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JWE Volume 13 | 2018 | No. 2

Journal of Wine Economics Volume 13 | 2018 | No. 2

Introduction to the Issue

Karl Storchmann
Pages: 117-118
Full Text PDF
Introduction

This issue of the Journal of Wine Economics opens with “Alcohol Consumption in the United States: Past, Present, and Future Trends” by James Fogarty and Derby Voon (Fogarty and Voon, 2018). The authors examine long-run changes in U.S. alcohol consumption patterns at the state level and present forecasts for per capita consumption of beer, wine, and spirits in 2022, employing ARIMA. They find that, for about 30 years beginning in the early 1970s, there was a clear trend towards increased convergence in both the level of consumption and the consump- tion mix among U.S. states for. However, since the early 2000s, the opposite has been true, and consumption levels have dispersed. The authors forecast a further increase in dispersion rather than convergence in per capita consumption. Although beer has been the dominant alcoholic beverage in most states, this dominance is likely to weaken. Per capita wine consumption is predicted to increase by 2022, but will not exceed a market share above 45%, measured in grams of ethanol, in any state.

Florine Livat and Hervé Remaud analyze “Factors Affecting Wine Price Mark-up in Restaurants” (Livat and Remaud, 2018). Drawing on 1,869 price observations from 267 restaurants they regress the percentage mark-ups on various wine and res- taurant characteristics. They find that a sommelier’s experience or having a somme- lier at all does not influence a restaurant’s wine price mark-up. Likewise, the regression results suggest that mark-ups decline with increasing (wholesale) price of the wine; expensive wines exhibit smaller mark-ups. In contrast, restaurant char- acteristics such as being associated with a hotel, high meal prices and various meal style characteristics all exert a positive effect on the mark-up.

In “Wine Cycles in South Africa,” Nick Vink, Willem H. Boshoff, Johan Fourie, and Rossouw van Jaarsveld (Vink et al., 2018) shed some light on the economic history of the wine industry in South Africa. Drawing on several sources, the authors first construct a harmonized production time series starting in 1700. They then relate the various production cycles with cycles in real GDP per capita over the same period, matching it to the historical narrative. “In this regard, a 300-year annual data series of South African wine production explains the evolution not only of one of the largest agricultural sectors, but of the South African economy in general” (p. 182).

The fourth paper, entitled “Hoppiness Is Happiness? Under-fertilized Hop Treatments and Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Beer,” by Gnel Gabrielyan, Thomas L. Marsh, Jill J. McCluskey, and Carolyn F. Ross (Gabrielyan et al., 2018) focuses on the effects that different nitrogen regimes have on the perceived quality of hops and its impact on the willingness of consumers to pay for beer in an experimental setting. Their research question is somewhat related to the low yield– high quality assumption (or myth) for wine. Similar to the findings of Matthews (2015) and Uzes and Skinkis (2016) for wine, Gabrielyan et al. do not find any negative correlation between hops yield and beer quality. “The results indicate that uninformed consumers in a blind tasting could identify the differences in beer made from hops across the fertilization treatments and, thus, implying that all else equal sufficient fer- tilizer is required to achieve satisfactory hoppiness for which consumers are willing to pay” (p. 160).

The last paper of this issue, authored by Kym Anderson and Kimie Harada (Anderson and Harada, 2018), examines “How Much Wine Is Really Produced and Consumed in China, Hong Kong, and Japan?” The authors find that production and consumption data in these countries are exaggerated for several reasons. First, imported bulk wine is often added to domestically produced wine without being declared on the label; similar issues arise from wine made from imported grape juice concentrate. Second, wine is often double-counted, that is, domestic wine pro- duced in one region of the country may be blended with wine produced in another region, with both regions claiming it as their contribution to national production. Third, some smuggled wine re-exports and imports are unrecorded. Overall, the deviations between officially reported and calculated production data in both China and Japan are non-trivial, suggesting that “foreign suppliers may face consid- erably less competition in the Chinese and Japanese markets from local producers than official data imply” (p. 216).

Karl Storchmann
New York University

Obituary

Obituary Stephen B. Chaikind

Karl Storchmann
Pages: 119-120
Full Text

The American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) and the wine economics community were saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Stephen Barry Chaikind on April 11, 2018 after a brief illness. He was 68 years old.

Dr. Chaikind was born on August 22, 1949, in New York City. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Baruch College–The City University of New York (CUNY) in 1971, a Master’s degree in economics from the City College of New York in 1974, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree, also in economics, from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1978.

His first job after completing his doctorate was with the Congressional Budget Office as Principal Analyst and Economist (1977–1984). In 1984, he became Chief Economist for Decision Resources Corporation, a large healthcare research and consulting company (1984–1989).

In 1989, Dr. Chaikind joined Gallaudet University in Washington DC, where he was a professor in the Department of Business until 2012. Upon his retirement, he was named Professor Emeritus. From 2011–2015, he also was an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Master of Science in Applied Economics program.

Dr. Chaikind became a member of the AAWE in 2009 and, until his death, was one of its driving forces. Beginning with the Annual AAWE Conference in Reims (Champagne, France), he and his wife of 35 years, Hinda Chaikind, were active AAWE conference attendees. Dr. Chaikind contributed to the conferences with numerous research presentations and chaired several conference sessions. He com- piled a comprehensive and well used list of Sources for Wine Economics Data for researchers, which is posted on AAWE’s website. He also contributed many thought- fully written book reviews for the Journal of Wine Economics. In the fall of 2012, his paper “The Role of Viticulture and Enology in the Development of Economic Thought: How Wine Contributed to Modern Economic Theory,” in which he exam- ines the works by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Léon Walras, Alfred Marshall, and others, was published in the Journal of Wine Economics. “…wine’s ubiquitous presence throughout civilized history has served as the basis and catalyst for the development of numerous economic concepts. The prominence of wine as a central factor in economic thought predates the modern era and continues to the present.”

Karl Storchmann
New York University

Alcohol Consumption in the United States: Past, Present, and Future Trends

James Fogarty & Derby Voon
Pages: 121-143
Full Text PDF
Abstract

This research examines long-run changes in alcohol consumption patterns for the United States, at the state level, and presents forecasts for per capita consumption of beer, wine, and spirits developed using the ARIMA methodology. The evidence is then presented on the extent of convergence in consumption through time. This evidence shows that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, a pattern of convergence in both the level of consumption and the consumption mix was evident, but since the early 2000s, and unlike the pattern observed globally, there has been a reversal of this trend. The changes in consumption through time are illustrated via ternary plots. Bayesian estimation methods are used to for- mally describe changes in historical consumption patterns and to investigate the impact of policy settings on consumption forecasts. There were no systematic correlations found between alcohol policy settings and forecast future consumption changes, or tax rate levels and forecast consumption changes.

Factors Affecting Wine Price Mark-up in Restaurants

Florine Livat & Hervé Remaud
Pages: 144-159
Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how restaurants determine the percentage of wine mark-up. Wine sales are a substantial contributor to restaurants’ profitability, therefore a better understanding of the factors affecting mark-up is critical for the industry. Here, the mark-up is expressed as a percentage over the cost and refers to a cost-plus pricing strategy. Sommeliers from around the world, the majority of whom were members of the International Sommelier Association, were approached to complete our Internet-based questionnaire administered between February 2014 and May 2014. Of the 800 who began the survey, 267 fully completed the questionnaire, generating 1,869 observations. We regressed the declared percentage mark-up against restaurant and wine list characteristics, including managerial practices and wine steward characteristics, and showed that if the restaurants apply a simple rule of thumb to set wine prices, focusing on every price segment, it appears that sommeliers do not have much impact on the percentage mark-up.

Wine Cycles in South Africa

Nick Vink, Willem H. Boshoff, Johan Fourie & Rossouw van Jaarsveld
Pages: 182-198
Abstract

In this article, medium-run cycles in wine production in South Africa are extracted and related to similar cycles in real GDP per capita during the same period. In addition to removing noise in the historical data, smoothing out short-run fluctuations also eliminates the short-run impact on agricultural production due to idiosyncratic shocks such as weather events, wars, and vine diseases. By isolating the medium-run cycles, it is possible to verify the timing and duration of each cycle, matching it with the historical narrative. In this regard, a 300-year annual data series of South African wine production explains the evolution not only of one of the largest agricultural sectors, but of the South African economy in general.

How Much Wine Is Really Produced and Consumed in China, Hong Kong, and Japan?

Kym Anderson & Kimie Harada
Pages: 199-220
Abstract

Statistics on the wine market in countries where it is not traditionally produced or consumed are estimates using simple methods. In northeast Asia those statistics are exaggerated for a combination of several reasons. One is a labelling issue: imported bulk wine is able to be added to domestically produced wine without the front label having to declare the bottle may contain foreign product. Similar freedom applies to wine made from imported grape juice concentrate. A second (particularly in China) is a double-counting issue: domestic wine produced in one region of the country may be blended with wine produced in and pack- aged for final sale from another region, with both regions claiming it as their contribution to national wine output. A third possibility is a smuggling issue: some wine re-exports and imports are unrecorded. These possibilities of the wine market being exaggerated are signifi- cant for firms seeking to export to and sell in such countries, especially in the fast-growing ones of northeast Asia. This article shows the extent to which estimates for the region could change for such indicators as per capita wine consumption, wine self-sufficiency, and the region’s share of global wine consumption, when alternative assumptions are made in response to these issues.

Book & Film Reviews

Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World

By: Johan Swinnen & Devin Briski
Reviewer: Richard J. Volpe
Pages: 221-223
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Beeronomics tells the story of how the growth and evolution of beer and brewing across the world has been shaped by the economic forces of supply and demand. It is a story that stretches back far, before the arrival of Budweiser and even long before European monks honed their craft. Throughout all this time, beer has been a major force in shaping diverse markets and cultural practices and preferences across the world. I have been drinking beer since my days in the dormitories at the University of Massachusetts, and I have studied beer on and off for several years. Nevertheless, reading this fairly compact book, I learned something new, and often surprising, on nearly every page.

The book is roughly chronological in order and begins millennia in the past, telling the story of how brewing beer, through its association with farming, was long thought to be associated with civilized cultures. This manifested most clearly in ancient Egypt, where beer was the preferred beverage of choice among the ruling class for centuries. The story advances, inevitably, to the monks of Germany, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe. These monasteries are often thought to be the original craft brewers, and Beeronomics is, both implicitly and explicitly, also the story of how brewing in the United States and other developed nations has returned to consisting of many small, highly differentiated brewers.

From here, we learn how hops completely transformed beer and its industry. By altering the brewing process and the makeup of beers, hops led to dramatic changes in the pricing and taxing of beer, the homogeneity of beers across geographic regions, the storability and transportability of beer, and, of course, its taste. One fas- cinating thread throughout the history of beer is how the key inputs to beer have served as crucial currencies and, therefore, how beer demand and taxation has had ripple effects across diverse markets.

The economic impact of beer, historically, is perhaps no better exemplified than through the taxes and tariffs used to fund England’s imperialist wars through the late 1600s and the early 1700s. I found it particularly fascinating to learn how the crown used propaganda and import policy to encourage Brits to drink beer rather than wine, which was the preferred beverage of the French. The high taxes levied on domestic beer consumption, in turn, provided the funds necessary for Great Britain to wage wars and expand its empire and interests across the globe.

Much of the middle of the book discusses the rapid and unprecedented wave of consolidation and concentration that took place in brewing beer in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in European nations. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of brewers in the United States fell from 350 to 24, and the market share of the four largest brewers rose from 20 to 90%. These figures are staggering and I struggle to conceive of other industries that have undergone such dramatic structural change in such a short period of time. As it happens, we have beer to (largely) thank for the technological innovations of pasteurization and refrigeration. These practices, in turn, led to sharp increases in the industrialization and standard- ization of brewing beer, which helped to open the doors to consolidation on the national stage. It is worth clarifying that these advances are not solely responsible for these changes in the beer sector. Perhaps the anecdote from this book upon which I will rely the heaviest at future cocktail parties is the pivotal role that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s played in rise of the big three U.S. macrobrewers: Budweiser, Miller, and Coors.

From there, the book progresses in time and trots the globe to tell the story of how beer and the brewing industry became truly global while gradually laying the stage for the craft beer boom. We learn much more about the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch than was readily gleaned from the news at the time of the takeover. We hear the story of how international investment on the part of brewers upended barley markets throughout Eastern Europe. I particularly enjoyed reading about Russia’s slow and ongoing transition from vodka to beer, progressing with the march of generations, as well as the note on President Jimmy Carter’s legacy in fueling the rise of craft beer production in the United States. The story brings us to the present day and America’s love affair with craft beer, which embodies “local” and “independent,” two descriptors that increasingly garner favor among consumers in the age of international megacorporations.

Beeronomics is a fast and entertaining read. In reading it, I was reminded of a number of lessons I have learned over the years in my studies and beyond. First and foremost, things are not always what they seem. Beer can seem like one of life’s simple pleasures, but this book puts into perspective the story behind how a cold pint arrives at the local watering hole. This is a story that includes wars, extreme weather events, and technological advancements that changed the world. Second, incentives matter. Again and again throughout the book, Swinnen and Briski remind us that markets revolve around incentives and that the players within markets will make decisions, often bold ones, when faced with changes in incentives. And third, particularly when discussing food and beverages, it is amazing that supply chains function at all. After reading this book and learning so much more about how beer inputs have been sourced, how laws and regulation have impacted brewing and distributing, and competitive challenges that brewers have faced over the centuries not just from their peers but from other beverages, it amazes me that hops grown from the earth ever manage to end up in my refrigerator in any liquid form whatsoever.

This book addresses a range of topics in economics and business; it is written to be accessible to the layperson. In an academic setting, Beeronomics could support or supplement courses in industrial organization, economic history, supply chain man- agement, brewing, microeconomics, and probably more. But more broadly, it is my experience that many people who enjoy beer are also fascinated by what has gone on behind the scenes in the making and distributing of the beer. There are plenty of books for those who are particularly interested in the science behind beer and brewing, and I think it is wonderful that we now have a highly readable book for those who are also interested in the economics and history of beer.

Richard J. Volpe
California Polytech State University, San Luis Obispo
rvolpe@calpoly.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.20

South Dakota Wine: A Fruitful History

By: Denise DePaolo & Kara Sweet
Reviewer: Jacob R. Straus
Pages: 224-225
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Thomas Jefferson loved wine and famously believed that “the United States [could] make as a great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good” (Gabler, 1995, p. 205). Jefferson’s concept of American wine has become a reality today, with thousands of wineries all over the United States, including places with long modern traditions—California, Oregon, Washington, New York—and more modest beginnings of grape growing and wine-making (Catell, 2014). Denise DePaolo and Kara Sweet’s story of the South Dakota wine industry is living proof that Thomas Jefferson’s dream has been realized, almost 191 years after his death. South Dakota Wine: A Fruitful History is a succinct, yet detailed examination of the founding of South Dakota’s wine industry, the challenges it faces, and its ability to flourish.

DePaolo and Sweet organize their discussion of South Dakota wine by focusing on the pioneers of the wine industry, the cooperation of science and politics to push South Dakota winemaking, and the importance of tourism. Overall, they develop a compelling narrative that successfully blends the stories of individual wine-makers with the day-to-day realities of running a luxury good business.

Wine in South Dakota, like so many other American stories, is about immigrants who bring their knowledge and passion to the new world. DePaolo and Sweet begin with the story of the Vojta family. Immigrants from Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia (and today the Czech Republic), the Vojtas settled in South Dakota and began making wine in the traditional way, with “all production … done by hand, from the planting, the pruning and the picking of the grapes to the stomping, the pressing, the fermenting and the bottling of wines” (p. 18). The Vojta family tradition was passed down from Grandma Frances to current-genera- tion winemaker Sandy Vojta, who founded Prairie Berry Wine in Mobridge shortly after the South Dakota Legislature passed the Farm Winery Bill in 1996.

The Farm Winery Bill was a watershed moment for South Dakota wine. With its passage, for the first time, farmers were allowed to sell wine at their farms. The bill also defined a farm winery “as any winery operated by the owner of a South Dakota farm and producing table, sparking, or sacramental wines from grapes, grape juice, or other fruit bases, or honey” (p. 48). This bill opened up new potential not just for grape-based wine—which was often hard to grow in the harsh South Dakota climate —but also fruit-based wine using native produce. These wines have been made from dandelion, rhubarb, chokecherry, black chokecherry, cranberries, and other fruit.

The quest for grape-based wine was expansive and brought together some of the best minds from the University of South Dakota, the University of Minnesota (where many hybrid grapes were developed), and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture to introduce grapes that could survive South Dakota winters. These included “the red grapes Marquette and Frontenac and the white grapes Brianna and Frontenac Gris,” among others (p. 67). These hybrid grapes, grown by wineries including Old Folsom Vineyard are designed especially to thrive in cold weather cli- mates that traditional vitis vinifera grapes cannot tolerate.

By the time South Dakota Wines was published, more than 30 wineries were growing grapes and making grape-based and other fruit-based wines. The result is a boom in wine tourism in South Dakota. The number of visitors stopping at win- eries while touring traditional destinations like the Black Hills has increased, as has the number of visitors making wine the central focus of their trip. In fact, “as more wineries pop up all over the region and country, more tourists want to enjoy wines while on vacation. In fact, travelers are even coming to the area for wine alone and then seeing the usual attractions after wine” (p. 108).

Ultimately, South Dakota Wine shows that wine can be made anywhere. For South Dakota, however, it is not just about making wine, but also providing a high-quality product that people want to consume. As Americans continue to seek out locally- based products and experiences, the success of South Dakota wine is likely to increase, as the quality of the wines continues to improve.

Jacob R. Straus
University of Maryland Baltimore County, Shady Grove
jstraus@umbc.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.21

The Wines of Canada

By: Roderick Phillips
Reviewer: Richard E. Quandt
Pages: 228-230
Full Text PDF
Book Review

This is an excellent and authoritative primer on the wines of Canada, a subject on which most of us are woefully ignorant.

The initial chapter sketches the broad outlines of the Canadian wine industry from 1850 to Prohibition in 1917, then to the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988, and followed by the modern period. It is noteworthy that much of Canadian wine history is under the auspices of labrusca wines, with vitis vinifera gradually gaining ground over labrusca and hybrid wines. The gains made by the higher-quality wines were clearly spurred by the increasing availability of acceptable but cheap California wines. The post-2000 period also witnessed the rapid growth in “the number of wineries … the volume of production, a more sophisticated infra- structure that includes the delineation of viticultural areas and sub-appellations” (p. 37) among other developments. The youthfulness of the Canadian wine industry is attested by the fact that most Canadian wineries came into existence after 2000.

An interesting and unusual feature of Canada is that there is no national wine law and producers in the different regions have to conform to different sets of regulations (p. 42). These are so confusing on the whole that “only residents of British Columbia and Manitoba can legally order as much wine as they like from another province” (p. 43). The principal wine regions are British Columbia and Ontario, with fairly com- parable levels of wine production, with Quebec and Nova Scotia being much smaller, though not insignificant. It is also noteworthy that British Columbia and Ontario rely predominantly on vitis vinifera varieties, while the other regions depend much more on hybrid varieties. In Ontario, the most popular white varieties are Chardonnay, Riesling, and Pinot Gris, while the most popular red varieties are Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Pinot Noir. British Columbia is not all that dissimilar, with whites being dominated by Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Gewürztraminer and reds by Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. While many of the Canadian reds and whites are enjoyable, they are not, on the whole, ready to compete with those of the major French or U.S. producers.

The one wine in which Canada has much more than a modest edge is icewine, which is quite sui generis. The section describing icewines (pp. 68–78) is outstand- ingly informative and strongly recommended. Although icewine has been made in Europe as early as the late-18th century, the first commercial icewine in Canada was not made until 1978 in British Columbia, with Ontario following some five years later. The crux of icewine is that it must be exposed to temperatures of –8°C, which is achieved in British Columbia, but much more routinely in Ontario. This low temperature causes the water in the grapes to freeze, leaving only a highly condensed sugary syrup in its unfrozen state, where it can be pressed. As a result, yields are low and “in many cases a single vine produces no more than one 375 millilitre bottle [of wine]” (p. 69). In addition to British Columbia and Ontario (with the latter being the main producing area), Nova Scotia also produces some icewine. It is to be noted that because of the modest yields, it is permitted to gather the berries that have fallen off the vine between the onset of the regular harvest and the beginning of the icewine harvest. Icewine is highly regulated, including its name, which is icewine, not ice wine or ice-wine, as per regulations of the Vintners Quality Alliance of Ontario. In Ontario and British Columbia the pressings must have an average of 35° Brix.1 The yield is about 125 liters per ton of Riesling, much lower than for table wine. Because of the higher price of icewine, it is a good target for counterfeiting. Economics also drives the practice, legally permitted, of blending Canadian wines with non- Canadian wines; the production of these is quite widespread and accounts for 75% of Ontario-sold wines. It should also be noted that winter temperatures at times descend in the –35–40°C range, which would kill the vines unless specific protective measures were undertaken, such as covering the wines with soil for the winter. (It is noteworthy that –40°C equals –40°F.) While normally one would think that such regions are outside the region that can be profitably cultivated, global warming will almost certainly diminish the problems that extreme cold can cause.

The remaining four chapters cover in detail the producers and the characteristics of wineries in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic Provinces. A size- able number of producers are discussed and anyone interested in acquiring Canadian wines would be well advised to study these chapters.

The writing is uniformly clear and accurate and useful maps of the various wine regions are provided in the various chapters. The only thing that might have improved the maps would have been to include measures of a geographic scale on each of the maps. In any event, the author provides a useful service to the wine-drinking public.

1 Brix measures the sugar content of an aqueous solution: one degree is one gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brix.

Richard E. Quandt
Princeton University
requandt@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.23

A Natural History of Wine

By: Ian Tattersall & Rob DeSalle
Reviewer: Tim Elliott & Philippe LeMay-Boucher
Pages: 230-232
Full Text PDF
Book Review

The front jacket blurb introduces this volume’s purpose as providing a universally accessible answer to the question “What can science tell us about wine?” The dozen chapters contained within tend to be complementary but can be enjoyed as separate reads as each explores a relatively discrete topic; an ideal menu if the reader intends to consume the content paired with a glass of the studied beverage. Each is introduced by a wine label with a short discussion about its producer, region, and attributes. There are innumerable good regional wines that, alas, are still overshadowed by the flashy darlings which monopolise the attention of high- profile writers and the markets. We must warmly thank the authors for including both some accessible specimens whose virtues we recognise plus unknown others for fundamental reasons, rather than straining to impress with a Romani-Conti or other trophy wine. While the Dom Pérignon 1990 and Drouhin Montrachet are obvious exceptions to this, we are in good hands with folk who understand that Clairette de Die is also worthy of introducing a chapter.

The senses are engaged from the first touch with luxuriously thick, soft paper that conveys a sense of substance and familiarity. The illustrations are attractive and bright but use a palate of soft tones reminiscent of a venerable ornithology or other natural science text, reinforcing its’ gravitas. The illustrations also evoked nos- talgic memories of Dungeons & Dragons in one member of our review panel … Either way, you feel the book would be at home on a shelf in the American Museum of Natural History, surrounded by a dusty taxidermy menagerie. The authors are shown in such a mysterious setting grasping glasses of red, conjuring in the mind’s eye the wonderful pictures taken of the late Jim Harrison by Le Monde in 2013; finishing a bottle of Chateau Thivin, cigarette in hand, in front of a summerhouse in Livingston, Montana. These people are ready to tell a story worth our time.

As expected there were many juicy and diverse facts that illuminated the dark corners of our understanding. Exploring them all would spoil the joy for other readers and is beyond our remit here, but some favourites deserve mention. The Pen Tailed Tree Shrew and its’ prodigious ability to imbibe without succumbing to intoxication is simultaneously amusing and depressing—this poor wretch does not ever get to enjoy the warming and fulfilling physiological sensations detailed in later chapters. Juxtaposing the shrew, we learn of African elephants’ fondness for an annual bender on the fermenting fruit of the Amarula tree. We are told exactly why grapes have developed to be the colours and as sweet as they are, while an explanation similarly rooted in biochemistry and evolutionary pressures expounds the reason we consumers of fruit also enjoy alcohol as much as we do. It hints that perhaps there is something in this symbiotic relationship that prevents the development of a seedless grape capable of producing a quality wine. The remarkably complex (18 stage!) life-cycle of phylloxera is beautifully revealed and shows why its’ scourge was so difficult for 19th-century winemakers to tackle.

Just as you are three-quarters of the way through your meaty Cinsault from d’Oc, this faithful companion gives you a concise review of alcohol’s effects on your brain … how à-propos. But when one gets to pp. 169–177 an economist is on familiar terrain. A succinct review is offered on the significant neuroeconomic effects pricing and rankings have on consumer preferences. We are grateful for the inclusion of choice experiments highlighting the fact that we get out of wine what we expect to. Satisfaction depends just as much (or more) upon price and brand recognition, than anything else. “Wine and the senses” was a chapter that made us think “ok, here we go again.” It sounds basic and we have been there in many different books, but here the mechanics of vision, smell, and taste are neatly explored with the key scientific facts that go beyond the usual platitudes we are often served. Many are now familiar with how modern revolutions in ampelography have shown various grape cultivars to be duplicates, but here it is extended to how crosses of the same parentage can produce equally sublime examples as Syrah and Viognier. Perhaps the most pro- found content is the examination of the role of microbes in the vineyard; unique pop- ulations of bacteria may play a role as crucial as topography or geology in determining terroir. “Mind blown,” as the kids would say.

While we recognise the breadth of topics covered and an even broader set of pos- sible areas of interest for such a book, our craving for ripe scientific morsels was regrettably not sated. The opening chapter invites with an interesting but brief history of wine making, starting from the earliest known origins in Armenia. After some brief exposition in nearby cultures, it jumps somehow brutally to an ending on prohibition. Our understanding of wine and our relationship with it have been shaped by many different societies between the two periods discussed, and the reader is left hankering for more detail. Given the stated egalitarian intent of the authors, it felt like the concerns of the average drinker could have been addressed more too. Is sulphur to blame for my headache? What happens in my wine when I decant it? How does ageing work? Instead of appealing to this audience, Chapter 3’s focus on biochemistry is taxing for humble economists like us and we presume for many others. It does not fulfil the promise of “being accessible to everyone.” We also experience an awkwardly crude explanation of the atomic scale in a chapter which simultaneously over-indulges in chemistry nomenclature, making the tone seem inconsistent. Most upsetting was the perpetuation of myths of food and wine matching, which should have died some time ago. Believing no wine should be consumed alongside garlic or fresh fruit seems based more on concern for rules than the foundations upon which they rest, as much of the world breaks their “First Commandment” on a regular basis.

Despite these minor criticisms, we got ample enjoyment out of this work and look forward to future discoveries, as do the authors, looking at “vins de l’impossible” in their final chapter. Anthropogenic climate change offers the conflicting prospect that your two humble reviewers may, in a not so distant future, savour a Scottish “Côtes du Forth” with Tattersall and DeSalle’s next volume.

Tim Elliott & Philippe LeMay-Boucher
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
tpe1@hw.ac.u
p.lemay-boucher@hw.ac.uk
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.24

The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy

By: Justin Spring
Reviewer: Stephen Chaikind
Pages: 232-236
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Similar themes, ideas, and historical references to time and place tie these three books together as they trace the advent of food and wine culture and enjoyment in the United States. Guided by the overarching influence of French culinary ethos, they explore the evolution of American cooking, restaurants, and food person- alities through a biographical approach. Within this context, Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way explores six American food and wine writers who lived in France and incorporated the most detail about wine in relation to food; Paul Freedman’s Ten Restaurants That Changed America described the way these ten res- taurants both influenced and responded to American society; and Alice Waters’ Coming to My Senses relived the life and ideas of one food legend through the opening of her iconic restaurant in Berkeley, California. Taken together, these works leave a lasting impression of eating and drinking as an irrefutable part of life and culture.

It is difficult to discuss eating and drinking in present day America without noting the importance of French food and wine. Just as French fine wine very often serves as the basis for analysis of wine pricing, consumer behavior, and the wine trade, among others, one cannot represent much of fine dining without also acknowledging the French influence. While only four of the restaurant histories in Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveal their French heritage (Delmonico, Antoine, Le Pavillon, and Chez Panisse—and one that was created to be decidedly not French—The Four Seasons), Freedman also notes the predominant, if now diminishing, influence of French food and wine on American’s dining habits. The verities of good French food and wine were made widely accessible to Americans through the cookbooks and writings of six Americans (and their associates) who lived, trained, and cooked in Paris and elsewhere in France during the mid-20th century (the six, profiled in The Gourmands’ Way, are Julia Child, M. F. K. Fisher, Alexis Lichine, A. J. Liebling, Richard Olney, and Alice B. Toklas). And, as we learn in all three of these volumes, several of these culinary texts heavily influenced Alice Waters.

In her memoir, Coming to My Senses, Waters’ credits her stay in France as a student and the accompanying French culinary experience with her awakening to fine food and fresh ingredients. Leaning on cookbooks such as those by Richard Olney and Elizabeth David (people we meet intimately in The Gourmands’ Way), she began preparing exquisite home cooked meals for friends. With that experience and after stints as a waitress and Montessori teacher, she began harboring the idea of opening a restaurant modeled on the small French prix fixe establishments she so enjoyed in France. Hence the creation, on a shoestring, of Chez Panisse, which started with a French menu and soul. And while Chez Panisse eventually evolved into an American restaurant and café, it continues to maintain its French roots and follow French culinary principles, creating menus based on the availability of locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.

The emphasis on France’s culinary influence is a principal theme in The Gourmands’ Way. Here, we meet the six Americans, with various backgrounds and lifestyles, who all decided to create and work (all or much of the time) in France at about the same time. What ties them together in The Gourmands’ Way is that they were all influential writers who informed Americans’ perceptions of French food and wine, and through that, Americans’ enjoyment of food and wine in general. Their books and articles provided Americans with the knowledge and ability to experiment with French cooking in their homes and demystified the selection and pairing of French wines with food. What also variously links these indi- viduals, in addition to their love of a good meal, is their free-spirited and bohemian approach to life. For example, Alice Waters was a political activist and supporter of the 1960s free speech movement. Richard Olney, with limited funds, bought a crum- bling house in the South of France and began the process of renovating it over years by hand. Alice B. Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein held court engaging in wide-ranging discussions over dinner with a continuing series of visitors among the avant-garde artists and writers of the time—as did Olney and others.

Food and wine, of course, are intrinsically linked to a country’s culture in all three of these volumes. This connection informs Paul Freedman’s selection of the ten most influential restaurants in America—or, as the book’s title says—changed America. These are restaurants whose innovations say something about the way society was/is progressing or which helped influence such progress (and not meant to indi- cate the ten best restaurants). Changes in American society since the creation of the first influential restaurant—Delmonico’s, established in the early 1800s—is evi- denced, for example, by the emerging role of women, the assimilation of diverse racial and ethnic groups, and the growth of an automobile-focused society. These and other societal shifts are all reflected through the lenses of the restaurants docu- mented in this book. For example, the changing role of women in American society is seen through restaurants in several ways in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. Schrafft’s is identified as a safe-haven for women. Until its creation, women were generally thought poorly of if they tried to dine alone. As women increasingly worked out of the home and wanted to eat lunch outside of the office, Schrafft’s provided a comfortable and welcoming environment for women without male escorts, with menus catering to their tastes and, until Schrafft’s final years, the absence of alcoholic beverages. The story of the empowerment of women over the past 100 years in America is also shown in the chapters discussing restaurants where women are owners and chefs—including Cecilia Chiang’s Mandarin, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, and Sylvia Woods’ Sylvia’s Restaurant.

The ethnic and racial diversity in the United States, as well as the internal migra- tion of African Americans from the South to the North, is also explored through res- taurants in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. The explosion and acceptance of Chinese and Italian food (whether totally authentic or modified/created for American tastes), as well as the rise of an even broader ethnic diversity in dining, is shown through the book’s histories of the Mandarin in San Francisco, Sylvia’s in Harlem, Mamma Leone’s in New York, and Antoine’s in New Orleans.

The Gourmands’ Way is the most wine-centric of the three volumes reviewed, although the importance of wine for the individuals and restaurants portrayed is clear in all three works. The American expatriates cooking and eating in France con- sidered wines that paired well with foods an essential part of the meal, and went to great lengths to understand French wine culture. They took advantage of the oppor- tunity to visit and often make friends with the local vignerons. Richard Olney, who was by then writing a wine column for Cuisine et Vins de France (and later published Simple French Food), constructed a wine cellar as part of his home renovation project in Provence, and then was meticulous about the wines selected to accompany each course of the frequent meals he prepared for friends. Julia Child’s husband, Paul Child, also paired wines with care for Julia’s dinners at home and for their meals in restaurants. They and others profiled in this book all understood, too, the role of simple as well as grand cru French wines as part of the dining experience, although the wines cited are often classified Bordeaux and great Burgundies. Even though many of the gourmands had limited resources (Olney, Fisher, Toklas), this choice was reflective of the era under discussion—the mid-20th century, when fine wines were all relatively inexpensive compared to today; footnotes in The Gourmands’ Way often tell us what these wines, similarly aged, would cost today. Even when Chez Panisse opened towards the end of this era in 1971 on a tight budget and with only three wines on its wine list (Mondavi Gamay, Mondavi Fume Blanc, and Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes), Alice Waters in Coming to My Senses noted that great Sauternes cost $2.50 per bottle, and the most expensive, d’Yquem, was $3.50 (about $21 in today’s dollars).

The story of Alexis Lichine and his influence on American wine knowledge and consumption told in The Gourmands’ Way is particularly enlightening for wine eco- nomics. Lichine was a New York wine salesman, importer, and educator. In order to enhance his public image as a wine expert (which he was), he wrote Wines of France in 1951. This publication served as a springboard for lecturing extensively about wine across the United States, and, as a result, to selling more and better wines to his clients. In France, he then began bottling and shipping these fine wines directly from estates, and through the purchase of several chateaus (including Prieure- Lichine), began to centralize the purchasing, storage, shipping, and distribution of wines, adding efficiency to and cutting costs from a more traditional way of doing business in France. These innovations, however, after a period of time were also partly responsible for the decline in his business, as much larger and better capital- ized wine companies followed his lead and diminished his competitive advantage.

Not to be overlooked in all of these stories about the people and restaurants that led the way for food and wine in America are the risks they took to achieve what they did—risks both personal and financial. Lichine accepted the risk of tinkering with the traditional French wine business model, but, as seen, increased competition (and several bad vintages) ultimately forced him to sell his business and company name (although the sale price allowed him to move to France and continue wine- making on his Chateau). Waters’ Chez Panisse did not make a profit for years. New immigrants to the United States also frequently risked their life savings to open restaurants, and Alice B. Toklas, after Gertrude Stein’s death, with limited funds, assembled her recipes and memoirs in the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book in order to financially support herself. A. J. Liebling, covering Europe for The New Yorker was in fact dining in Paris when it was invaded at the start of WWII (he continued his lunch under the initial bombardment), and returned under sniper fire as it was liberated. Along the way, too, soon after D-Day, Liebling was able to partake of impressive provincial food and wine in Normandy, some of which he described in his book Normandy Revisited. Betting on the need for reliable and familiar places to eat in a newly mobile America, Howard Johnson decided to build his restaurants along highways and roads, becoming the first standardized chain—a formula that was risky at the time, but now ubiquitous. Julia Child’s success publishing Mastering the Art of French Cooking led her to take a chance with developing a show in the relatively new medium of television. And even though financed by those with deep pockets, the opening of New York’s lavish Four Seasons restaurant in 1959, costing $4.5 million (about $38 million in 2017 dollars), was obviously risky.

This brief review of three very enlightening books cannot, of course, provide the richness of detail and fascinating facets within them. Both The Gourmands’ Way and Ten Restaurants That Changed America are extensively researched, scholarly works, with numerous references and footnotes, yet they are highly readable narra- tives. Both conclude by looking at what the authors see as trends in the future of dining in America, including the gradual lessening of French influence, the contin- uance of the farm to table movement, and the use of fresh and local ingredients and wines. Coming to My Senses, as a memoir, informs us about the background of an individual who has done much to change the way Americans think about food. These books reveal the events and influences leading up to America’s present-day culinary landscape. All three books, in the end, tell good stories.

Stephen Chaikind
Gallaudet University
aawe@wine-economcis.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.25

Ten Restaurants that Changed America

By: Paul Freedman
Reviewer: Stephen Chaikind
Pages: 232-236
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Similar themes, ideas, and historical references to time and place tie these three books together as they trace the advent of food and wine culture and enjoyment in the United States. Guided by the overarching influence of French culinary ethos, they explore the evolution of American cooking, restaurants, and food person- alities through a biographical approach. Within this context, Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way explores six American food and wine writers who lived in France and incorporated the most detail about wine in relation to food; Paul Freedman’s Ten Restaurants That Changed America described the way these ten res- taurants both influenced and responded to American society; and Alice Waters’ Coming to My Senses relived the life and ideas of one food legend through the opening of her iconic restaurant in Berkeley, California. Taken together, these works leave a lasting impression of eating and drinking as an irrefutable part of life and culture.

It is difficult to discuss eating and drinking in present day America without noting the importance of French food and wine. Just as French fine wine very often serves as the basis for analysis of wine pricing, consumer behavior, and the wine trade, among others, one cannot represent much of fine dining without also acknowledging the French influence. While only four of the restaurant histories in Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveal their French heritage (Delmonico, Antoine, Le Pavillon, and Chez Panisse—and one that was created to be decidedly not French—The Four Seasons), Freedman also notes the predominant, if now diminishing, influence of French food and wine on American’s dining habits. The verities of good French food and wine were made widely accessible to Americans through the cookbooks and writings of six Americans (and their associates) who lived, trained, and cooked in Paris and elsewhere in France during the mid-20th century (the six, profiled in The Gourmands’ Way, are Julia Child, M. F. K. Fisher, Alexis Lichine, A. J. Liebling, Richard Olney, and Alice B. Toklas). And, as we learn in all three of these volumes, several of these culinary texts heavily influenced Alice Waters.

In her memoir, Coming to My Senses, Waters’ credits her stay in France as a student and the accompanying French culinary experience with her awakening to fine food and fresh ingredients. Leaning on cookbooks such as those by Richard Olney and Elizabeth David (people we meet intimately in The Gourmands’ Way), she began preparing exquisite home cooked meals for friends. With that experience and after stints as a waitress and Montessori teacher, she began harboring the idea of opening a restaurant modeled on the small French prix fixe establishments she so enjoyed in France. Hence the creation, on a shoestring, of Chez Panisse, which started with a French menu and soul. And while Chez Panisse eventually evolved into an American restaurant and café, it continues to maintain its French roots and follow French culinary principles, creating menus based on the availability of locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.

The emphasis on France’s culinary influence is a principal theme in The Gourmands’ Way. Here, we meet the six Americans, with various backgrounds and lifestyles, who all decided to create and work (all or much of the time) in France at about the same time. What ties them together in The Gourmands’ Way is that they were all influential writers who informed Americans’ perceptions of French food and wine, and through that, Americans’ enjoyment of food and wine in general. Their books and articles provided Americans with the knowledge and ability to experiment with French cooking in their homes and demystified the selection and pairing of French wines with food. What also variously links these indi- viduals, in addition to their love of a good meal, is their free-spirited and bohemian approach to life. For example, Alice Waters was a political activist and supporter of the 1960s free speech movement. Richard Olney, with limited funds, bought a crum- bling house in the South of France and began the process of renovating it over years by hand. Alice B. Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein held court engaging in wide-ranging discussions over dinner with a continuing series of visitors among the avant-garde artists and writers of the time—as did Olney and others.

Food and wine, of course, are intrinsically linked to a country’s culture in all three of these volumes. This connection informs Paul Freedman’s selection of the ten most influential restaurants in America—or, as the book’s title says—changed America. These are restaurants whose innovations say something about the way society was/is progressing or which helped influence such progress (and not meant to indi- cate the ten best restaurants). Changes in American society since the creation of the first influential restaurant—Delmonico’s, established in the early 1800s—is evi- denced, for example, by the emerging role of women, the assimilation of diverse racial and ethnic groups, and the growth of an automobile-focused society. These and other societal shifts are all reflected through the lenses of the restaurants docu- mented in this book. For example, the changing role of women in American society is seen through restaurants in several ways in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. Schrafft’s is identified as a safe-haven for women. Until its creation, women were generally thought poorly of if they tried to dine alone. As women increasingly worked out of the home and wanted to eat lunch outside of the office, Schrafft’s provided a comfortable and welcoming environment for women without male escorts, with menus catering to their tastes and, until Schrafft’s final years, the absence of alcoholic beverages. The story of the empowerment of women over the past 100 years in America is also shown in the chapters discussing restaurants where women are owners and chefs—including Cecilia Chiang’s Mandarin, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, and Sylvia Woods’ Sylvia’s Restaurant.

The ethnic and racial diversity in the United States, as well as the internal migra- tion of African Americans from the South to the North, is also explored through res- taurants in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. The explosion and acceptance of Chinese and Italian food (whether totally authentic or modified/created for American tastes), as well as the rise of an even broader ethnic diversity in dining, is shown through the book’s histories of the Mandarin in San Francisco, Sylvia’s in Harlem, Mamma Leone’s in New York, and Antoine’s in New Orleans.

The Gourmands’ Way is the most wine-centric of the three volumes reviewed, although the importance of wine for the individuals and restaurants portrayed is clear in all three works. The American expatriates cooking and eating in France con- sidered wines that paired well with foods an essential part of the meal, and went to great lengths to understand French wine culture. They took advantage of the oppor- tunity to visit and often make friends with the local vignerons. Richard Olney, who was by then writing a wine column for Cuisine et Vins de France (and later published Simple French Food), constructed a wine cellar as part of his home renovation project in Provence, and then was meticulous about the wines selected to accompany each course of the frequent meals he prepared for friends. Julia Child’s husband, Paul Child, also paired wines with care for Julia’s dinners at home and for their meals in restaurants. They and others profiled in this book all understood, too, the role of simple as well as grand cru French wines as part of the dining experience, although the wines cited are often classified Bordeaux and great Burgundies. Even though many of the gourmands had limited resources (Olney, Fisher, Toklas), this choice was reflective of the era under discussion—the mid-20th century, when fine wines were all relatively inexpensive compared to today; footnotes in The Gourmands’ Way often tell us what these wines, similarly aged, would cost today. Even when Chez Panisse opened towards the end of this era in 1971 on a tight budget and with only three wines on its wine list (Mondavi Gamay, Mondavi Fume Blanc, and Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes), Alice Waters in Coming to My Senses noted that great Sauternes cost $2.50 per bottle, and the most expensive, d’Yquem, was $3.50 (about $21 in today’s dollars).

The story of Alexis Lichine and his influence on American wine knowledge and consumption told in The Gourmands’ Way is particularly enlightening for wine eco- nomics. Lichine was a New York wine salesman, importer, and educator. In order to enhance his public image as a wine expert (which he was), he wrote Wines of France in 1951. This publication served as a springboard for lecturing extensively about wine across the United States, and, as a result, to selling more and better wines to his clients. In France, he then began bottling and shipping these fine wines directly from estates, and through the purchase of several chateaus (including Prieure- Lichine), began to centralize the purchasing, storage, shipping, and distribution of wines, adding efficiency to and cutting costs from a more traditional way of doing business in France. These innovations, however, after a period of time were also partly responsible for the decline in his business, as much larger and better capital- ized wine companies followed his lead and diminished his competitive advantage.

Not to be overlooked in all of these stories about the people and restaurants that led the way for food and wine in America are the risks they took to achieve what they did—risks both personal and financial. Lichine accepted the risk of tinkering with the traditional French wine business model, but, as seen, increased competition (and several bad vintages) ultimately forced him to sell his business and company name (although the sale price allowed him to move to France and continue wine- making on his Chateau). Waters’ Chez Panisse did not make a profit for years. New immigrants to the United States also frequently risked their life savings to open restaurants, and Alice B. Toklas, after Gertrude Stein’s death, with limited funds, assembled her recipes and memoirs in the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book in order to financially support herself. A. J. Liebling, covering Europe for The New Yorker was in fact dining in Paris when it was invaded at the start of WWII (he continued his lunch under the initial bombardment), and returned under sniper fire as it was liberated. Along the way, too, soon after D-Day, Liebling was able to partake of impressive provincial food and wine in Normandy, some of which he described in his book Normandy Revisited. Betting on the need for reliable and familiar places to eat in a newly mobile America, Howard Johnson decided to build his restaurants along highways and roads, becoming the first standardized chain—a formula that was risky at the time, but now ubiquitous. Julia Child’s success publishing Mastering the Art of French Cooking led her to take a chance with developing a show in the relatively new medium of television. And even though financed by those with deep pockets, the opening of New York’s lavish Four Seasons restaurant in 1959, costing $4.5 million (about $38 million in 2017 dollars), was obviously risky.

This brief review of three very enlightening books cannot, of course, provide the richness of detail and fascinating facets within them. Both The Gourmands’ Way and Ten Restaurants That Changed America are extensively researched, scholarly works, with numerous references and footnotes, yet they are highly readable narra- tives. Both conclude by looking at what the authors see as trends in the future of dining in America, including the gradual lessening of French influence, the contin- uance of the farm to table movement, and the use of fresh and local ingredients and wines. Coming to My Senses, as a memoir, informs us about the background of an individual who has done much to change the way Americans think about food. These books reveal the events and influences leading up to America’s present-day culinary landscape. All three books, in the end, tell good stories.

Stephen Chaikind
Gallaudet University
aawe@wine-economcis.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.25

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook

By: Alice Waters
Reviewer: Stephen Chaikind
Pages: 232-236
Full Text PDF
Book Review

Similar themes, ideas, and historical references to time and place tie these three books together as they trace the advent of food and wine culture and enjoyment in the United States. Guided by the overarching influence of French culinary ethos, they explore the evolution of American cooking, restaurants, and food person- alities through a biographical approach. Within this context, Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way explores six American food and wine writers who lived in France and incorporated the most detail about wine in relation to food; Paul Freedman’s Ten Restaurants That Changed America described the way these ten res- taurants both influenced and responded to American society; and Alice Waters’ Coming to My Senses relived the life and ideas of one food legend through the opening of her iconic restaurant in Berkeley, California. Taken together, these works leave a lasting impression of eating and drinking as an irrefutable part of life and culture.

It is difficult to discuss eating and drinking in present day America without noting the importance of French food and wine. Just as French fine wine very often serves as the basis for analysis of wine pricing, consumer behavior, and the wine trade, among others, one cannot represent much of fine dining without also acknowledging the French influence. While only four of the restaurant histories in Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveal their French heritage (Delmonico, Antoine, Le Pavillon, and Chez Panisse—and one that was created to be decidedly not French—The Four Seasons), Freedman also notes the predominant, if now diminishing, influence of French food and wine on American’s dining habits. The verities of good French food and wine were made widely accessible to Americans through the cookbooks and writings of six Americans (and their associates) who lived, trained, and cooked in Paris and elsewhere in France during the mid-20th century (the six, profiled in The Gourmands’ Way, are Julia Child, M. F. K. Fisher, Alexis Lichine, A. J. Liebling, Richard Olney, and Alice B. Toklas). And, as we learn in all three of these volumes, several of these culinary texts heavily influenced Alice Waters.

In her memoir, Coming to My Senses, Waters’ credits her stay in France as a student and the accompanying French culinary experience with her awakening to fine food and fresh ingredients. Leaning on cookbooks such as those by Richard Olney and Elizabeth David (people we meet intimately in The Gourmands’ Way), she began preparing exquisite home cooked meals for friends. With that experience and after stints as a waitress and Montessori teacher, she began harboring the idea of opening a restaurant modeled on the small French prix fixe establishments she so enjoyed in France. Hence the creation, on a shoestring, of Chez Panisse, which started with a French menu and soul. And while Chez Panisse eventually evolved into an American restaurant and café, it continues to maintain its French roots and follow French culinary principles, creating menus based on the availability of locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.

The emphasis on France’s culinary influence is a principal theme in The Gourmands’ Way. Here, we meet the six Americans, with various backgrounds and lifestyles, who all decided to create and work (all or much of the time) in France at about the same time. What ties them together in The Gourmands’ Way is that they were all influential writers who informed Americans’ perceptions of French food and wine, and through that, Americans’ enjoyment of food and wine in general. Their books and articles provided Americans with the knowledge and ability to experiment with French cooking in their homes and demystified the selection and pairing of French wines with food. What also variously links these indi- viduals, in addition to their love of a good meal, is their free-spirited and bohemian approach to life. For example, Alice Waters was a political activist and supporter of the 1960s free speech movement. Richard Olney, with limited funds, bought a crum- bling house in the South of France and began the process of renovating it over years by hand. Alice B. Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein held court engaging in wide-ranging discussions over dinner with a continuing series of visitors among the avant-garde artists and writers of the time—as did Olney and others.

Food and wine, of course, are intrinsically linked to a country’s culture in all three of these volumes. This connection informs Paul Freedman’s selection of the ten most influential restaurants in America—or, as the book’s title says—changed America. These are restaurants whose innovations say something about the way society was/is progressing or which helped influence such progress (and not meant to indi- cate the ten best restaurants). Changes in American society since the creation of the first influential restaurant—Delmonico’s, established in the early 1800s—is evi- denced, for example, by the emerging role of women, the assimilation of diverse racial and ethnic groups, and the growth of an automobile-focused society. These and other societal shifts are all reflected through the lenses of the restaurants docu- mented in this book. For example, the changing role of women in American society is seen through restaurants in several ways in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. Schrafft’s is identified as a safe-haven for women. Until its creation, women were generally thought poorly of if they tried to dine alone. As women increasingly worked out of the home and wanted to eat lunch outside of the office, Schrafft’s provided a comfortable and welcoming environment for women without male escorts, with menus catering to their tastes and, until Schrafft’s final years, the absence of alcoholic beverages. The story of the empowerment of women over the past 100 years in America is also shown in the chapters discussing restaurants where women are owners and chefs—including Cecilia Chiang’s Mandarin, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, and Sylvia Woods’ Sylvia’s Restaurant.

The ethnic and racial diversity in the United States, as well as the internal migra- tion of African Americans from the South to the North, is also explored through res- taurants in Ten Restaurants That Changed America. The explosion and acceptance of Chinese and Italian food (whether totally authentic or modified/created for American tastes), as well as the rise of an even broader ethnic diversity in dining, is shown through the book’s histories of the Mandarin in San Francisco, Sylvia’s in Harlem, Mamma Leone’s in New York, and Antoine’s in New Orleans.

The Gourmands’ Way is the most wine-centric of the three volumes reviewed, although the importance of wine for the individuals and restaurants portrayed is clear in all three works. The American expatriates cooking and eating in France con- sidered wines that paired well with foods an essential part of the meal, and went to great lengths to understand French wine culture. They took advantage of the oppor- tunity to visit and often make friends with the local vignerons. Richard Olney, who was by then writing a wine column for Cuisine et Vins de France (and later published Simple French Food), constructed a wine cellar as part of his home renovation project in Provence, and then was meticulous about the wines selected to accompany each course of the frequent meals he prepared for friends. Julia Child’s husband, Paul Child, also paired wines with care for Julia’s dinners at home and for their meals in restaurants. They and others profiled in this book all understood, too, the role of simple as well as grand cru French wines as part of the dining experience, although the wines cited are often classified Bordeaux and great Burgundies. Even though many of the gourmands had limited resources (Olney, Fisher, Toklas), this choice was reflective of the era under discussion—the mid-20th century, when fine wines were all relatively inexpensive compared to today; footnotes in The Gourmands’ Way often tell us what these wines, similarly aged, would cost today. Even when Chez Panisse opened towards the end of this era in 1971 on a tight budget and with only three wines on its wine list (Mondavi Gamay, Mondavi Fume Blanc, and Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes), Alice Waters in Coming to My Senses noted that great Sauternes cost $2.50 per bottle, and the most expensive, d’Yquem, was $3.50 (about $21 in today’s dollars).

The story of Alexis Lichine and his influence on American wine knowledge and consumption told in The Gourmands’ Way is particularly enlightening for wine eco- nomics. Lichine was a New York wine salesman, importer, and educator. In order to enhance his public image as a wine expert (which he was), he wrote Wines of France in 1951. This publication served as a springboard for lecturing extensively about wine across the United States, and, as a result, to selling more and better wines to his clients. In France, he then began bottling and shipping these fine wines directly from estates, and through the purchase of several chateaus (including Prieure- Lichine), began to centralize the purchasing, storage, shipping, and distribution of wines, adding efficiency to and cutting costs from a more traditional way of doing business in France. These innovations, however, after a period of time were also partly responsible for the decline in his business, as much larger and better capital- ized wine companies followed his lead and diminished his competitive advantage.

Not to be overlooked in all of these stories about the people and restaurants that led the way for food and wine in America are the risks they took to achieve what they did—risks both personal and financial. Lichine accepted the risk of tinkering with the traditional French wine business model, but, as seen, increased competition (and several bad vintages) ultimately forced him to sell his business and company name (although the sale price allowed him to move to France and continue wine- making on his Chateau). Waters’ Chez Panisse did not make a profit for years. New immigrants to the United States also frequently risked their life savings to open restaurants, and Alice B. Toklas, after Gertrude Stein’s death, with limited funds, assembled her recipes and memoirs in the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book in order to financially support herself. A. J. Liebling, covering Europe for The New Yorker was in fact dining in Paris when it was invaded at the start of WWII (he continued his lunch under the initial bombardment), and returned under sniper fire as it was liberated. Along the way, too, soon after D-Day, Liebling was able to partake of impressive provincial food and wine in Normandy, some of which he described in his book Normandy Revisited. Betting on the need for reliable and familiar places to eat in a newly mobile America, Howard Johnson decided to build his restaurants along highways and roads, becoming the first standardized chain—a formula that was risky at the time, but now ubiquitous. Julia Child’s success publishing Mastering the Art of French Cooking led her to take a chance with developing a show in the relatively new medium of television. And even though financed by those with deep pockets, the opening of New York’s lavish Four Seasons restaurant in 1959, costing $4.5 million (about $38 million in 2017 dollars), was obviously risky.

This brief review of three very enlightening books cannot, of course, provide the richness of detail and fascinating facets within them. Both The Gourmands’ Way and Ten Restaurants That Changed America are extensively researched, scholarly works, with numerous references and footnotes, yet they are highly readable narra- tives. Both conclude by looking at what the authors see as trends in the future of dining in America, including the gradual lessening of French influence, the contin- uance of the farm to table movement, and the use of fresh and local ingredients and wines. Coming to My Senses, as a memoir, informs us about the background of an individual who has done much to change the way Americans think about food. These books reveal the events and influences leading up to America’s present-day culinary landscape. All three books, in the end, tell good stories.

Stephen Chaikind
Gallaudet University
aawe@wine-economcis.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2018.25

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