (brand name: Samuel Adams). Koch helped shape craft beer into big business. In 2014, he joined the Bloomberg billionaire list. When asked what is the “best beer,” Koch responded with the name of a familiar German lager: “Budweiser” (p. 194).

For Koch, Budweiser is not the best because it is the largest-selling brand. Rather, Budweiser is the largest-selling brand because it is the best. By best, Koch is referring to the taste and the consistency of Budweiser beer. Referring to Anheuser-Busch, Koch asserts: “Everybody jumps on them, but they’re great beers. They care just as much about their product as [craft brewers] and they have better brewing skills” (p. 194).

In “The Immigrant,” Bostwick provides a minihistory of the bar. The inn was important in “The Patriot.” However, it was the bar—or saloon—that for a later gen- eration provided the retail outlet for the prodigious output of the German-produced lager beer. Bostwick reports that Milwaukee once had one bar for every 130 citizens; San Francisco, one for every 96 citizens.

Although much of Bostwick’s book is devoted to the varieties of beer, “The Immigrant” is primarily about lagers, which, he writes, “in one sense, represent beer’s crowning achievement” (p. 202). For millions of people, having a “cold one” means enjoying a lager beer. Craft beer receives an inordinate amount of atten- tion from the business press. In the meantime, millions of consumers continue to drink MillCoorWeiser.

“The Advertiser” closes the book. Who is this particular character in A History of the World According to Beer? The Advertiser was the savior of the beer industry. When the United States emerged from Prohibition and World War II, “the bartender had been replaced by the grocery store clerk, the brewer by the ad man. And as drinking changed, the drink would too” (p. 229).

The last chapter of Bostwick’s history is, in part, an analysis of the major brewers’ discovery of Madison Avenue. As American consumers transitioned to sweeter soft drinks, they also turned to lighter beer. The inflection point in this transition was Miller’s production of a low-calorie beer named “Lite” and the brilliance of Miller’s initial advertising campaign. Fueled by advertising dollars from its new parent, Philip Morris, Miller turned Lite into a sensational success. Unfortunately for Miller, the firm could not exploit a first-mover advantage. Bud Light and Coors Light enjoyed a second-mover advantage and challenged Miller’s leadership in the low-calorie beer segment.

As the mainstream brewers moved to lighter and lighter beers, this opened the door to craft brewers who offered an alternative taste signature. Bostwick describes the reaction of Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors to develop their own craft beer product lines, through acquisition and internal growth, in order to participate in the growth segment of the industry without losing the scale advantages of their megabreweries. How this plays out will in many ways determine the future structure of the beer industry in the United States.

Beer and wine can be substitutes in consumption; they also can be viewed as sibling industries (or at least first cousins). Both beer and wine involve a potable product, both have ancient histories, both share a common ingredient, both have a history of attracting taxation and government regulation, both can be cottage industries, both can take the form of large enterprise, and like most siblings, beer and wine have times when they both care for each other and times when they do not.

An important hypothesis that Bostwick explores, of interest among the readers of this journal, is the stark contrast he draws between beer and wine. Bostwick argues that beer is “made,” whereas wine “just happens.” He describes beer as the first engi- neered food. The sugar in a grape will ferment on its own, but the central ingredient in making beer—grain—needs a hand to “coax out its sugars and ferment them into alcohol. Brewing beer demands thought and skill. It demands, in a word, a creator” (p. xii). Beer consumers and beer producers will drink heartily to this contention by Bostwick. It would be idle to contend that oenophiles will be much persuaded.

Kenneth G. Elzinga
University of Virginia
elzinga@virginia.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.22

Alice Feiring, who has published several other books on wine, records in this volume her travels through Georgia―not where Atlanta is, but the country of Georgia. Most readers will not be familiar with the wines of Georgia, except perhaps for the more or less apocryphal lore that it is the place from which Stalin’s favorite wine hailed. Georgia and the Georgian wine industry have had a checkered history, punctuated by periodic invasions from the south by Turkey, whose armies would rip out the vines, which the wine-loving Georgians would promptly replant after the invading forces went home. In 2013, Georgia was the 25th largest producer of wine, with 105,000 metric tons (see www.wineinstitute.org). To acquire Georgian wines in the United States takes some (minor) effort; two sources (which may not ship to all states) are Potomac Wines and Spirits (http://www.potomacwines.com; 800-333-2829) and Wine Anthology (http://www.wineanthology.com; 888-238-2251).

The book is written in a pleasant conversational style and recounts the author’s travels, mostly in the company of an American expatriate friend who himself is a winemaker, to the various wine regions of Georgia. We meet lots of Georgian wine- makers and their families, some other travelers who attach themselves to her group, plus some Western “wine experts” whom she uniformly describes with profound con- tempt. We learn a lot about Georgian history and local practices and customs, among them that Georgia has 525 indigenous grape varieties and that wine is fer- mented in large earthenware containers called qvevri, which are typically sunk in the earth. Another salient fact is that white wines (which I think from the text are deemed more important than reds) are typically fermented with long-term contact with skins, which, she claims, explains the amber color of the white wines. She describes their taste as “beeswax and orange blossom water and strawberry tea in addition to the wine’s bitter and savory power, (p. 2). I have tasted only one white, which is a blend of 55% Rkatsiteli and 45% Mtsvane grapes, and it was neither amber colored nor did it taste of orange blossom water or strawberry tea, but it definitely had a bitter tinge with quite a long finish. Of course, I acquired it in the United States, and there is no guarantee that the wine was organic, qvevri fermented, and so forth. I also tasted a red called Mukuzani 2013, made of the Saperavi grape (14% alcohol), which is described as tasting of cherries, dark chocolate, and hints of vanilla. It was very tannic and tasted somewhat like a very young Cabernet, and I thought it definitely had some potential for enjoyment a few years down the road. It should be noted that the word mtsvane simply means “green” in Georgian and that the Mtsvane label without place name modifier is not really meaningful (see Rob Tebeau’s blog Fringe Wine; http://fringewine.blogspot.com/search/label/ Georgia). Tebeau also says that it has been some time since he was able to find an interesting Georgian grape, contrary, I think, to the author and most Georgians who seem to like pretty much all Georgian wines. There are some potential reasons for this fact. First, I wonder if the qvevri, being made of earthenware, is to any extent porous and admits any air, which might cause oxidation. Second, it appears that the Georgians drink an enormous amount: it is claimed that they consume 2 liters (2 and 1/3 bottles) per day, and after that amount of wine consump- tion, it would not be unusual if one’s ability to judge were impaired. (For a wedding party, Georgians budget 3 liters per person.) Furthermore, there are 11 separate mentions of smoking that I noticed, which must also have a distinct influence on the palate. In addition, Georgian cooking seems to be highly seasoned: on page 135, the author says that she ate a plum sauce “so garlicky that I knew it would kill not only a vampire, but also my palate.” I would be surprised if this fact did not affect one’s ability to judge the quality of wines.

The fundamental objective of the book is to promote “natural” or organic wine making that eschews additives of any sort, particularly added yeast, sulfites, tartaric acid, and so forth. I think Feiring would condemn fining and filtration, pH control, and many additives and procedures that are common in most Western wine making. The emphasis is on “honest wines” and keeping to tradition, and the arguments for organic wines are almost religious in their fervor; yielding to Western methods or technologies is at a minimum considered unpatriotic. Some of these attitudes undoubtedly derive from Ilia Chavchavadze, the nineteenth-century national hero of Georgia: “Our people disdain very much the addition of anything but grape juice into the wine. If now and then someone, somewhere has dared to do it, he should try very hard to hide it because all of us consider it a shame and a sin to profane the sacred juice of grapes that nature has given us with additions and inter- ferences … [success] can only be achieved if we stand up to European fake wines by having [people] taste our true wine” (p. 129).

The volume is marred by a few careless errors and inconsistencies. On page 46, 1,000 square meters is claimed to be about half a hectare; in fact, a hectare is exactly 10,000 square meters. On page 92, the text states that “the east-facing window [of a church] seemed to look directly toward Jerusalem”; in fact, Israel is sit- uated southwest of Georgia, and there is no way in which an east-looking window can look toward Jerusalem. There is also a claim that Georgian wines are served at the Noma restaurant in Copenhagen―arguably one of the finest in the world. I looked through the 41-page wine list of Noma online but could not find a Georgian wine. At one point, the author tastes a Muscat-Mtsvane blend and finds it pétillant, which she attributes to sloppy wine making; however, if you cannot do anything to the wine on principle, how can it be sloppy wine making? The worst offense―and this clearly betrays my academic background―is that there is no index or bibliography, which makes the volume less user friendly than it could have been. Nevertheless, it is chock-full of facts, and I welcomed the opportunity to learn about the wine industry in a country of which I had known nothing. The people are amiable and devoted, and their wine industry survived the Soviet regime, during which the number of permitted grape varieties was severely reduced.

Richard E. Quandt
Princeton University
requandt@gmail.com

doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.21

This hardcover book printed on durable alkaline paper is part of an American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium Series. The purpose of books in this series is to publish rapidly in book form the results of original research findings as well as timely reviews presented in the symposia. This book is based on an ACS symposium, “Flavor Chemistry of Alcoholic Beverages,” held in Boston, Massachusetts, in August 2010. General topics covered include those such as flavor and flavor precur- sors in wine grapes and their conversion in wine, as well as the aging process during wine production resulting in degradation and formation of flavor compounds. As it describes advances in wine flavor chemistry, it is of technical interest to scientists and other professionals engaged in wine and other alcoholic beverage research and development.

Wine flavor research is the main topic of the book as it comprises 11 of the 17 chapters. Other alcoholic beverages discussed include beer, tequila, rice wine, and two Chinese liquors (Moutai and Langjiu). In this review, I will confine my com- ments to the presentations regarding wine. Many of the chapters are focused on tech- nical aspects of the flavor of one of the grapes that is associated with the region of interest of the authors. Examples include Shiraz (Australia), Sauvignon Blanc (Australia), Pinot Noir (Oregon), Garganega (Veneto, Italy), and three new Chinese grapes, Ecolly, Meili, and Hutai. Other major topics of the book include the process of wine oxidation and the assessment and detection of smoke taint in grapes and wine.

The research is peer reviewed and technical in detail, but the conclusions are in- teresting and relatively easily understood by the nonchemist. Let us explore some of the findings to get a better flavor of this flavor-based book. Shiraz grapes can produce a high-quality wine with a major defining component as a “peppery” aroma and flavor. This can be directly attributed to the compound rotundone. This is an important discovery because the rotundone level can be influenced by vi- ticulture practices as it comes directly from the grape or by wine-making practices. Smoke taint has become an increasing danger to grapes and wine as uncontrolled wildfires have become a frequent threat to vineyards. One chapter describes how the quantification of guiacol glycoconjugates can assist in smoke taint quantifica- tion, while another chapter describes an enzymatic analysis that can be used relative- ly rapidly to assess smoke taint risk levels in the grape supply. An ancient technique of long skin maceration time of white grapes in clay vessels has been revived with some commercial success in Italy. Authors of the Veneto region of Italy where this technique is being used have studied its impact on wine aroma descriptors and aroma compounds. The future use of this method is aided by this basis of under- standing in order to ensure that the fundamental aromas desired can be regularly achieved. The exposure of wine to oxygen can be both helpful in forming favorable aroma and taste compounds, or it can be deleterious as it can cause the rapid dete- rioration of wine. The results of one study emphasize the importance of oxygen man- agement at bottling and the oxygen barrier properties of the closure in optimizing the sensory properties of wine. The authors found that natural cork stoppers or Saranex screw caps provide optimal oxygen transfer rates and were superior to other closures.

There is an unusual chapter among the wine chapters in that it was a review of the wine of Northwest China rather than a formal presentation of a chemical research issue regarding wine. The chapter is a bit difficult to read as its translation leaves ample room for interpretation; however, the fact is that China is now among the leading growers of grapes and producers of wine. This alone deserves attention. At the time of this publication, China was fifth in grape cultivation and seventh in wine production in the world. Wine production in China started 9,000 years ago and currently includes the products of Chinese-developed hybrid grapes, wild grapes of China, and some European varieties.

As this is a reference book for scientists engaged primarily in enological research, I recommend this for wine economists interested in multidisciplinary research. The book chapters are available online, so if one has a specific topic of interest, one could purchase it online. Each chapter has extensive references, there is a well- formed subject index, and the book is bound in long-lasting hardcover and includes plenty of tables, figures, and color illustrations.

Lawrence R. Coia
Past President, Outer Coastal Plain Viticulture Association
njwineman@comcast.net
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.10

Here is what is so enticing about wine economics. I am sitting in Starbucks reading through my newspaper. A small article catches my eye, one that I would usually just skip over and keep turning the pages. However, I had just read Thirsty Dragon: China’s Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World’s Best Wines, by Suzanne Mustacich, and the newspaper article reported that yet several more high-level Chinese officials were being investigated for “serious breaches of discipline” (Hernández, 2015). If my interest in China’s President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption measures—the enforcement of which is implicated as one of the reasons for the recent fall in fine wine prices—had not been piqued by Thirsty Dragon, I would not have bothered learning the details of this latest government maneuver.

China’s current antigraft campaign takes us full circle in Thirsty Dragon’s story of China’s emergence as a wine-consuming and wine-producing nation. As promised in the book’s subtitle, Thirsty Dragon shows how China’s particular infatuation with Bordeaux wines has been an agent for change in aspects of Bordeaux’s en primeur pricing and marketing system, while speculating on whether these changes will further erode Bordeaux’s traditional way of doing business. This tale of wine in China provides insights into Chinese and French culture, society, and ways of doing business, along with a detailed peek at many of the intricacies of the Place de Bordeaux.

The start of wine’s role as a tool in China’s economic strategy occurred in 1996, when Premier Li Peng “extolled the benefits of red wine” (Mustacich, p. 14) as both an alternative to hard liquor and spirits—echoing Thomas Jefferson and others—and as a means for economic growth. The sense that Li gave the assembled National People’s Congress, according to Thirsty Dragon, was that “Grape vines were marvelous plants. They grew on hillsides and in poor soil, in places where very little else could thrive” (p. 14). To emphasize his point, Li toasted the Congress with a glass of red wine, which was, Mustacich notes, “an unmistakable signal to every official, state employee, and entrepreneur that red wine was approved by the Communist leadership … Li had opened China to wine” (p. 14).

From this beginning, Thirsty Dragon documents the fascinating interplay among key players that resulted from this “signal.” The Bordelais, of course, noticed and wanted to sell more wine in China, knowing that the Chinese saw Bordeaux wines, especially the first growths, as world standards for quality and prestige. Chinese businessmen noticed, with Bordeaux’s classified growths sought after for guanxi—the cultivation of personal connections and exchange of favors, where gifts of fine Bordeaux wines (the more expensive the better) eased the art of the deal. Celebrants noticed, offering capacious quantities of grand cru wines at elabo- rate banquets in a show of gei mianzi (respect). Importers and distributors noticed, negotiating exclusivity deals with Bordeaux vineyards. Investors noticed, establish- ing wine businesses, wineries, and vineyards in China, often as joint ventures with French or other collaborators, and purchasing chateaux in Bordeaux. Speculators noticed too, with record prices for Bordeaux wines at auction.

With two groups as culturally and traditionally diverse as the Bordelais and the Chinese, conflicts naturally arose. Thirsty Dragon details these tensions, not only between the Chinese and French stakeholders, but also among and between parties within China and within the Place de Bordeaux. The book’s style provides a series of short, insightful, and interesting cases in time and place as these interac- tions progress. This approach adds a sense of mystery, leading the reader to antici- pate what will happen the next time we meet the players involved. The numerous and rotating cast of individuals, businesses, government officials, collaborators, win- eries, and so on, however, does make Thirsty Dragon seem disjointed at first, but as one progresses through the book, the bigger picture does emerge.

The historical Place de Bordeaux business model had been changing prior to the explosion of Chinese interest in the region, as evidenced by growth in direct sales to customers by chateaux, wine being produced by négociants supplementing their role as middlemen, and smaller and increasing numbers of tranches released by chateaux to test the market. However, the emergence of the Chinese wine market exacerbated this process. Chinese merchants who saw no reason at all not to deal directly with chateaux owners did so—effectively bypassing the Place de Bordeaux’s close-knit courtier and négociant community on a larger scale. Rather than deal with the system, increasing numbers of Chinese investors bought an entire chateaux’s wine production—or the vineyard itself—and exported all of it directly to China. Chinese corporate wine merchants, who were often government employees under pressure to increase profits, backed out of agreements when convenient, especially in an already declining market, often leaving the Bordelais with vast quantities of unsold wine. Additional stress on Bordeaux came from frequently changing rules and laws in China, which made business dealings there a sometimes moving target. Trademark or brand “squatters” registered hundreds of wine names in Chinese characters under China’s first-to-file law (Mustacich, p. 141), putting owners of Bordeaux wines at a disadvantage with most customers in China who could not read the labels in French, hindering sales and profits. These practices and more deviate from the customs, traditions, and standards of Bordeaux (and several appear, at least in the eyes of some, as less than ethical), further straining the Place de Bordeaux. All of this is presented by Mustacich in rich detail with an academic’s eye, providing myriad footnotes and references—none of which distract from the book’s flow.

One might come away from Thirsty Dragon thinking that the rise in the Chinese and Asian markets is the sole cause of the upheaval in Bordeaux wine prices and in the en primeur system. Although the rapid growth in China’s demand for Bordeaux wines has made China arguably Bordeaux’s most important customer—a recent report noted that China was Bordeaux’s biggest importer in volume and second in value even after the recent sales slowdown (Anson, 2014)—there are other factors in this upheaval, as shown in much wine economics research. For example, there is a solid body of wine economic literature that correlates critics’ grades, including those of Robert Parker, the Wine Spectator magazine, and others, to the price of fine wines (see Masset, Weisskopf, and Cossutta [2015] for a recent review of this lit- erature).1 High ratings by Parker and other critics for the 2005 vintage (a “vintage of the century”) and again in 2009, along with a continuous string of very good to ex- cellent years, played a role as well.

In addition, the more recent decline in Bordeaux and other fine wine prices is sim- ilarly not solely the result of China’s influence and its anti-ostentatious campaign. The extraordinary price run-up from the series of outstanding vintages from 2005 through 2010, as well as China’s surging demand, discouraged the level of buying in much of the rest of the world. The recent financial crisis and economic downturn too, as duly noted in Thirsty Dragon, contributed to the slowdown in futures prices. More recently, Parker’s decision to stop reviewing Bordeaux wines has also been sug- gested as a contributing factor in lower prices (McCoy, 2015), but this is an area for future wine economics research. All of this, however, is not to say that, even with the deflated bubble for expensive wines, the events of this millennium have not had a pro- found and lasting effect on wine in China and, in turn, on the economics of wine in worldwide. The popularizing of wine as both a tool for economic development and as a healthier alternative to drinking baijiu and other distilled spirits continues. Wines in the $30 to $50 range, according to the chairman of a large Chinese wine merchant and importer, still sold well after the collapse in classified wine prices (Mustacich, p. 262).

Apart from the interactions between China and Bordeaux, Thirsty Dragon also describes the growth of the wine industry within China. Although the production of fine wine in China is still in its infancy, several quality-focused producers are profiled in the book, including Emma Gao of Silver Heights, Zhang Jing of Helan Qingxue, and Judy Chan of Grace Vineyards. Prominent to this story are the growth of Ningxia as a premier wine grape–growing region in China and the contin- ued search for terroirs that might support fine-wine making in China, complement- ing the nearly 2 million acres of vineyards producing inexpensive mass-market wines (TDA, 2015). Enhancing the push to solidify its reputation and demonstrate that quality wines can be produced in China is the establishment of new vineyards by renowned French producers, including Laffite Rothschild and Moet Hennessey.

After reading this book, one might wonder about the quality of this new breed of fine wines produced in China (which remain unavailable in the United States). Coincidentally, as Thirsty Dragon was published, an article in the New York Times profiled the growth in quality wines and wine-producing regions in China (Sasseen, 2015), and the New York Times’ wine critic, Eric Asimov, reviewed five of them, including two from the aforementioned Silver Heights. All were mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, and all but one included Merlot and/or Carmenère (called Cabernet Gernischt in China) and ranged in price from $17 to $100 per bottle.2 Asimov found the entry-level wines “soft, simple and easygoing,” with the top- level wines showing “a bit of complexity” and “deep, plush flavors and lots of oak.” However, he noted they all lacked a “sense of distinctiveness, or … terroir” (Asimov, 2015). As for the future, Asimov acknowledges that China has the re- sources to make acceptable commercial wines, wondering if it will also produce sought-after distinctive wines. With this question, the next phase of the Thirsty Dragon story begins.

Stephen Chaikind
Gallaudet University
stephen.chaikind@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.9

The interplay between the study of wine and the study of economics has continued to gain considerable appreciation in recent years, encouraged in great part by the nu- merous scholarly conferences held by the American Association of Wine Economists and its publication of the peer-reviewed Journal of Wine Economics. The rapid expansion of scholarly work in this area leads one to ask a basic question: Does this expansion simply represent the intersection of two areas of interest, fueled by the trend toward ever-increasing specialization in scholarly research, or is there perhaps something intrinsic and unique about the topic of wine that sets it apart from other areas of economic study? In short, does the subject of wine economics, building on the expertise of both wine and economics, justify the moniker of an emergent discipline in its own right? Such introspective questions may appear lofty, but they reflect the challenges that any young discipline faces as it strives to gain the respect of the broader research community.

In Wine and Economics: Transacting the Elixir of Life, Denton Marks takes seri- ously such challenges. The book draws on Marks’s personal experience and expertise as a classroom teacher of economics, as well as his expertise and passion for the world of wine. It intertwines an introductory textbook-like presentation of economic principles with the analysis of wine consumption and production and culminates in a contemplative discussion of some of the special and unique features of wine that dis- tinguish it from other economic goods. Marks takes a distinctively philosophical bent in the presentation of his material but, at the same time, writes in a lighthearted manner, always providing plenty of interesting tidbits about wine to keep even the most casual reader engaged.

Indeed, Marks’s book should find broad appeal among a wide-ranging audience beyond those interested specifically in what Marks sets out as an emergent field of wine and economics. Most obviously are professionals coming from either side of the intersection. Professionals from the world of wine, including those teaching in programs such as oenology and winery management, will find in chapters 2 through 5 a relatively gentle and intuitive introduction to core economic concepts as they apply to the wine trade. The analysis is general enough to apply to any eco- nomic good and therein provides the wine professional with a useful conceptual tool kit, but at the same time, it moves quickly within each chapter to illustrations with specific wine applications. In fact, this feature of the book also lends itself well to an entirely different yet complementary use: College level instructors of introductory microeconomics may find in these same chapters an opportunity to supplement their lectures on topics such as comparative advantage, behavior of the consumer, and behavior of the firm. As important as these subjects may be for aspiring econo- mists, students have been known to describe these as somewhat “dry” topics. Why talk about the monopoly power derived from product differentiation among auto- mobiles when one can sweeten the concept with an illustration of how official appellation designations such as Sauternes or Quarts de Chaume serve to strengthen the wines’ monopoly power? For the innovative instructor, chapters 2 through 5 offer a multitude of fun and interesting examples of the use of these concepts applied to wines, be they moelleux or “sec.”

Conversely, the later chapters, 6 through 9, have much to offer for the profession- ally trained economist who wishes to learn more about the aspects of wine that serve to make it a unique and interesting topic for economic study. Why is wine more than simply a difficult-to-assess, almost transcendent experiential good? In what precise sense might wine embody the ethereal concept of a cultural good, which transmits cultural value to both the individual consumer and society? To give but one example, does the notion of terroir, or sense of place in general, have the potential to endow a wine with cultural content, undervalued by individuals and deserving of social protection? In drawing in part on his own research, this is the class of difficult questions on which Marks embarks in his later chapters, and which in part help to frame wine and economics as a discipline distinct from other areas of economic study.

An idealist may wish that more of the analytical formalization developed in the earlier chapters could have been used to better envelop the more enigmatic discus- sions of the later chapters—something that might also have served to better unify the presentation styles between the chapters. However, this is a bold frontier on which the book embarks, and Marks helps us to see some of the key challenges. The book is written in a thoughtful and philosophical style, while offering bountiful morsels of interesting practical information about the elixir of life. It is sure to entice professionals as well as enthusiasts and represents an important synoptic and in- sightful text for the discipline.

Peter Pedroni
Williams College
ppedroni@williams.edu 
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.8

Throughout the wine world, Burgundy is everyone’s poster child for rational, terroir- driven site delimitation and vineyard classification: a découpage of about a hundred appellations and at least another thousand individual site names (lieux dits) arranged in a neat hierarchy of qualitative tiers. Other regions treat Burgundy as their prime example of how to do it right, idealizing the monks who are said to have paid close attention to sites and wines as early as the twelfth century, the Burgundian dukes who legally protected Pinot Noir against “lesser” grape varieties, and the consistency of “local, loyal, and long-standing practices” that survived cataclysmic regime changes to become embedded in controlled appellation law when it was promulgated in the 1930s. Burgundian arrangements have been used as a reference point from Alsace to Barolo, and Burgundian terminology is self-consciously echoed in the Erste Lage and Grosse Lage rubrics recently embraced by Germany’s Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter.

Although Burgundian arrangements were not codified until the twentieth century, it is generally conceded that much of their foundation was laid a good deal earlier. To explore that turf and identify what he calls “original grand crus”—that is, de facto grands crus before the advent of the appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) schema —Charles Curtis presents English translations of extracts from two eighteenth- century, four nineteenth-century, and one early twentieth-century French works. Of these, only one, as far as I know, has been rendered previously in English (André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus [1816]), so the mere fact of translation, even of short excerpts, should be useful to anglophone readers. Chapters 1–5 consist of thread text by Curtis about each work and its author(s), woven around short translated excerpts. The authors bring quite different personal and professional backgrounds to their interest in Burgundy’s vineyards, and these differences mark their respective works. Chapters 6–22 follow the same pattern of thread text and excerpts, but each of these chapters is geographically delimited, be- ginning in the north with the Côte Dijonnaise and ending at the south end of the Côte d’Or, at Santenay, facilitating attention to commune-specific details. In chap- ters 1–5, the thread is a good introduction to the sources and their authors who, apart from Jullien, are not especially well known. Some of the translated excerpts are unremarkable; it is not surprising to learn, for example, that “the people of Beaune [ca. 1780] believe themselves in exclusive possession of the best wines of Burgundy” (p. 21). However, much of this material is keenly interesting and occa- sionally startling as historical documentation. Consider, for example, that Denis Morelot railed as early as 1831 against “greedy proprietors” who “cover their sup- posedly weak vineyards in manure” and “propagate by layering more vines than they should” so that their grapes “contain above all water and vegetable proteins” and are produced in “over-abundant” quantity (p. 38). In addition, winemakers in the nineteenth century were sugaring their musts “even in hot years” (p. 42). Finally, landholding patterns, at least according to Morelot, differed significantly and consequentially between the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune, the latter “incredibly fragmented,” leading to more blended wines, whereas the very best wines “that come from the same cru” were mostly from the Côte de Nuits (p. 44). There is also Jules Lavalle’s assertion, quoted on p. 51, that by 1855, vineyard surface planted to Gamay was almost 10 times greater that the surface devoted to Pinot Noir, largely (it is implied) because of excruciatingly low yields for Pinot, av- eraging just 18 hectoliters per hectare, or about half of what is typical today in premier cru vineyards. Historians know that Pinot lost ground to Gamay after the French Revolution, but the extent of the loss may have been understated.

In chapters 6–22, Curtis takes excerpts primarily from those parts of Jullien’s, Morelot’s, and Lavalle’s works where the authors have grouped their vineyard de- scriptions into qualitative categories (e.g., Tête de Cuvée, 1ère Cuvée, 2ème Cuvée, etc.), because it is aggregation of such assessments that drives Curtis’s own list of the “original grand crus.” The nineteenth-century groupings are generally con- sistent with modern classification and therefore confirm the proposition that most highly classified sites were known as such at least a century before the AOC work was done in the 1930s, but Curtis notes the exceptions carefully, especially where im- portant vineyards are concerned, pointing out that some differences between unofficial nineteenth century and official twentieth century reflect altered footprints for the crus concerned. For example, Les Gaudichots was not part of La Tâche in Lavalle’s time but had been combined with it by the 1930s. Similarly, Les Vérroilles, a separate cru in the nineteenth century, was made part of Les Richebourgs in the twentieth century. There is also abundant evidence, however, that nineteenth-century authors attached great importance to proprietorship. In their lists for each commune, Jullien, Morelot, and Lavalle listed the owners of each cru by name, along with the precise size of each owner’s holdings, sometimes making clear that changes of ownership had affected the quality of the wines pro- duced. For example, “during the time that Clos-du-Roi [in Chenôve] was owned by the crown, the vines harvested there enjoyed a very high reputation”—a reputa- tion that was subsequently lost (p. 73). This preoccupation with ownership is more, I think, than a reflection of the wholesale changes that followed the French Revolution. It is also quiet confirmation that Roger Dion (1896–1981) and Jean-Robert Pitte have been at least partially correct when they have argued that pro- prietors’ ability and willingness to invest in their vineyards is a more powerful deter- minant of wine quality that the intrinsic properties of terroir, a proposition vehemently contested by most “terroirists.” Jullien, Morelot, and Lavalle were also very conscious of heterogeneity within individual crus. For example, notwithstand- ing that no fewer than 34 different climats can be found within the walled 50- hectare surface of Clos Vougeot, and that per Lavalle “the upper parts give a wine that is very fine and delicate, [whereas] the lower parts … give inferior wine” (p. 28), Vougeot has consistently been treated as a single cru for classification pur- poses. Alas for logic, one cru is not always one climat or vice versa.

By its nature, The Original Grands Crus of Burgundy is not an easy read and is perhaps better sampled than read cover to cover. However, there is fascinating content here, great attention to detail, and a potent reminder that the exceptional in- dividuals who wrote extensively about Burgundy’s vineyards in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are a source for much more than information about crus and classifications. Jullien, Morelot, and Lavalle were witnesses to evolutions in viticul- ture, wine making, and economic history writ large. If the excerpts from their work that Curtis has translated and annotated stimulate more attention to the original works than they have received to this point, our understanding of the transition from the Ancien Régime to the nineteenth century may be improved.

John W. Haeger
Stanford University
jwhaeger@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.7

Admittedly, it was hard to write a dispassionate review of books that so lovingly describe the region in which I live and so admiringly profile many of my acquain- tances in the Oregon wine industry. Therefore, I used as measures of merit how well each echoed my impressions of this most beautiful area and its people, and whether each accomplished its objectives.

Perry’s and Vincent’s Winemakers of the Willamette Valley (WWV) “is meant to showcase the stories of a handful of Oregon’s many Willamette Valley winemakers” (WWV, p. 11). A foreword by Chehalem founder Harry Peterson-Nedry sets the per- sonal tone that pervades those stories. Next, in a mere eight pages of text, the first chapter, “History of the Willamette Valley Wine Region,” covers the climate, soil, grape selection, craftsmanship, industry structure and early success in sufficient detail to provide valuable context. The authors then share intimate interviews with eighteen vintners and vignerons. Within each chapter named for one or two wine- makers are brief descriptions of the wineries that each is affiliated with. These include year founded, ownership, varietals, tasting room location, hours and con- tacts. Sustainability features, a point of pride in the Oregon wine industry, are also listed. The epilogue memorializes the late Willamette Valley Vineyards winemaker Forrest Glenn Klaffke. Wine Tasting Routes and a list of wineries by town provided by the Willamette Valley Wineries Association comprise the appendix.

In contrast, Warncke’s “Oregon Wine Pioneers (OWP) aims to tell a good story and inspire you to take part in that story. We hope you take it along when you head out to visit…” (OWP, p. 9). Although the fifteen chapters are named for win- eries, they contain much biographical information about the principals. Each con- cludes with tasting notes of wines made at the facility and a lined page for the reader’s own comments. Six Trail Guides for Portland, Forest Grove, Newberg, McMinnville, Salem and Southern Oregon follow. These give driving directions, contact information for the featured wineries, and restaurant recommendations.

“By definition, there can only be one group of pioneers” (OWP, p. 29), Warncke tells us. From a strict point of view, then, only the first wave of a dozen producers who began coming to Oregon about a half century ago should be regarded as pio- neers. Wisely though, the two books de facto adopt a broader perspective. Warncke presents vignettes about winemakers who became part of the Oregon wine industry well after the 1960s and 1970s. For example, she interviews Earl Jones who pioneered high quality Tempranillo in the United States at Abacela in the 1990s. And WWV, which includes “Pioneering Vintners” in its subtitle, profiles folks like Steve Doerner, winemaker at Cristom Vineyards since 1992, who “is a thirty-five year practitioner of whole-cluster, native yeast fermentations” (WWV,

p. 51).

Both volumes cover Adelsheim, Elk Cove, A to Z/Rex Hill, and Ponzi with some overlap but enough differences to make each worth reading. While winemaker David Paige is the focus in WWV’s chapter on Adelsheim (WWV, Chapter 6), founder David Adelsheim is highlighted in OWP (OWP, pp. 22-33). Both concentrate on Elk Cove’s second generation winemaker Adam Campbell but OWP also introduces his sister, Anna (WWV, Chapter 8; OWP, pp. 34-45). WWV (WWV, Chapter 12) fea- tures Anna Matzinger and Michael Davies, the latter, the executive winemaker at A to Z/Rex Hill, whereas OWP (OWP, pp. 46-59) takes us on a tour of that winery with the direct sales manager that includes a cameo appearance by cofounder Deb Hatcher, but no mention of Davies. The greatest degree of overlap is in the chapters on Ponzi (WWV, Chapter 7; OWP, pp. 60-71) wherein Luisa Ponzi, who took over as winemaker from her father, Dick, in 1993, is the center of attention.

WWV concentrates on producers who get their grapes primarily from the six American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) that partially overlap the northwest portion of the Willamette Valley AVA. OWP ventures further south with profiles of Illahe Vineyards in Dallas, Left Coast Cellars in Rickreall, and Abacela in the Umpqua Valley near Roseburg.

The trail guides in OWP are much more valuable resources for the prospective tourist than what is given in WWV. In particular, I can vouch for many of the restau- rants included. While the tasting room information in each chapter of WWV might be useful, it should be confirmed as things do change. The appendix, however, seems like an afterthought.

While none of the authors are established wine writers, all have published exten- sively so both books read very well and very quickly. Journalistic WWV relies more on quotations and less on descriptions of the land, the processes and the writers’ personal reactions. The writing in OWP struck me as more literary, impres- sionistic and passionate. We share moments of realization with Warncke: “Voila. The missing piece. The link. The glue. I should have guessed. The clue is in the name: A to Z. You can say anything with 26 letters and this is a winery dedicated to expression. Climate, soil, elevation, varietals, and water, are the winemaker’s alphabet” (OWP, p. 56). I also enjoyed the clever analogies Warncke draws. In describing the career path of Tom Symonette of Whistling Dog Cellars, she writes “…a picture emerges of a man whose life – like the vines he tends with such intense affection – had three buds. Two of which, removed, left one strong shoot” (OWP, p. 100).

WWV edges out self-published OWP for production value with sharper photo- graphs and affectionate sketches of the winemakers by Sarah Schlesinger. Still, the latter skillfully weaves uncaptioned snapshots into text from which they derive their significance. Both successfully give the reader a sense of what it is like to visit a winery in the Beaver State.

There are some minor quibbles. I didn’t find the tasting notes in OWP particularly useful and even a bit bizarre: petrol notes in Pinot (OWP, pp. 20, 58, 96, 108)?! Also, many of the wines mentioned are likely no long available. Inadvertently, no doubt, punk artist Don Letts is referred to as an Oregon wine legend (OWP, p. 86), dislodg- ing “Papa Pinot,” David Lett. The number of vineyards and wineries in Oregon is woefully underreported as 400+ (OWP, p. 9). The 2014 Oregon Vineyard and Winery Census Report published by the Southern Oregon University Research Center in August 2015 reports an increase of 8% to 1,027 vineyard operations and from 605 to 676 bonded wineries. There is some unnecessary repetition in WWV, for example, regarding The Carlton Winemakers Studio location, fee, and contact information (WWV, pp. 83 and 85).

Books of this sort do have a limited shelf life since they report on a fluid industry. Much has changed even in the short time since WWV was released. Scott Wright sold his interest in Scott Paul Wines and Kelley Fox (WWV, Chapter 11) no longer makes wine for that label. Anthony King (WWV, Chapter 13) is now General Manager of The Carlton Winemakers Studio (WWV, Chapter 9). Don Crank III (WWV, Chapter 16) left Willamette Valley Vineyards and is now at Rex Hill (OWP, pp. 46–59). Eric Hamacher (WWV, Chapter 9) was just named winemak- er at Ghost Hill Cellars (OWP, pp. 84–97).

Before I became a full time resident of Oregon, I spent part of the year in Virginia and would invariably miss McMinnville. I would devour each issue of the Oregon Wine Press when it arrived so that I could be transported back to where I wanted to be. As I read these two adoring accounts of an industry of which I am now a part, I was reminded of how lucky I am to be here and to experience daily this ex- traordinary place and its people. For those less fortunate, reading both Perry and Vincent, and Warncke can give a satisfying vicarious experience. The two accounts dovetail nicely with the resulting binocular view more complete than any one of them would provide. For the price of a good bottle of Oregon Pinot noir, these two slim attractive volumes will make you want to visit, if the wine hasn’t already convinced you to do so.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.37

A colleague at KEDGE Business School in Bordeaux first recommended Vino Business by Isabelle Saporta to me back in May of 2014. Vino Business had just been published, in French, and was already surrounded by controversy. Half of my French wine friends and wine economics colleagues were raving about this book, the other half was seriously upset. Most have strong opinions about Vino Business. In fact, in March of 2014, Isabelle Saporta was sued for defamation by Hubert de Boüard de Laforest, the owner of Château Angélus.
Isabelle Saporta’s book has been translated into English and was published in the U.S. in November 2015. Isabella Saporta is an investigative journalist who special- izes in topics related to agriculture. Before Vino Business she published a few books on agriculture, food, and the environment, notably “Le livre noir de l’agricul- ture” (The Black Book of Agriculture), but nothing specific to wine.
Vino Business is 256 total pages consisting of 25 short chapters, almost all of which are set in Bordeaux, particularly the right bank. Although the chapters can be read in- dependently, there is a thread that goes through some of them, particularly the first 11, which are the core of the book. Here, Saporta introduces us to the protagonist and sym- bolic figure of the entire book, Hubert de Boüard, the owner of Château Angélus, and sheds light on his role in the 2012 re-classification of Saint-Emilion properties.
The French system of vineyard classification has a long history. Contrary to what some wine enthusiasts may think, vineyards were not originally classified by wine critics to guide consumers in their wine purchasing decisions, but were based on eco- nomic criteria. Vineyard land was classified and ranked according to its value and profitability. Examples of this include the 1855 Bordeaux Classification covering wines from Médoc and Graves, the French Mosel Classification of 1801 and others dating back to the 17th century (see, e.g., Ashenfelter and Storchmann, 2010). These ratings sometimes even served as a basis for a “fair” profit-oriented land taxation.
In contrast to the left bank of the Garonne, the right bank was not classified in the 19th century. The first Saint-Emilion classification was established in 1955 and has been updated every 10 years. Saporta tells us about the 2012 update, in which Hubert de Boüard and his Château Angélus play a central role. Before 2012, Château Angélus was only a Premier Grand Cru Classé B, not the best of the best. After 2012, however, Château Angélus was upgraded to the top tier. According to Saporta, this is why.
First, in contrast to past classifications, the Saint-Emilion classification does not draw on objective data such as land values or wine prices. Instead, it is based on a complex system of points that need to be accumulated by the applicant chateau. For Premiers Grand Cru Classés these points are weighted as follows: wine tasting 30%, the chateau’s reputation 35%, estate and terroirs 30%, estate practices 5% (Conseil des Vins de Saint- Emilion, 2015). Under ‘estate and terroirs,’ “the classification criteria would also wisely allow some points for the size of the visitors’ parking lot” (p. 32). A seminar room is worth some extra points as well (p. 32). In contrast, Château Ausone was criticized by the commission for the lack of indirect lighting in its historic cellar. The classification standards also penalize winemakers that get involved in tours, possibly leading the tours themselves (e.g., Château Croque-Michotte). Who came up with these rules?
The regulating body in charge of instituting these criteria is the Conseil des Vins de Saint-Emilion (Saint-Emilion Wine Council), of which Hubert de Boüard was the president from 1999 until 2008. “His right-hand man, Jean-François Quenin, suc- ceeded him.” (p. 32). Saporta suggests that Quenin and de Boüard devised the clas- sification criteria to suit Château Angélus and to eventually lift it to the top echelon. However, these rules needed to be confirmed by the INAO (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine), the French organization in charge of regulating agricultural products. Saporta does not hold INAO in high esteem. In Chapter 5, entitled, “With a Bogus Authority, the INAO,” she reports that Hubert de Boüard “is a member of both INAO’s Regional Committee and its National committee …. ” and “… now holds all the cards and let it be known.” (p. 53). INAO confirms the classification criteria and Château Angélus is promoted. Saporta takes issue with both the appar- ent conflict of interest and the fact that the classification rules add more weight to non-wine criteria, such as parking lots, than to the wine itself.
The ensuing chapters cover similar “injustices,” such as the role of Robert Parker and his influence on wine and wine business, the “land grab” by the Mieux family (who owns Château Pétrus) in Pomerol, the use of pesticides in grape growing and the disregard for organic winemaking, the sales of Bordeaux wine and real estate to China, the rule of technocrats over winemakers, and the redefinition of the Champagne AOC.
The tenor of Vino Business can be summarized in three sentences. Wine is ruled by corrupt big business that is detached from their product. Large firms set the rules at the expense of small winemakers. Organic winemaking is disrespected.
The book is an easy read, entertaining, and filled with valuable information, but Saporta makes no effort to be neutral. Almost everything is suggestive and often she offers her own interpretation – even of facial expressions. For instance, when citing Michel Rolland talking about Chinese buyers “‘… it’s quite good business,’ jokes the winemaker, a greedy look in his eyes.” (p. 16). About 15% of the text consists of ci- tations, many of them anonymous (e.g., “’Why should they bite the hand that feeds them?’ a great winemaker adds cruelly and scornfully” (p. 84) or “’Michel Rolland has a thing in Argentina… It’s a jackpot. You can make €150,000 for an internation- al contract. … you have a lot less hassle for way more cash!’ an expert who prefers to stay in Bordeaux summarizes with a smile.” (p. 63)).
The book reminded me of the movie Mondovino (see the review by Lima and Schroder, 2009), which also fights for the small winemaker and down-to-earth wine- making. The book is as chauvinistic as the movie. While the book recommends not to sell wine and property to the Chinese, in the movie we learn why vineyard land in Aniane/Languedoc should be sold to French actor Gérard Depardieu instead to the American Mondavi family. Ironically, Depardieu has been less loyal to France and moved to Russia to evade French taxation in 2013.
No doubt, and despite my criticism above, Vino Business is an important wine book and should be read by every serious wine friend. It provides a trove of informa- tion about the business and politics of wine, particularly in Bordeaux, much of which is virtually unknown to the general public. But I think Saporta would have served her cause better with greater distance and neutrality and a less suggestive style.
References
Ashenfelter, O., and Storchmann, K. (2010). Using hedonic models of solar radiation and weather to assess the economic effect of climate change: The case of Mosel valley vine- yards. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(2), 333–349.
Conseil des Vins de Saint-Emilion (2015). Press Kit 2012 Classification of Saint-Emilion Wines. Online: (PDF) (accessed November 25, 2015)
Lima, T., and Schroder, N. (2009). Film Review of Jonathan Nossiter (Director): Mondovino. Journal of Wine Economics, 4(1), 119–121.

Wine policy in the European Union (EU) can look back on a history of more than half a century. This was not a period of legislative restraint. Rather, more than 50 years of regulatory activism have left behind a formidable volume of regulations, all drafted in quaint legal idiom, that attempted to remedy both alleged failures of wine markets and the evident failures of earlier regulations. Few economists have a taste for wallowing through such material. Those economists who venture into EU wine policy and legislation often come from Mediterranean countries with large wine industries, and they mostly write in their native languages. An up-to- date English-language account of EU wine policy is therefore welcome.

The two authors of the book are wine business economists. Davide Gaeta is an as- sociate professor who teaches economics of wine firms and wine policy at the University of Verona, Italy, and CEO of Chianti Classico Company. Paola Corsinovi is a wine business consultant in Brussels; she holds a Ph.D. in wine economics. In the Acknowledgments, the authors name Alison Matthews, a free-

lance interpreter at the European Union, as the translator of their text.

In my own professional work, I have shied away from EU wine policies and leg- islation, and I can claim no expertise in this area. I therefore approached this review as someone intent on learning something about EU wine policies. My attitude toward EU policies and its style of governance is, however, not totally neutral. For too long I have observed from the sidelines the economic folly that was the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The Book’s Content

The book is not a rigorous economic analysis of EU wine policy. Rather, it is an essay by two wine business experts who guide their readers through the EU wine legislation thicket and who interpret EU wine policy. Whereas policy analysis usually pays a great deal of attention to policy objectives and quantitative economic outcomes, wine policy objectives are not systematically scrutinized in the text, and economic policy outcomes are largely ignored. The authors have arranged their material in three sections and eleven subsections in total. Section 1 is concerned with EU governance institutions and their legislative and policy output related to agriculture and wine. Section 2 is focused on some economic aspects of EU wine market regulations, and Section 3 highlights the role of interest groups in the evolution of EU wine policy.

In a preface, Gaeta and Corsinovi (G&C) motivate their concern with EU wine policy, state the aims of the book, and identify their intended readers. Their motiva- tion for writing the book is the intensity of wine market regulation and their concern over the amount of bureaucratic red tape that comes in the wake of this legislation. Moreover, the authors characterize the wine sector as “one of the most highly regu- lated markets” and suggest that “we should ask ourselves whether this is done in a fair and effective manner” (p. xiii).

The aims of the book are “to examine the wine production sector” and “to cover the … relationship between the state and the market, and more specifically between public choice and pressure groups” (p. xiv). The authors have targeted the book at two groups of readers: university students and readers who are novices with regard to EU wine policy. Moreover, the authors perceive their book as a non- Eurocentric “European manual” (p. xiv).

The four subsections of Section 1 introduce readers to the legislative machinery of the European Union, the evolution of EU agricultural policy in which EU wine policy is embedded, EU wine regulations since 1962 and associated policy measures, and, finally, the flow of finance that these policies have engendered.

In Subsection 1.1, G&C provide an overview of major EU governance institutions and the legislative processes that tie the institutions together. Here the authors also inform their readers about the five types of acts to which the European Union is subject: regulations, directions, decisions, recommendations, and opinions. The acts with which the book is concerned are predominantly regulations passed by the European Union and are binding in all member states. Subsection 1.2 is a histor- ical abstract of the evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy. This section prob- ably contains more details about the several metamorphoses of agricultural policy of the European Union and its predecessor organizations than many readers interested in EU wine policy want to know. Subsection 1.3 is the core of Section 1, and, in my opinion, it is the most useful part of the whole book. Here G&C outline the evolution of the EU wine policy in terms of the regulations and the policy measures laid out in the regulations. I counted in this section some 26 different regulations and 60 policy measures. The numbers suggest that popular allegations of excessive regulatory activism by EU institutions may be well founded. In the closing subsection of Section 1, G&C analyze how the EU wine budget is spent. Here the authors also espouse an attitude toward EU spending that I find irritating. They suggest that EU spending is too low on two accounts: in relation to the economic value generated by the wine sector and compared to spending in other agricultural sectors. Such ar- guments suggest that spending priorities are best set according to congruence criteria that allocate budget spending in proportion to the size of the recipient sectors. The distribution of budget resources that results from such a rule may be unrelated to policy priorities but the rule has the advantage for administrators that it can be im- plemented by applying mechanically elementary arithmetic.

Economic aspects of wine supply, demand, and foreign trade are the topics of Section 2. The section opens with a discussion of sources of market failure which may justify market interventions by the state. As in most accounts of market failure, a complementary discussion of the sources of government failure is not pro- vided in this section even though a sizable share of regulatory activity by the European Union is intended to remedy failures of earlier wine policies. Having justified government interventions in markets, G&C introduce several market dia- grams in which they try to show how some select market interventions affect market prices and the quantities traded. I was unable to parse some of the text ac- companying the graphs. Whether this failure is due to my imperfect command of English, the authors’ command of economics, the translator’s ability to translate economics text from Italian to English, or any combination of these deficiencies, I am unable to say. A clear problem does occur, however, in one of the market dia- grams, in which price is allowed to do two things: change the quantities demanded along a given demand function and shift the demand function. In real-world markets, prices can sometimes perform miracles. But in a two-dimensional price- quantity world, prices cannot shift demand curves. Also in this section, G&C discuss Marc Nerlove’s supply model and hedonic demand analysis.

In the rest of the section, the authors leave the theories and models behind and turn to matters of fact, in particular, the historical development of production, quan- tity supplied, and quantity demanded, prices, and wine trade issues. I was surprised by the authors’ aim in the section on trade, which is “to demonstrate how interna- tional trade … finds itself increasingly threatened and facing a series of obstacles, all of which are directly linked to the wine sector” (p. 126). There certainly are serious obstacles to trade, such as tariff barriers, nontariff barriers, and technical barriers to trade, which the authors all duly discuss. Not mentioned are, however, the huge reductions in international trade costs due to innovations in shipping, air transport, and international voice and data communications. Perhaps the latter de- velopments help to explain why world wine exports and imports, which the authors report in this section, do not show any evidence that international trade in wine is seriously threatened.

In the final section, G&C relate how lobbying groups have invaded EU wine policy making. The authors begin the section with a synopsis of public choice theo- ries from Duncan Black and Kenneth Arrow onward. Here they also introduce their readers to Robert Putnam’s “gaming table,” which appears to be a single-issue, two- person bargaining model in which the bargaining issue is evaluated in a single dimen- sion. After this theoretical warmup, the authors identify 12 key lobbying issues in the EU wine sector, which they organize into four groups: (1) market management, (2) production rules, (3) quality policies, and (4) consumers, trade, and simplification. Moreover, G&C identify 13 organizations—most are known by a nonmnemonic acronym—from agriculture and from the wine sector that are involved in wine policy lobbying. Having identified major lobbying issues and important lobbying groups, they set the stage for short accounts of lobbying group positions and lobby- ing activities in relation to each of the 12 major lobbying issues. This section has cer- tainly benefited from Gaeta’s unique characteristic of being an academic and the CEO of a wine firm.

The text ends when the last lobbying issue has been dealt with—there is no summary, no conclusions, no grand finale. The book ends with notes and a useful bibliography.

Appreciation

I have organized my appreciation of the book into three parts. I first assess the extent to which the aims of the book have been attained, and I consider whether the book is suitable for its intended readership. I then turn to the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

Does the Book Achieve Its Aims?

In the Preface, the authors state three aims of their book: (1) “to examine the wine production sector,” (2) “to cover the … relationship between the state and the market, and more specifically between public choice and pressure groups”; and (3) the book should be a non-Eurocentric “European manual” (p. xiv).
The authors have missed their first aim by such a wide margin that one must suspect that this was not really an aim at all. An examination of the wine production sector is nowhere to be found in the book. With the exception of land, the book has no information on production factors employed in wine production, nothing on the technologies used in the vineyard or in the winery, and nothing on the organization of production. The authors present, however, some tables showing vineyard area and others showing production of wines of protected designations of origin (PDO) and wines of protected geographic indications (PGI), two legal quality categories that seem to have sprung from the minds of EU bureaucrats.

The authors have covered the relationship between the state and the market in some measure. The motivation of the European Union to intervene in the wine markets, in contrast, is addressed only incompletely. In some sections of the book, in particular in Subsection 2.1, the authors seem to suggest that the state intervenes in markets to remedy alleged market failures. In Section 3, in which the public choice approach is introduced, state action is, to some extent, driven by lobbyists and special interest groups. The relationship between the two views of state action, a chal- lenging yet important topic, is not explored by the authors.

Finally, is the book a non-Eurocentric “European manual” on wine policy? Unfortunately, I think they misuse the word “manual.” Among the several defini- tions that the Oxford English Dictionary offers for the noun “manual,” two are per- tinent here: (1) “A handbook or textbook, esp. a small or compendious one; a concise treatise, an abridgement. Also in extended use”; (2) “A set of instructions or proce- dures (not necessarily concise) for using a particular piece of equipment or for car- rying out a particular operation” (www.OED.com, accessed on July 10, 2015). The book is not a handbook: it is neither sufficiently comprehensive in scope nor brief in exposition to be considered one. Nor is the book a textbook: it lacks the systematic organization and comprehensiveness that one would expect of a textbook on EU wine policy. Finally, is the book a set of instructions and procedures for implement- ing and influencing wine policies in the European Union? No, it is not. Perhaps, rather than a “manual,” the authors’ aim was simply a “European overview.”

Is the Book Suitable for Its Target Audience?

The authors have targeted the book at two groups of readers: university students and readers who are novices with regard to EU wine policy. It is always easy for profes- sors to name students as their target readers—their own students may not have the option to decline the privilege. I therefore asked myself whether I would have recom- mended the book, or parts thereof, to the students in the wine economics course that I used to teach at my university. I think I would have recommended parts of it. In particular, I would have recommended Section 1.3 (“The Development of European Wine Policies”) and, for illustrations of lobbying activities, Section 3.3 (“Lobbying in the Wine Sector”). At the same time, I would have cautioned my stu- dents to stay clear from Section 2.1 (“Economics and Market Instruments in a Few Examples”) and Section 3.1, where the authors outline the public choice approach. For the contents of both sections, there are other sources that I regard as more suit- able for students.

Is the book suitable for novices with regard to EU wine policy? Perhaps it is for some novices, but not all of them. Here we have to consider three types of novices: those who are unfamiliar with both the wine industry and EU wine policy, and those who are unfamiliar with either the wine industry or EU wine policy. I consider myself an EU wine policy novice from the latter camp: I know a little bit about the wine industry and about EU agricultural policy, but I have never worked on EU wine policy. For people like me, it is useful to have a book whose authors took it upon themselves to penetrate the thicket of mind-numbing EU regulations and to bring into some intelligible order what they have bagged in their regulation and policy hunt. Such work is much appreciated and valuable. For people who are only novices with regard to the wine market but are familiar with EU agricultural policy, the book lacks background information on the peculiar- ities of wine as a product and an industry. Novices with regard to wine and to EU policy making are unlikely to read far into the book—there is not sufficient back- ground information for them in the book.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The book’s main strength is the number of facts that the authors have assembled and presented in a coherent way: the account of the historical sequence of EU wine legislation and of the entangled linkages between the various acts, the description of the evolution of wine policies of increasing complexity, the details about the new wine quality categories that have been invented by EU bureaucrats and about which wine consumers seem to know next to nothing, the roster of wine lob- bying groups, and the list of wine policy issues that trigger lobbyists’ rent-seeking reflexes.

There also are weaknesses. First, which some policy economists are likely to bemoan, the authors emphasize regulations at the expense of a more detailed treat- ment of the objectives and the consequences of the policies that are cast into legal terms by the regulations. A detailed exploration of the economic consequences of EU wine regulations, however, would have required a different book. Policy objec- tives are briefly mentioned. For example, we learn early in the book that EU wine policy, like the rest of the EU’s agricultural policy, was meant to stabilize market prices and to boost producer incomes. The question of whether the objectives were in any way justified is, however, not addressed, nor do we learn whether wine prices were so volatile that intervention by the state was justified. The focus on reg- ulation and the frequent quotations from them also introduce into the text the sort of mind-numbing idioms that are characteristic of EU legislative documents.

Another weakness of the book is the tenuous liaison between its theoretical and factual sections. In particular, Sections 2 and 3 remind me of a sauce whose fat and water components have separated. In each of the two sections, the insights from theory are only loosely blended with the facts that follow, if at all, and I was left wondering whether the theoretical sections are needed.

Finally, the text contains many passages that are written, or perhaps translated, in a style that is difficult to read, and there are a fair number of distracting little errors like misspellings, unexplained abbreviations, and instances in which the wrong table number is used in the text. I do not think the book represents the best editing effort by the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan. Given the book’s considerable retail price, readers are entitled to a more carefully edited text.

Be that as it may, the book is the best currently available entry point into the for- bidding realm of highly complex and entangled EU wine regulations. Scholars who need to venture into that realm are well advised to pay the book’s high price and to put up with its idiosyncrasies. The book will give them an impression of the complex- ities that await them and provides some orientation through the entangled pathways of EU wine regulation development.

Rolf A.E. Mueller
University at Kiel, Germany (ret.)
raem@agric-econ.uni-kiel.de
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.25

Today a group of roughly two dozen wine grape varieties with widespread appeal and consumer recognition are planted diffusely throughout the wine-growing regions of the world (Anderson, 2014). In fact, fewer than 15 wine grape varieties account for 90% of the varieties grown in major wine-producing regions, such as the United States and France. Only a few of these “international varieties” —such as Sangiovese or Nebbiolo—are native to Italy. The wine from such varieties often can represent the pinnacle of what the fruit of the vine can produce, but the popular- ity of international varieties often comes at the expense of a region’s indigenous va- rieties, and it is with this in mind that Native Wine Grapes of Italy was written.

Italy has over 377 native and genetically distinct grape varieties—more than France, Spain, and Greece combined. Nearly 30% of the world’s commercially pro- ductive wine grape varieties are in Italy. Native Wine Grapes of Italy provides grape and wine researchers, growers, producers, merchants, and consumers with a fascinat- ing insight into the existing and potential value of native Italian wine grape varieties and gives a deeper understanding of the “sometimes crazy but always wonderful  country that Italy is,” as described by its author, Ian D’Agata.

Thoroughly researched and accurately reported in depth on native Italian varie- ties, D’Agata’s capolavoro text totals 620 pages and consists of two parts. Part I is relatively short at 25 pages and well worth reading as it introduces two important topics: grape vine identification and the viticultural history of Italy. Part II presents over 400 of Italy’s native and traditional grape varieties. Native varieties are defined as those originating in a specific place and remaining almost exclusively at that lo- cation. Traditional varieties are those that are not indigenous but, rather, have been grown in a specific place for several hundred years (typically 300–500) and have been part of that land’s tradition. Cabernet Franc is an example of a traditional but not native Italian variety, since it has been grown in northeastern Italy, particu- larly the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, for hundreds of years. These two grape variety divisions are useful and far less subjective than divisions such as “classic” or “noble,” which are sometimes used in other works on grape varieties.

In order to understand Italian grape varieties, a subject full of complexities and interwoven relationships, we are first introduced in Part II to about a dozen grape groups and grape families. This gives the reader a better understanding of how the varieties are more or less related. The group and family section is then followed by sections on the major varieties, little-known varieties, and finally variety crosses. For those readers who are most interested in having fun with wine and tasting the many varieties that Italy produces, I suggest going directly to the major variety section. It covers nearly 200 of the varieties that you might find in stores in the United States, or while vacationing in Italy.

The description of each variety is hugely informative and comprehensive. First a summary statement of the variety is given, including the region(s) in which the grape is grown, its National Registry Code, and the color of the grape. Following this summary is a description of alternative names of the grape, the grape’s relationship to other varieties (including descendants from older or ancient varieties), and how the vine and its grape grow (including productivity, vigor, soil and climate preferences, and disease resistance). Each description concludes with a section indicating which wines of the variety to chose and why to choose them. Wine ratings are based on a three-star system according to the producer’s ability to grow and showcase the best qualities of the grape, in the opinion of the author. Often the description of each variety reflects its great potential and also gives a glimpse of how the variety holds genetic, financial, ecological, and social significance for each region in which it is grown.

D’Agata’s unique, erudite, and comprehensive approach reflects his extensive background in not only writing about wine but also in science and medicine. He is one of the world’s best known wine writers and a regular contributor to Decanter magazine and the International Wine Cellar newsletter. In 2012 he was named Italy’s best wine journalist by the Comitato Grandi Cru. He has lived and studied in Rome and writes with great enthusiasm and insider detail gained from traveling throughout Italy for 13 years to research the topic for this book. He is trained as a pediatric gastroenterologist, has conducted research in cellular and molecular biology, and has lectured extensively on wine and its relation to culture and health.

In his research, he recognized that many of Italy’s native grapes were on the verge of extinction, and this book is an expression of his love for Italy’s native grapes and the need to defend Italy’s grapevine biodiversity. His identification and description of these varieties and their wonderful qualities allow us to share his appreciation for their place in the world and encourage the propagation of these varieties for future generations.

The Roman saying “Nomen est omen,” meaning “The truth lies within the name,” must have been heeded by grape growers on the Italian peninsula and islands over the centuries, as can be seen in the names of the varieties that bore them fruit, drink, and sustenance, if not fame and fortune. These names are many and are often confusing but can also be amusing. While fortunately the National Registry of Grape Varieties is the official record listing the names of varieties authorized for cultivation in Italy (currently 461), many if not all of the varieties have more than one name, depending on the region where they are grown, the local dialect, and other factors. Such names are based on factors such as sensory attributes, physical attributes, viticultural behav- ior, cultivation methods, productivity levels, wine characteristics, perceived region of origin, and the names of people, saints, or other religious references. For example, the most frequently planted variety, Sangiovese, is a reference to the blood of Jupiter. Variety names related to productivity include amusing ones such as Caricalasino (load up the donkey), Stracciacambiale (rip up the promissory note), and Scacciadebito (pay the debt). Sensory-related names include the likes of Tazzelenghe (cuts the tongue) and the zingy and peppery Pulcinculo (fleas up your rear end). Single-letter changes in a name such as Corvino or Corvina can mean en- tirely different varieties. We owe thanks to D’Agata for having the ability to sort all this “truth in the naming” out for us and present the topic as it is inherently tied to the culture of Italy. As he states, “the fun never ends when identifying Italian grape varieties.”

D’Agata has a keen understanding of grapevine genetic research, a field that has greatly improved variety identification over the past two decades. The study of grape- vine identity had been based largely on the morphologic characteristics, such as size, shape, and color of the leaf, shoot, cluster, and berries and was often an inaccurate way to identify a variety. Advances in biomolecular markers that reveal DNA se- quences specific to single varieties have made possible a much better understanding of grapevine identification and inheritance. These include advances introduced in the 1990s in cellular and molecular biology, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and identification of microsatellite markers, such as nuclear and chloroplast simple sequence repeats (nSSR and cSSR, respectively). Given the huge number of varieties planted in Italy, with each variety often having a different name by region or dialect, the use of specific genetic markers has shed new light on the true identity of many varieties. His genetic descriptions of each variety, when available, represent a clear recognition by the author that it is the genetics of the variety that is most important, as it determines the basis for the color, aroma, and taste profiles of a grape variety and its wine far more than any other aspect of terroir.

Native Wine Grapes of Italy informs us of the great biodiversity of grapevines, which have accumulated over the centuries, and how that diversity has diminished and may diminish further. Of the current top 10 varieties in total planting area in Italy, two (Merlot and Chardonnay) are not Italian. From 1970 to 2010, the acreage of widely planted native varieties, such as Barbera and Primitivo, have halved while those of some non-native varieties, such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah, have skyrocketed. Even in Italy, where many barriers to re- placing vines exist, cultural and otherwise, there is some truth to Oz Clarke’s pro- nouncement that Chardonnay is “the ruthless colonizer and destroyer of the world’s vineyards and the world’s palates.” Despite the many producers who decide to pull out and replant native varieties based on the opinion of some famous, often foreign, wine consultants, there are also many farmers who decide to stick with their varieties despite such opinions. Examples of native varieties once spurned or ignored that are currently expanding in acreage and popularity include Furmint, a red grape variety of Val d’Aosta, and Pecorino, a white grape variety now grown in Abruzzo.

While survival of Italian native varieties is of critical importance to viticulture worldwide, native Italian varieties often do not readily transplant or make successful wines outside Italy. Witness the boom and bust of Sangiovese in California in the 1990s and the difficulty in growing and making great wine from the Nebbiolo grape outside Piedmont. The viticulture of Italy has a particular interest to me as a grape grower of Italian heritage with a vineyard in the United States (the Outer Coastal Plain American Viticultural Area). No doubt my ancestors and those of many other Italian Americans had difficulty in transplanting the native varieties of their region to the United States and often eventually chose to grow native “American” varieties, particularly Vitis labrusca varieties, such as Concord or Niagara. Until recently, the only recourse a grower had in choosing a successful variety was to find a variety that was well matched to the soil, climate, diseases and pests, and other circumstances in the region. Improvements in viticulture in areas such as canopy management, plant biology and nutrition, and integrated pest management have greatly helped growers expand the number of varieties that can be successfully grown in regions where it was not possible before. Although several regions in the Eastern United States can successfully grow Vitis vinifera vari- eties, few of the varieties are native to Italy. As our knowledge and abilities in genet- ics increase, we will likely not have to match a variety to a specific region or regions; rather, we will have the ability to develop characteristics in a variety that may help us to grow it wherever we want to.

Despite the exhaustive work done in writing this book, it was no doubt a labor of love, and, because of his clear, colorful writing style, the reader will share his enthu- siasm for native Italian grape varieties. I suggest not trying to read this book cover to cover in a short period of time, as you may drown in detail. Instead, try dipping in from time to time and read to better experience the pleasure Italian grape varieties can give and enjoy the Italian culture as it can be experienced through its wine va- rieties. While there are no illustrations apart from color drawings of a voluptuous Nebbiolo cluster on the front jacket cover and the sparse bearing Picolit grapevine on the back jacket cover, the use of illustrations would not have added significant value. Varieties cannot always be readily identified by morphologic depictions, illus- trations would have made the book prohibitively expensive, and D’Agata’s descrip- tive writing abilities are superb. There are three tables covering topics such as varieties planted, acreage planted, regions planted, and planting trends. There is an expansive glossary, a 20-page bibliography of scientific literature, a 16-page general index, and a 9-page index of grape varieties. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in learning about Italian varieties, from beginner to expert.

Lawrence Coia
Chairman, Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association
njwineman@comcast.net
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.24

The first thing to note about this title is that this is a serious book, and, unlike many other books about wine, its primary objective is not to entertain but to inform and instruct. As a consequence, the average wine connoisseur will find it hard going, except perhaps for the introductory and concluding sections in each chapter. It is written by and for those with more than a passing acquaintance with reasonably ad- vanced topics in econometrics. The authors hail from three continents, and the editors are to be congratulated on putting together a volume of essays by highly dis- persed authors and managing the task of keeping the style and the general method- ology reasonably uniform.

My second general comment is this: the volume consists of 16 chapters, each on a different topic, and it is not possible to do justice to each and every chapter in a brief review. I want to stress that the chapters that are not discussed in detail in what follows are no less valuable or excellent than the ones that I do discuss; my selections necessarily reflect my own interests, and no implicit criticism is to be read into these selections. Overall, I can say that all the chapters are very solid and reflect the use of appropriate methodology, and those that are empirical in orientation rely on prodi- gious amounts of data.

The volume is divided into five parts, titled Alcohol Consumption and Welfare, Consumer Behavior and Prices, Wine Ranking and Financial Issues, Intermediary Markets and Strategic Decisions, and, finally, New Topics. Just to be perverse, let me start at the end. The brief final part of this volume deals with two very timely topics: wine tourism and the high and rising alcohol content of wine. To analyze the former, Françoise Bensa and Marie-Claude Pichery collect a large sample of win- eries in Burgundy and Alsace (376 in all) and analyze the impact of wine tourism ac- tivities on variables such as on-site sales. They find that impact is mostly in the long run. Much depends on the maintenance of more or less regular contacts between the growers and the tourists, and it is noteworthy that 86% of growers recontact their visitors in one way or another. Concerning the alcohol content of wine, Alston et al. find that “even a substantial rise in average temperature … would have had only modest effects on the sugar content of wine grapes” (p. 354). In any event, alcohol content has been rising, a fact that is bemoaned by many wine connoisseurs.

Chapter 1 examines the relationship between alcohol consumption in its three principal forms (beer, wine, spirits) and self-reported measures of life satisfaction. On the whole, the relationship is negative and, in some cases, even significantly so. Chapter 2, dealing with externalities and optimal taxes, considers three types of drinkers: moderate drinkers, informed abusers, and uninformed abusers. The con- sumption of alcohol entails enhanced health and accident risks, and some of the costs of those are privately borne, while others are externalities. The total social cost of alcohol ranges between 2.1% and 2.5%, of which perhaps 0.7% is in the form of externalities. Fairly standard formulas involving the relevant elasticities yield optimal tax calculations, with the result that “the current beer tax rate is broadly consistent with the base-case welfare maximizing tax rate, the current wine tax is about half the base-case welfare maximizing tax rate and the current spirits tax is about twice the base-case welfare maximizing tax rate” (p. 44). Chapter 3 examines the effect of the Evin Law in Europe, which banned the use of certain types of advertising of alcoholic beverages. A Rotterdam model is estimat- ed, and it is found that the law significantly affects demand. I do not think that this is surprising, but it is comforting to have it confirmed.

Chapter 4 examines the effect on price of a place name when the product is, in fact, not from the place in question; to wit, sparkling wine sold in the United States as “champagne” when it is obviously not from the Champagne region. Hedonic price equations are estimated, and when French and U.S. data are pooled, the variable that indicates “champagne” in the label raises the price for the French product but lowers it for the U.S. product. Chapter 5 examines the interesting question of whether bottle size has an effect on the (scaled) price. It appears that value is increasing in bottle size, and interesting charts demonstrate that well. A quibble: it should be noted that the symbols for various products are occasionally difficult to decipher―this reviewer could not tell the difference between the symbol used for Veuve Clicquot and for Dom Perignon even with the aid of a magnifying glass. Chapter 6 examines, with the aid of an ordered probit model, whether three professional panels of wine judges show any consensus about Italian wines and tests in particular how the fraction of wines in a region is related to the fraction receiving awards. On the whole, the agree- ment of the three sets of panels is weak, which underscores the conventional wisdom that people (even experts) do not have reliable taste buds. The final chapter on consum- er behavior and prices examines the effect of appellation of origin: it turns out that label information has a positive effect on the probability of purchase by the consumer, as it does on the prices that people are willing to pay.

Part II of the volume starts with an essay by Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki on the issue of how to rank wines. This is a subject that has been much written about, and the chapter is, in fact, an encapsulated version of Balinki and Laraki’s much bigger work, Majority Judgment (MIT Press, 2011; ISBN 978-0-262-01513-4). For a work of intermediate length, the curious reader may also wish to consult Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki, “Judge: Don’t Vote” (Operations Research, 62 [3] [2014], 483–511). Balinski and Laraki make a definitive contribution by showing that the frequently used methods of ranking the wines and then determining the “best” wine by computing the rank sums for each wine are seriously deficient in that they are “incoherent,” or, alternatively, they violate the axiom of the indepen- dence of irrelevant alternatives. If wines are assigned grades à la Parker, the results have another truly terrible feature in that they are manipulable. Balinski and Laraki’s (B&L’s) method consists of finding each wine’s “majority grade,” that is, the grade that is supported by a majority against any other grade, which, in the absence of pesky problems such as ties, turns out to be the median grade. We would then declare the wine with the highest majority grade the winner. Of course, it would be desirable that the method be “strategy proof in ranking,” that is, induce each taster to give his or her honest evaluation of each wine, but it is un- fortunately the case that no method is strategy proof in ranking, although B&L’s method is the least subject to this criticism. (Proofs are omitted in this chapter but can be found in their larger work.) It will be interesting to see how long the profes- sion of wine raters will take to adopt B&L’s methodology, which everybody should. I am not holding my breath because we are all conservative and change only slowly and because we all have much invested in existing computer programs―one hates nothing more than having to discard a program that works well and writing a new one. In any event, this is a fundamental contribution and also stands out by being the only one in the volume that is purely theoretical.

In Chapter 9, we find out about wine as a financial investment and learn that it tends to have a low correlation with other assets, which would make investment in wine a reasonable way of diversifying one’s portfolio, with the caveat that “wine is not a panacea that will always yield superb investment” (p. 196). In Chapter 10, we learn, perhaps not unsurprisingly, that the behavior of French wine companies responds to the business cycle in terms of capital management and other policies.

Part III of the volume begins with a chapter on the technical efficiency of grape growers. It estimates production frontier functions popularized in the 1970s by Dennis Aigner and finds via likelihood ratio tests that the translog production func- tion beats the Cobb-Douglas production function. A generalization of the model permits the use of panel data and accommodates time-varying technical efficiency. For the Australian data employed here, it turns out that there are significant techni- cal inefficiencies and evidence of technical change. Most interestingly, the shadow price of water indicates that farmers underutilize water. A quibble: there is an error in Figure 11-3, in that the vertical scale has separate two notches that are marked with the frequency 15. Chapter 12 deals with product assortment and efficiency and relies on the relatively rarely employed data envelopment analysis of Abraham Charnes. Chapter 13 analyzes wine bottling decisions with the aid of a sequential probit model, whereas Chapter 14 is devoted to the export intentions of wineries.

All the chapters deal with important as well as interesting issues, and all are char- acterize by high levels of technical competence. With the possible exception of Chapter 8, they will all be of interest to econometricians and scholars researching the wine industry, while Chapter 8 should be of prime interest to all who are engaged in rating or grading wines. The editors, Eric Giraud-Héraud and Marie- Claude Pichery, are to be congratulated for having rendered a great service to oenophiles.

Richard E. Quandt
Princeton University
metrics@quandt.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.23

This volume, with the immodest but entirely appropriate subtitle, indeed lives up to its billing. There is so much to like about and learn from it. To help one get oriented, ten maps are provided at the continent, country, and regional levels. The first chapter begins with a two-page history of the earliest viticulture and winemaking in South America, starting with the first planting of vineyards south of Lima, Peru, in 1548. We then jump to the late twentieth century for an overview of the wine industry in the four major producers, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.

Before delving into each of these, as well as lesser players, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela, Goldstein dedicates a substantial chapter to grape varieties grown in the continent. “Official sources indicate commer- cial plantings of 165 different grapes in Argentina, 117 in Brazil, 65 in Uruguay, and over 60 in Chile” (p. 13), we learn. Not surprising, vinifera cultivars originating in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and Germany were brought by immigrants who needed something familiar to drink in their new lands. A class of vinifera varieties called criollas came over with the Spanish conquerors and settlers in the 1500s and remain significant sources of everyday wines. But some, like the three different Torrontés in Argentina, have been gaining favor especially in the American market. When attempts to grow vinifera failed in the less congenial climates, hybrids and even labrusca varietals like Niagara were imported from North America.

Individual chapters are dedicated to each of the four largest wine-producing countries, with the two chapters on Argentina and Chile comprising half the book. This is appropriate since each has over half a million acres planted to wine grapes, far more than any other country on the continent. The lesser players are covered in a single chapter. The format for each of these chapters should serve well the needs of the casual reader, the wine buyer, and the prospective tourist. Each starts with a quick summary of statistics, leading grape varietals, and memorable vintages. An introduction includes Goldstein’s personal obser- vations based on his visits to the area and a general discussion of the lay of each land. A short history of winemaking in the country follows. Game-changing person- alities in the industry are then introduced. Next is an extensive discussion of each country’s wine regions, along with maps and a list of recommended producers in each. Winery profiles conclude the chapters. These are conveniently presented alphabetically with addresses, both physical and web, and information for the visitor. Key personnel, important grape varieties, and signature wines are also listed. A crisp, chatty, and generally appealing paragraph variously touching on the particular history, distinctive bottlings, and other factoids concludes the coverage of each producer.

Malbec has become synonymous with Argentine wine and “for most wine lovers, Mendoza means Malbec” (p. 55). Goldstein cites low rainfall, most of which is in the summer, and a wide thermal amplitude as the reasons for its success. I have sampled a lovely Malbec from Susana Balboa, one of Goldstein’s game changers, as well as an enticing Torrontés she bottles under her low-cost, high-value Crios label. The rustic Bonarda, known as Douce Noir in France and Charbono in the United States, is popular for beber diariamente and can be quite pleasant either in a blend with other red grapes or on its own. A reasonably priced 2006 La Posta Bonarda Estela Armando is one example of the latter that I have enjoyed. “La Posta makes single-vineyard wines from selected old-vine plantings … each of which have been identified for their depth of character, the history of their land, and the personality of the families who own them” (p. 92), Goldstein tells us.

And then there is Argentine Pinot Noir. In 2010 and 2014, Bodega Chacra was the country’s sole representative at the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) held annually in my hometown of McMinnville, Oregon. Goldstein notes that wines produced by Chacra from older vineyards “are frequently considered the grand crus of Argentina’s Pinot Noir” (p. 77). I wrote about a less exalted but none- theless charming bottling from this winery in an article on the Passport to Pinot 2014, the abridged version of IPNC: “The 2012 Barda from Northern Patagonia was something of a revelation with funky aromas competing with floral notes and an elegant palate with lots of acidity and good tannins. Winery proprietor Piero Incisa, who showed interest in my connection to the American Association of Wine Economists, promised to stay in touch and could become my latest friend in the industry” (www.oregonwinepress.com). Piero’s economic concern is that inflation will once again raise its troublesome head.

Though the Sauvignon Blancs and Carmenères I have had from Chile were cer- tainly solid and good values, I cannot recall drinking any of note. Nevertheless, the chapter on that country excited me the most, perhaps because Goldstein’s enthu- siasm about what is going on there is contagious. As he explains: “Signs of a renais- sance in Chilean wine can be tasted in many new terroir-focused wines being produced in new regions by gifted young winemakers” (p. 112). In response to the very large dominant wine companies that make a broad range of wines, including those considered some of the best in the country, the Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes (MOVI) was formed “to promote smaller-scale terroir-focused wine- making operations” (p. 111). Significant wine regions can be found all along the almost 3,000-mile length of the country, covering a wide range of temperature zones. Many of the wineries are within a reasonable distance from the capital, Santiago, making them readily accessible to tourists.

The chapter on Brazil emphasizes sparkling wines. “Almost one-third of the coun- try’s domestic wine sales of fine wines, and close to one-fifth of total domestic wines sales, are in bubbles. The range is staggering” (p. 182). Credit for the success of bubbly is due to Mario Geisse who “first came to Brazil in 1976 with Moët & Chandon” (p. 183). Vitis labrusca dominates the still wine produced in the country.

Relatively tiny Uruguay has been making something of a splash with approach- able Tannat. First planted in 1870 by Pascual Harrigue, this grape was known by his surname in the country until the 1970s. As the world began to discover “what’s Tannat like,” the original name was adopted. Uruguayan winemakers seem to have mastered the tannins producing for Goldstein “the best Tannat any- where in the world” (p. 33).

Of the six remaining countries with vineyards, some have a limited amount of fine wine production, especially Bolivia. Criticism should be both credible and kind, two characteristics that do not necessarily go well together. Yet Goldstein pulls it off in his assessments of wineries that are not quite there. His paragraph about a relatively new producer in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz region concludes by saying: “To date, Uvairenda has just a few vintages under its belt, so it is too early to rush to judgment. The winemakers have the vision but not yet the wine” (p. 247). While the first vine- yards in South America were planted near Lima, “Pisco rules the roost in Peru” (p. 241). Columbia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Venezuela each have three or fewer wineries, so their inclusion seems to be justified only by a desire for completeness.

Since this book succeeds on so many levels, being able to find things easily is almost as important as the content. As complete an index—26 two-column pages—as one could ever hope for facilitates the search for the most obscure reference.

Anyone considering a trip will want to study “Touring South American Wine Country” (pp. 253–259) and “Dining South American Style” (pp. 261–264). Suffice it to say, Goldstein, a frequent visitor to those parts, makes it clear that things are very different there. “Traveling the wine regions of South America is not like wine tourism in other places. In the Napa Valley or New South Wales, all you really have to do is rent a car, add a GPS or map, and set out. Taking that approach in South America is a ticket to adventure” (p. 253). Goldstein shares a list of English-speaking drivers who make sure that the adventure is restricted to the tasting part. For those planning a trip soon, consider the e-book (at this writing, the Kindle version costs a hefty $27.06) so that the information can be readily accessed.

Goldstein has gifted us with a thoroughly authoritative, reader-friendly, and, yes, essential exposition of a current and future source of fabulous wines of all styles. Even if you have no travel plans, his wisdom will guide you to a whole continent of wholly contented drinking possibilities.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.9

The Wine Atlas of Germany is a wonderful coffee-table–style book that takes a thorough look at the wine geography of Germany. It contains excellent wine maps and a wealth of useful information about German wine. However, the atlas has its limitations because (1) the way in which German winemakers classify their wines is in transition; and (2) the Wine Atlas of Germany is a translation of the Weinatlas Deutschland, published in Germany in 2007; the cut-off date for the German version was almost ten years ago, so the Wine Atlas of Germany was already outdated in a number of important aspects when it was published. This is the only weakness of the book, but it is a major one.

The authors are Dieter Braatz (deputy editor-in-chief of the German gourmet magazine Der Feinschmecker), Ulrich Sautter (wine writer) and Ingo Swoboda (co-author of Riesling). Jancis Robinson provided a foreword, and the translator, Kevin Goldberg, added a note at the beginning of the book.

The Wine Atlas of Germany is essentially divided into two main parts. First, intro- ductory chapters provide background to the ongoing reform of wine classification in Germany, a discussion of the factors that make a vineyard unique, an overview of the history of winegrowing in Germany, and an introduction to the grape varieties in Germany. Second (and comprising the majority of the book), 16 chapters cover all German wine regions, one by one. Each of these chapters includes detailed maps and information on the area’s soils, history, and main grape varieties.

Turning to the issue of wine classification in Germany, the basic German wine classification system is that of the German wine law of 1971, which replaced the German wine law of 1930. The German wine law of 1971 created the Prädikatswein system, which links must weights to a hierarchy of predicates. In ascending order of ripeness of the grapes at harvest, these are Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein, and Trockenbeerenauslese. Importantly, although the hierarchy of predicates is not a quality hierarchy, in reality it is seen that way. The terroir as a determining factor for quality clearly moved to the backburner in Germany as a result of the introduction of the Prädikatswein system in 1971.

In terms of vineyard classification, the 1971 law distinguishes between Einzellage and Grosslage. Einzellage is a single vineyard; Grosslage is a collection of single vine- yards. A village typically has, say, ten single vineyards and one collective vineyard. The wine law of 1971 redrew the vineyard map of Germany considerably, as the law required that single vineyards be at least 5 hectares in size. As a consequence, the 1971 law resulted in fewer but larger and more heterogeneous single vineyards than before. The Wine Atlas of Germany covers all collective vineyards and all single vineyards delineated by the German wine law of 1971.

The 1971 law does not contain a ranking of the single vineyards. However, the authors divided them into four levels: (1) excellent vineyard; (2) superior vineyard; (3) good vineyard, and (4) other vineyards. The vineyard ranking in the Wine Atlas of Germany is a subjective ranking of the authors, based on various infor- mation and historical documents that are available, such as Prussian tax documents for the 1800s.

The ranking of the authors, all three accomplished experts on German wine, is sound, although some criticisms have been raised. For instance, just seven sites along the entire Mosel are listed as exceptional, 13 if you include the Saar and Ruwer. This compares with 11 exceptional vineyards in the Pfalz, 16 exceptional vineyards in the Rheingau, and 21 exceptional vineyards in the Nahe. The large community in the world of fruity-sweet Mosel-Saar-Ruwer wines fans is obviously disappointed by these ratings. But this is because the Wine Atlas of Germany is a translation of a German wine atlas, and in Germany, the wines of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer do not enjoy the same cult status as they do outside Germany.

A few years ago, the VDP (the association of German elite wine makers) revolu- tionized the German classification system by moving to a terroir-based classification, following the Bourgogne model. With the latest modifications in 2012, at the bottom of the VDP classification are the basic entry-level wines (Gutswein). Above these are the village wines (Ortswein), followed by the single vineyard wines worthy of premier cru (Erste Lage) or even a grand cru (Grosse Lage) status. Note that in 2012, Grosse Lage replaced Erste Lage at the top of the VDP classification. Note that Grosse Lage should not be confused with Grosslage, the term for a large collective site in the 1971 law (which, in my view, should be abolished).

Obviously, the Wine Atlas of Germany reflects only the early phase of these funda- mental reforms. Unfortunately, much has happened in the past few years, and this is not reflected in the atlas. Thus, if you have a recent vintage of a VDP producer, the Wine Atlas of Germany is of only limited utility if you want to know more about where the wine comes from.

Should one care about the VDP classification? It is the classification of just 200 winemakers, but 20,000 or so winemakers are not members of the VDP. Yes, one should care. It is the elite of Germany (although quite a number of top winemakers are not members of the VDP). When it comes to drinking German wine outside Germany, the wine market is dominated by VDP producers. And, rightly in my view, the Wine Atlas of Germany pays a lot of attention to the VDP classification, even though it does not capture the changes of the past few years.

Finally, looking ahead, Germany is in the process of changing the wine geography further by allowing Gewann names—a subplot of a single vineyard—on the label, in response to the fact that many single vineyards established in the wine law of 1971 are of quite varying quality (i.e., heterogeneous). Many such Gewanne have already been registered, and you will see more and more of them on German wine

labels. This reform, of course, is not reflected in the Wine Atlas of Germany.

In sum, the Wine Atlas of Germany does not capture the most recent movement to a Bourgogne-type ranking of vineyards in Germany, but there is much more to the book. Overall, the Wine Atlas of Germany is a beautiful book with great maps and a lot of background information. The excellent photographs capture essential details of each region covered. Finally, German wine lovers outside Germany will be excited by the coverage of the internationally lesser-known regions, such as Baden, Württemberg, and Saxony.

Christian G.E. Schiller
International Monetary Fund (ret.) and emeritus professor, University of Mainz, Germany
Cschiller@schiller-wine.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.8

Economists have long tried to translate the concept of comparative advantage into a measurable concept: using Belassa’s revealed comparative advantage measure makes it possible to reduce the competitiveness of an industry or a country to a single number. One can even go further and establish the causes of this comparative advan- tage, for example, does it arise because of government intervention, because of market factors, or from factors on the input side or on the output side, and so forth, with techniques such as the policy analysis matrix. The problem with these approaches, however, is that in the real world industries don’t trade; firms do; and firms operate along value chains and within clusters that are as important at deter- mining competitiveness as are the attributes of the individual firm and its environ- ment. So the appropriate question is: “What makes clusters competitive?”

This is the title of a recent (2013) volume edited by Anil Hira, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The book consists of an introductory chapter (Explaining the Success of Clusters), an overview of the global wine industry, five case studies (from British Columbia in Canada, Extremadura in Spain, Chile, Bolgheri-Val Di Cornia in Italy, and from Australia), and a concluding chapter. Professor Hira is a coauthor on the first two chapters, the conclusion, and the Canadian case study. The other authors are an interesting mix of economists, agricultural economists, and management scholars.

The book uses the global wine industry as a case study of the broader question of why some “late-developing industries [are] competitive in global markets, while others fail.” It is argued that the selection of a single industry is justified because this provides a control over the many different types of support that industries receive. The cluster approach is chosen because of its ubiquity in both the literature and practice, albeit with a twist that accounts for industrial policy perspectives and innovation theory. The wine industry is chosen because it is geographically concen- trated and the quality of the product is dependent on location, and because it is a global industry “subject to continuous technological revolutions.”

The methodology employed in the book consists mainly of a comparison of the development path of different wine industries in different parts of the world. This was done within a common framework of analysis using a common survey question- naire. The framework consists of four parts. First is a Schumpeterian evolutionary framework for innovation that traces how markets change to provide new opportu- nities. The second part is based on the idea popularized by Alice Amsden among others, namely that a developmental state has the ability to select “winners” and to support them with appropriate policy instruments. Third is the notion that econ- omic wealth is highly correlated with social capital. Finally, supply chains are becoming increasingly globalized, with the result that industries can relocate far easier than in the past. This loosening of the ties between industry and the state influ- ences the efficacy of state intervention in the economy.

Chapter 2 traces the rise of the New World producers as a force in the global wine industry that started in the early 1980s, and that was accompanied by deepening glo- balization. The wine world of the 1960s was very different from that of today. In the 1970s, the world’s biggest exporter by volume was Algeria (mostly to France), and there were no New World producers among the top ten exporters. In the first eight years of the new millennium (2001–2008), the top three exporters were Italy, France, and Spain, but now five of the top ten were New World producers (Australia, Chile, the United States, South Africa, and Argentina). The authors also provide evidence of the improvement in quality of these wines. The key role played by institutions responsible for technology development and transfer in the New World countries is highlighted. These two chapters plus the British Columbia case study make up half the book.

The case studies provide some interesting insights into what works well and what works less well. These “lessons” are summarized in the final chapter, which addresses the three questions that the book itself asks, namely, what explains the success of clusters, what are the sources of adaptability to market changes, and what tools and metrics are available to reduce transaction costs? The editor was very brave to include the first two (British Columbia [BC] in Canada and Extremadura), because in both cases the conclusion is that there is little evidence of a cluster, although the BC case may be a “proto-cluster,” while in Extremadura the negative role played by the state is explicitly highlighted. Brave, but not foolish: both these case studies provide rich texture to the conceptual framework used in the book.

The fourth case study (Bolgheri–Val Di Cornia in Tuscany) also highlights the negative role played by the state, although in this case there is solid evidence of a cluster that was able to build competitiveness up to the early part of the new millen- nium (the authors are less sanguine about the post–Great Recession prospects). The reason for the earlier success, they argue, has to be found in the role of firm-level entrepreneurship, with specific firms being responsible for introducing and diffusing new technologies throughout the region.

The Australian and Chilean case studies are more straightforward, given that their high degree of competitiveness is a fact of life. In this regard, industries around the globe learned from one another and built competitiveness through alliances among the state, industry, and private firms. Notwithstanding this success, however, the Australian case study goes further and shows how country competitiveness, built in the Australian case on dominance by global wine corporations, has been eroded everywhere, as it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate product that is transported around the world and sold in bulk, most often at steep discounts in supermarkets. So these two chapters reopen the questions posed at the beginning of the book: how do “traditional producers who created authentic wines with their own stories and identities, wines that could be traced back to a starting point and unveil their own histories” become and remain competitive in the new globalized wine market? This is a brave question, and one hopes that Professor Hira will turn his attention in that direction in the future.

Nick Vink
University of Stellenbosch
nv@sun.ac.za
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.7
Reference
Balassa, B. (1965). Trade liberalization and revealed comparative advantage. The Manchester School, 33, 99–123.

Great wine books, like great vintages, are often more hyperbole than reality. In fact, they are both rare. Charles Ludington’s 2013 book, The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History, is unlike anything that has come before it in its depth of research and its particular focus. At the risk of taking the analogy too far, Ludington has written a wine book for the ages.

The Politics of Wine in Britain analyzes what is arguably the most significant era in the history of wine, though in a locale that may surprise us: England. Using the years 1649 and 1862 as his bookends (weighty years in global wine history, as it turns out), Ludington bucks the trend of ascribing taste making to growers and distributors of wine. Instead, he hounds Britain’s politicos and consuming elite through an impress- ive array of sources to trace the changing nature of taste (as in a taste for something). In addition to turning his gaze on the consumer, Ludington is at pains to show that changes in tastes were not driven by the palate or liver but, rather, reflected and con- stituted political power and legitimacy. Though not without flaws, The Politics of Wine in Britain challenges our understanding of vinous history and destabilizes our assumptions about politics and power in the early modern wine trade.

As any historian of Europe knows, early modern Britain was greater than the sum of its parts. The exclusive focus on England, and then Great Britain after 1707, is not the limitation that it may appear. Ludington’s wine men are traders, consumers, and politicians in what was becoming the world’s premier economic and imperial power. If “wine was integral to British political culture,” as Ludington claims, then we may justifiably ponder the extent of the wine trade’s impact on industrialization, the spread of liberal capitalism, and even imperialism. Although Ludington is not inter- ested in pursuing his argument this far, he dexterously shows that politics created the public’s taste for wine. In doing so, Ludington challenges existing arguments of wine scholars, including those who ultimately suggest a similar politically laden relation- ship between taste and wine.

The Politics of Wine in Britain is divided into four sections, each of which is thorough enough to warrant its own book. Part I, titled the “Politicization of Wine,” grounds the story in the heady days of the mid-seventeenth century during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the rising tides of Francophilia and Francophobia, and the critical need to import wine for both tippling and taxing. Against the wishes of the king, Charles II, the House of Commons viewed French wine, particularly the popular claret (Bordeaux), with increasing suspicion. Wine had become a poli- ticized tool in the disputes between Tories and Whigs—the former associating claret with aristocratic wealth and a strong monarchy and the latter launching accu- sations that importing claret benefited France at the expense of England and that it led to effeminizing, immoral, and childlike drunkenness.

Ludington takes an important stand against the accepted historiography here. An English embargo on French goods during the Nine Years’ War (1689–1697) and a series of tariff hikes on French wine in the second half of the seventeenth century undermined claret’s leading position in the English market. Wines from Spain and Portugal would concomitantly replace claret as the Englishman’s “common draught” by 1700. In other words, claret’s decline and port’s rise in the English market actually preceded the 1703 Methuen treaty, long thought to be the exclusive factor in determining this monumental shift in English drinking habits. In addition, Ludington shows with an impressive range of statistical and anecdotal data how the embargoes and tariffs imposed on claret gave way to fraudulent trade and false declarations. Despite the increasing relevance of Iberian wines and the difficulty in importing French wine legally, the English (even Whig) love for claret did not fade. The politicization of claret around 1700 did not end in England. Scottish par- liamentarians irked their English counterparts by continuing to import claret, their preferred drink anyway. The Wine Act of 1703, which permitted the landing of French wine at Scottish ports (a thinly veiled snub against the English), and the Union of 1707, which joined the kingdoms of England and Scotland, were both cut from the same political cloth. Claret’s symbolism in Scotland as a drink with which to flout the English had been established.

Wrangling between Tories and Whigs over foreign policy did not conceal the fact that wine from somewhere was necessary for Britain’s elite and middling sorts (p. 61). Parts II and III recount the sensational eighteenth-century port revolution in Britain, a revolution embedded within the turbulent political economy of early modern Atlantic trade. Ludington’s descriptions of the era’s complications are engaging, but few are more exasperating than the writings of Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe. Defoe was indecisive, first arguing for the greater importation of port because of the Portuguese willingness to purchase English manufactures, then for a loosened trade with France, not least because—as Ludington points out on multiple occasions—even political opponents of France generally preferred French wine.

For the men involved in these debates, both claret and port became usable political symbols. Over time, claret secured its reputation as the drink of the rich and fashion- able while port solidified its association with the middle classes. Ludington is at his best when he ventures beyond the political to decipher societal pretensions and beha- viors. Claret, we learn, was intimately bound with eighteenth-century conceptions of politeness and the emergence of wine connoisseurship—meaning the discourse of tasting and describing. In some sense, good taste replaced aristocratic lineage as a rationale for political legitimacy. In Scotland, claret remained a “common” drink longer than it did in England. In fact, Scottish masculinity, particularly in the face of English oppression, was tied to its consumption. In the words of John Home (1722–1808), a Scottish poet and Presbyterian minister: “Firm and erect the Caledonian Stood/Old was his mutton and his claret good” (p. 117).

In contrast to claret, port developed as a drink for the “middle ranks,” though Ludington is clever enough not to reduce its ascension to purely economic phenom- ena. While the terms of the Methuen treaty kept tariffs on French wine higher than those on Portuguese wine, this is not enough to explain why port (of all Portuguese wines) rose to the fore nor is it enough to explain why port became the patriotic drink par excellence for the English tavern man. To understand this, we must, as Ludington suggests, consider port’s favorable price vis-à-vis claret, its ready availability, and its strength (i.e., alcohol content). Ludington also considers the technological innovations and natural limitations of the Douro Valley to help explain port’s success (most readers of this journal will know that port is not an ordinary red wine).

By the 1780s, port had experienced a kind of social ascendency in England. Whereas it had previously been the favored drink of the “middle ranks,” it was now, legitimately, the “Englishman’s wine” (p. 145). Consumers had benefited from improvements in port production and in wine quality generally, including the invention of the wine bottle. The qualitative improvement in port wine coincided with the elite’s need to fend off accusations of effeminate and, worse still, “French” behaviors. Robust port wine proved the ideal elixir. At the same time, port had overtaken claret as the preferred wine of most Scots. While port’s incursion into Scotland hinged on many of the same reasons that had allowed it to rise to pro- minence in England, we must also consider the presence of Scots in the port trade (notably the Sandeman brothers) and the consolidating impact on British identity by eighteenth-century wars. Nevertheless, Ludington stresses that the Scottish turn toward port was part and parcel of the broader creation of British identity, a process that evolved slowly and steadily, not suddenly.

In Part IV, titled “Drunkenness, Sobriety, and Civilization?,” Ludington pushes his examination into the nineteenth century. By addressing intoxication in the late Georgian era, Ludington convinces the reader that this overlooked period (nestled between the rambunctious eighteenth century and the Victorian era) was not a “valley of sobriety between two mountains of crapulence,” as is often inferred (p. 189). Ludington leaves no doubt about social drinking and its association with the “warrior masculinity” of the late Georgian era (p. 191), an ideal cherished by both the elite and middle strata. In a welcome respite from the male drunkenness that Ludington scrupulously analyzes, we also learn of the increasing popularity of sherry in England, particularly among women, in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Although the book has no formal conclusion—an unfortunate weakness—the final chapter of Part IV serves as the story’s finale. In a radical reversal of the pre- vious two centuries’ policies, British parliamentarians decided once again to coddle French imports, including wine. However, a change in policy did not necess- arily give way to the anticipated changes in behavior, as drinkers across the social spectrum clung to their stubborn consumption patterns. The nineteenth-century “wine debate,” as it was known, pitted those who supported a reduction in wine tariffs against those who were worried that such a reduction would negatively affect government revenue. While the tariff legislation of 1860–1862 helped catalyze French wine imports, it hardly ruined the trade in port and sherry, as some suggested at the time. Beyond the reduction in price, French wine had regained favor because its noble pedigree was beneficial in an era dominated by a hybrid of new and old money, commercial wealth and landed wealth, Victorian temperance, and free (or freer) trade.

It is a pity that Ludington does not analyze the drinking habits of Britain’s lower social strata, as this would greatly enhance (or perhaps work against) his claims about politics and taste. There is also, somewhat surprisingly, an inadequate discus- sion of the robust historiography of consumption. These two shortfalls leave the casual reader with three false impressions: (1) the lower classes did not consume alcohol; (2) wine was certainly more ubiquitous than gin and beer; and (3) that con- suming alcohol was only a political decision (i.e., Britain had a society without alco- holics). These are relatively minor flaws in a book that delivers so much.

In addition to the book’s 30-plus figures, photographs, and reproductions from primary sources, there are more than 40 tables and graphs. An appendix traces English duties on foreign wine from the 1660s to the 1860s, including those placed on Rhenish and Cape wines. Ludington is competent enough to draw from a number of historical subdisciplines, including economic history, but it is the broad range of his analytical view as well as the impressive breadth and depth of research that make The Politics of Wine in Britain such an important contribution to the lit- erature on early modern England, gender and alcohol, political economy, and, of course, the history of wine.

Kevin D. Goldberg
Kennesaw State University
kgoldbel@kennesaw.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2015.6