Journal of Wine Economics Volume 11 | 2016 | No. 2

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

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

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

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

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

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