Journal of Wine Economics Volume 10 | 2015 | No. 2

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

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

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