Journal of Wine Economics Volume 14 | 2019 | No. 1

Rod Phillips has been busy of late. In the span of five years, Phillips has written several important books, including 2016’s French Wine: A History (University of California Press). His industriousness has been our gain, as Phillip’s most recent book, Wine: A Social and Cultural History of the Drink That Changed Our Lives, may be his best work yet. In Wine, Phillips, a Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, locates that elusive balance between structure and expressive- ness; while we find surety in the hands of an objective historian, we revel in knowing that Phillips—who also writes for GuildSomm.com—is a great wine enthusiast.

Wine is organized thematically rather than chronologically. In each of the book’s eight chapters, wine is paired with a broad, topical accompaniment, including reli- gion, war, and crime. This multivalent approach keeps the content from becoming flat and allows Phillips to demonstrate his mastery of the secondary literature. Subtopics within each chapter are dense enough to whet the appetite of the reader (I tallied a list of almost two dozen topics that I want to read more about), but, at the same time, the content never reaches the point of oversaturation.

The first three chapters tread on fairly well-trammeled ground, exploring wine’s relationship to bodily health, gender, and religion. While the experienced reader of wine books will have encountered much of this material elsewhere, I am hard pressed to think of a better introduction to these central themes for the undergraduate or educated reader. “Wine and Wellness” traces wine’s relationship to the body from the ancient period to the present, and includes a description of Galen’s humoral theory and the infamous French Paradox. “Wine, Women, and Men” explores the place of wine in the construction of gender roles by analyzing, among other topics, ritualistic drinking, drunkenness, and the temperance movement. The most conventional chapter in the book may be “Wine and Religion,” which offers a straightforward (but nevertheless useful) introduction to wine’s position in the classic monotheistic texts and the Christian church.

While the first three chapters could appeal to social and cultural historians who have only a marginal interest in wine, Chapters 4–6 hone in on cultural categories that cater more to the wine scholar; terroir, tasting descriptions, and food and dining. In “Wine and Landscape,” Phillips provides a contemplative glimpse into the quarrel about whether or not (or how much) soil, climate, and other environmen- tal factors shape the profile of a wine. The goal for Phillips is not to settle the matter, but rather to articulate some of the many previous attempts to do so. “Wine and Words” offers a similarly captivating look at how wine has been judged and described. From Pliny the Elder to Robert Parker, Phillips treats the wine enthusiast to a grand tour of the many styles and techniques meant to convey the nuanced dif- ferences between growths. Unfortunately, Phillips misses out on the foremost taste- shapers of our own period, that is, the global, digital voices that drive websites like Cellartracker.com and WineBerserkers.com. “Wine and the Table” engrosses the reader in wine’s connection to food, which, it seems, was not always viewed as seri- ously as it is now. Phillips thinks carefully about how wine and food pairings intersect with other facets of life, including one’s social class and personal health. Despite this attention to detail, an otherwise intriguing section on representations of wine and food in painting loses some of its punch because very few of the described images are reproduced in the text.

The book closes on a high note with chapters on war and crime. As in the rest of the book, Phillips makes good use of the secondary literature to inform and entertain, in addition to punctuating the text with historiographical points (the Norman conquer- ors of England carried their own wine in barrels rather than relying only on captured stock, as is sometimes thought) and humor (Phillips refers to this as an early example of BYOB). Phillips does more than show how wine facilitated a fighting spirit among soldiers (from the ancient period through WWII). He demonstrates how war affected growers and the trade, and even helped shift paradigms of regional taste. In “Wine and Crime,” Phillips takes on vinous misconduct, including adulteration, which oftentimes was more fluid in its (il)-legality than would seem to be the case today. For example, haptalization and de-acidification, now fairly routine practices around the world, were once seen as insidious forms of manipulation. Less controversial but no less important are the more recent cases of fraud committed by Rudy Kurniawan and Hardy Rodenstock, both of whom Phillips discussed in the context of contemporary wine crime.

Wine is an eminently worthwhile book. Just as Hugh Johnson’s The World Atlas of Wine (2013) is the go-to reference for vineyard geography, I would make the case that Phillips’s new book may be the best general introduction to the social and cultural history and historiography of wine. While I often found myself excitedly looking ahead to see where Phillips was leading, I was just as frequently drawn to the material on the current page, mentally wandering off into ruminations about wine and land- scape, words, crime, etc. Thankfully, the book’s thematic format invites jumping around with limited opportunity cost. This is truly a thought-provoking book.

Kevin Goldberg
The Weber School, Atlanta
kgoldberg@weberschool.org
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.5

Der Wein des Vergessens (The Wine of Oblivion), written in German, may be the first book published that deals with the wine industry in Nazi Austria. In general, there is only scant literature about the German and Austrian wine industry during the Nazi regime, 1933–1945. Only in recent years have a few authors shed some light on various aspects of the Third Reich’s wine policies, particularly on the role of the German-Jewish wine trade. Daniel Deckers, editor of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was one of the first, who, in his outstanding German language book Im Zeichen des Traubenadlers. Eine Geschichte des deutschen Weins (Deckers, 2010), devotes more than 40 of 220 pages to the wine industry in Nazi Germany.1 From the book, as well as from a few subsequent articles (Deckers, 2012, 2017), we learn that up to 60% of the German wine trade, particularly the wine export, during the 1930s was handled by German-Jewish businesses. However, starting in the early 1930s, Jewish wine traders and brokers were harassed, denounced as wine adul- terators and currency scammers, and finally pushed out of their businesses.2 Most did not survive the Holocaust; the “lucky” ones left Germany, moved to the United States or the United Kingdom, and often successfully rekindled new wine businesses. Emigrants such as Max Fromm, Alfred Langenbach, Otto Loeb, S.F. Hallgarten, or Peter Sichel, the man behind Liebfraumilch Blue Nun, are also known as authors of authoritative books about German wine. Peter Sichel’s autobi- ography provides an excellent account of the life of a Jewish wine merchant before, during, and after WWII (Sichel, 2016).

In the fall of 2018, after Bernhard Herrman and Robert Streibel published The Wine of Oblivion, Austria’s wine world was in turmoil. Even in Germany and Switzerland, The Wine of Oblivion made it to prime-time news. In essence, the book argues that one of Austria’s largest wine producer, Winzer Krems Sandgrube 13 in Krems (Wachau), is an aryanized business, illegally taken from a Jewish wine merchant and his gay lover in 1938.

The fact that this had been forgotten for more than 80 years is amazing. Even a recent book, devoted to the history of wine in Krems (Frühwirth, 2005), does not mention the aryanization and, instead, honors local farmers’ chief Franz Aigner as the “founder of the wine cooperative” (p. 135) Winzer Krems Sandgrube 13— the winery he supposedly “bought” from Paul Robitschek.

The book, written as a historical novel, was conceived when one of the authors, Bernhard Herrman, found a trove of documents, letters, photos, and footage in an inherited house in Styria. The documents tell the story of the Jewish businessman Paul Robitschek and his lover August Rieger. It is the story of a wealthy Viennese wine merchant and the life of a gay couple in glamorous pre-Nazi Vienna. Robitschek and his mother Johanna owned several wine cellars, wineries, and vine- yards in Austria—one of which was Sandgrube 13 in Krems. In 1938, in an increas- ingly hostile climate towards Jews (and homosexuals), Robitschek sold the winery to his partner Rieger. The sales agreement was written under Austrian law, when Nazi approval was not yet required for the sale of Jewish property. However, several local Nazi leaders, notably Franz Aigner, the local Bauernführer (farmers’ chief) quickly challenged the contract exploiting the (illegal) homosexuality of Rieger, the new legal owner. After a short but intense bureaucratic battle, Rieger and Robitschek lost the winery; the Nazi administration handed it to the local cooperative.

Supported by various friends including a Nazi police chief, Robitschek escaped to Italy, and, after being interned in France, fled to Venezuela where he launched another successful wine business. His mother Johanna died in a Nazi concentration camp. And despite some trials and tribulations among others with the Gestapo (secret state police), August Rieger survived the war in Vienna. In 1949, Winzergenossenschaft Krems and Robitschek settled the sale for a final payment of 600,000 Austrian schillings, and the story was forgotten thereafter.

Aside from the fact that The Wine of Oblivion is a captivating read from the first page to the last, it also provides an excellent and detailed account of an aryanization process in the wine industry; a topic that has received little or no attention. In addi- tion, without this book, nobody would have remembered—and all would have been forgotten. Instead, Winzer Krems Sandgrube 13 wants to find out more about its own roots and commissioned three historians, including Herrman and Streibel, to compile all relevant historical documents.

Sometime in the mid-1970s, I opened a bottle of inexpensive claret that had been stored in the living room closet of my apartment in graduate housing. It smelled of damp basement and wet newspaper. I thought that perhaps being stored with winter coats had somehow introduced these unfortunate aromas into the wine. Had a book like Flawless been available, I would have discovered that the bottle was afflicted with cork taint. On the other hand, “Although the wine industry was aware of musty taints from affected corks for a long time, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that Swiss scientist Hans Tanner and his team published research that iden- tified [2,4,6-trichloroanisole] TCA as the main culprit in cork taint” (p. 123). The good news is that while not everything about wine flaws is known, much is and research continues to discover more.

Dr. Jamie Goode, who holds a Ph.D. in plant biology and is an award winning wine writer, has authored an important guide to what can go wrong with wine, how to recognize problems, and if anything can be done about them. While the title is oxymoronic, Goode defends it in the first chapter, “Introduction,” by explain- ing “I deliberately chose the title—Flawless—to emphasize the positive. The absence of flaws may not actually be a positive quality in itself…Sometimes, small levels of what might at higher levels be fault compounds can help beauty express itself…” (p. 2). He invokes “the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi…the idea that flaws can bring out beauty, or that flaws are in fact part of beauty” (p. 5).

Goode acknowledges that defining fault is difficult since there is a subjective aspect; one taster’s flaw is another’s nuance. Nevertheless, he contends that a “some- what more objective definition [can be] based on an ‘average’ taster—one with average sensitivity to all potential fault compounds, along with the educated ability to recognize them… [This is] how we tend to operate in the wine trade and in wine competitions” (p. 9).

The second chapter, “The Chronology of Wine Faults,” summarizes what can go wrong at each phase from wine grape growing, starting with planting and managing a vineyard through harvest, production, bottling, transporting, and storage of the wine. This sets the stage for the next 13 chapters which cover the faults in more detail. The wine faults examined in these chapters—”Brettanomyces,” “Oxidation,” “Volatile Acidity,” “Reduction and Volatile Sulfur Compounds,” “Musty Taints: Cork Taint and Its Relatives,” “Smoke Taint,” “Geosmin,” “Eucalyptus Taint,” “Light Damage,” “Heat Damage,” “Greenness in Wine and Ladybug Taint,” “Mousiness,” and “Faults of Malolactic Fermentation”—are rem- iniscent of the ten plagues recited during the Passover Seder while spilling a drop of wine from a cup onto a plate. But if one encounters any of these faults, especially if it is pronounced, or even worse, multiple faults, which is certainly possible, he or she is more likely to dump the entire bottle instead of a few drops.

Chapters 3 through 15 each begin with six questions and answers about the flaw: What is it? What is the flavor impact? What causes it? Is it always bad? How can it be prevented? How common is it? These can serve as a reference when a taster is trying to quickly identify a problem. A more in depth discussion follows with a brief summary paragraph at the end. Because some of the chapters are short, Goode’s adherence to the “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them” format occasionally leads to repetition of some of the same phrases even within a page.

Chapter 3 is about Brettanomyces or brett as it is commonly known. This common flaw caused by a yeast, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, manifests itself in many, though not always unpleasant ways. Goode notes that “Some bretty wines show more earthy and spicy; others are more at the fecal/barnyard end of the spectrum” (p. 23). He con- cludes with “Brett is such an interesting topic. It’s a fault, yet it’s an accepted element of some fine wine, particularly those with age. It’s a superb example of why we should take a more nuanced view of wine faults, rather than a binary ‘fault or no fault’ view” (p. 41). An example of an appealing bretty wine that I recently tasted is the 2013 White Rose Estate Nysa Vineyard Pinot Noir from the Dundee Hills in Oregon. The obvious but restrained barnyard aroma added to the complexity of this whole cluster fermented wine from a challenging vintage.

Goode contends “that oxygen management is probably the most important factor in wine quality” (p. 41) and spends 35 pages making the case in Chapter 4. Oxidation is another fault that does not always yield an unacceptable result and, in fact, is an essential component of several wines including tawny port. We learn that there are two types of oxidation: (1) enzymic and (2) nonenzymic or chemical. The former causes the browning of fruit. The latter involves complex interactions among oxygen, iron, and phenolics, which are flavor chemicals in red wine.

Chapter 5, “Volatile Acidity” (VA), another common flaw that gives a wine the smell of nail polish remover, is one that I have noticed in many wines that I have tasted lately. Goode writes, “At low levels, volatile acidity can add a bit of a lift to the nose of wines and can be positive” (p. 77). The lower the level, the better, I would say. At the same length as the previous chapter, Chapter 6, “Reduction and Volatile Sulfur Compounds” (VSCs), extensively examines “one of the most compli- cated and intriguing of all wine faults” (p. 87) that in most cases is truly repulsive— think of the rotten smell of hydrogen sulfide—yet is a “fundamental component of wine aroma in some varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc” (p. 86). Goode mentions that some experts have heard of flavors from VSCs being attributed to terroir.

Goode explains that “reduction, chemically speaking, is the opposite of oxidation” (p. 87). As with brett, yeasts are the culprits but reduction can also happen after bottling if the closure does not transmit enough oxygen as was the case with the screw tops early on. The problem was addressed by creating liners that are more permeable but Goode notes that it is too soon to tell if these will bring the problem under control.

Chapter 7, “Musty Taints: Cork Taint and Its Relatives,” is about a type of flaw that is always bad and the one that I had noticed in the claret. It is caused by the interaction of chlorine with microbes. While TCA is the main source, there are other compounds that cause these problems. At the winery where I work, I have witnessed diametrically opposite reactions to a corked bottle, one clearly suggestive of an allergic reaction, albeit short-lived, but nonetheless temporarily incapacitating, and the other anosmic. In the latter case, the individual unleashed a stream of adjectives and nouns grandiloquently extolling the aromatic virtues of a wine so clearly corked that the rest of us sat in utter disbelief. I wondered if there was such a thing as an X-ray nose!

Chapter 8, “Smoke Taint,” covers a hot topic in the western United States which suffered record breaking wildfires during the growing seasons of 2017 and 2018. It is an insidious problem because the effects may not be obvious until the wine has aged in bottle for a while. Although Goode deems smoke taint always bad, the Biscuit Fire in the Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon yielded examples of wines that some found attractive. For example, the 2002 Troon Biscuit Fire Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon became a collector’s item that sold for $700 a bottle (Eastman, 2009).

“Geosmin” (Chapter 9), is another flaw caused by microbes and, like TCA with which it has been confused, deemed irredeemably bad. “Eucalyptus Taint” (Chapter 10) is appealing to some and can bring out fruit notes. “Light Damage” (Chapter 11) and “Heat Damage” (Chapter 12) are both always bad but completely avoidable if the wine is handled properly. “Greenness in Wine and Ladybug Taint” (Chapter 13) can be caused by picking the grapes too soon or by ladybugs in the clus- ters. If resulting from the former, a little greenness might be acceptable. If it is caused by ladybugs, it is too intense.

“Mousiness” (Chapter 14), which can be caused by lactic acid bacteria, is admit- tedly one that I had never experienced possibly because you cannot smell it but must wait until it is in your mouth to detect it. But it can be even more deceptive. Goode states, “Up to a third of the population aren’t able to spot it at all. So, some wine- makers may be bottling wines that they think are fine, while two-thirds of their cus- tomers find them unacceptable” (pp. 180–181).

“Faults of Malolactic Fermentation” (Chapter 15) can result when malic acid is converted by bacteria to softer lactic acid. The results are favored by some and dis- liked by others, especially when the wine becomes too buttery.

Chapter 16 is a very short look at “Laboratory Testing for Wine Faults.” Because of the high cost of equipment needed to run some tests on samples, many wineries rely on commercial operations such as ETS Laboratories to do it for them. But Goode also recognizes “that technologies that were previously available through expensive third-party laboratories are now in reach of winery labs…[and] can do away with the need for defensive winemaking” (p. 201).

Chapter 17, “Conclusions,” shares Goode’s observations based on his experience in charge of monitoring flaws for the International Wine Challenge (IWC). He claims, “Wine faults seem to be less common than they used to be…More common than clear-cut faults are wines in which quality has been lost through the presence of fault compounds at levels that detract from the wine” (p. 202).

Quotations from experts in the area of wine flaws Goode interviewed lend credi- bility to the discussions as well as insights into the current research. The book includes references to the technical literature and an adequate index of four two-col- umn pages. A glossary of terms and an acronym list would have been helpful additions.

Someone without a background in chemistry is likely to find the chapters on indi- vidual flaws difficult reading. Goode does not hold back on the technical details or the use of long names of chemical compounds. Amusingly, though, after the chal- lenging discussion of brett, he realizes in the next chapter on oxidation that he has likely left some readers behind: “You probably won’t be pleased to hear that the mechanisms of chemical oxidation are really complicated. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I will try to explain them clearly in ways that won’t make you fall asleep, keeping the chemical jargon to a minimum” (pp. 47–48). He is suc- cessful only briefly before reverting to the jargon.

The intended audience for this book is unclear though there are some clues. In addition to his attempt to keep the lay audience awake, Goode also seems to be speaking directly to winemakers when he writes “depending on which country you are working in…” (p. 192). The emphasis on the detailed chemistry of the faults could be helpful to those involved in wine production. Oenophiles without the tech- nical background will gain important insight into how their beverage of choice might be compromised and what signs of problems to look for when tasting.

Because of his scientific background and well-honed writing abilities, Goode serves as an able and dispassionate link to the experts and active researchers in the field of wine faults. Flawless, while not flawless itself, is an important contribu- tion at whatever level of understanding a reader might require. I am certainly happy to have this reference to turn to now whenever I experience something unseemly in my glass.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitions of dummy that could refer to a potential reader of this book are most unflattering: “a dumb person” and “a dolt, blockhead.” And yet, since the first book in the For Dummies series appeared in 1991, more than 200 million books with about 2,500 titles are in print. There is even a competing collection with a much more offensive name, The Complete Idiot’s Guides. There must be a following that is not put off by the insulting titles since Wine for Dummies recently released a seventh edition.

Husband and wife, Ed McCarthy, a Certified Wine Educator, and Mary Ewing- Mulligan, the first American woman to earn a Master of Wine, unquestionably have the credentials to produce this guide ambitiously aimed at an audience well beyond dummies. In addition to someone who knows little about wine but wants to learn more, the book is pitched to those who “know something about wine… but want to understand it better, from the ground up” as well as to those who are “already very knowledgeable but realize that [he or she] can always discover more” (p. 3). The results are certainly competent but mixed.

The text consists of an Introduction and eight parts that are subdivided into chap- ters: “Getting Started with Wine” (five chapters), “Wine and You: Up Close and Personal” (four chapters), “Wine’s Classic Face: The ‘Old World’ of Wine” (three chapters), “Wine’s Modern Face: The ‘New World’ of Wine” (two chapters), “Wine’s Exotic Face” (two chapters), “When You’ve Caught the Bug” (three chap- ters), “The Part of Tens” (two chapters), and “Appendixes” (three appendixes). Icons in the margins are standard features in the For Dummies series. Six are used in this book: Real Deal denotes bargain wine; Remember highlights material that bears repeating; Technical Stuff, Tip, Warning, and Worth the Search are self- explanatory. Oddly, the icon for Tip is called a bull’s-eye despite being a light bulb.

Part 1 covers some of the fundamentals about wine. Chapter 1, “Wine 101,” charges through in 12 pages the basics on how wine is made and its colors and styles. Though the authors claim to incorporate recent changes in the wine world, there is no mention of orange wines, certainly a hot topic these days. They offer useful tips on how to taste, what to say when tasting, what the components of taste are, and how to identify good and bad wine. An overview of major and some less familiar grape varieties includes a nice concise discussion of personality traits versus performance factors. The lesson on how to read wine labels should be helpful to the uninitiated. Unfortunately, the authors maintain terroir has no fixed definition, ignoring the one given by the Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin (OIV). The section concludes with a short chapter entitled Winemaking Matters that touches on jargon, vine-growing, and turning grapes into wine.

The second part offers advice on purchasing wine to take home or to consume in a restaurant. Sometimes in an attempt to be helpful, the line to insulting is crossed by stating the obvious, for example: “The glass of wine that you order can be ordinary or finer, inexpensive or higher-priced, depending on the restaurant” (p. 93). A chapter on serving wine recommends cork removers including the Screwpull, the two-pronged Ah-So, and the waiter’s corkscrew. Curiously, the authors also mention The Durand, a high-priced combination corkscrew and Ah-So designed to extract a cork from a very old bottle without pushing it in or breaking it. While I have had my share of adventures opening decades-old bottles, I have not felt com- pelled to purchase one of these. A novice would be better advised to spend the money on an interesting case of moderately-priced wines. The remainder of the chapter does do a fine job of describing all the facets of wine service at home. The second part concludes with a very short chapter on wine pairings that should provide some comfort to those with no experience.

Part 3, the longest, takes the reader to Europe with extended visits to France and Italy and quick trips to Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia. The chapters on France and Italy offer a good though not exhaustive overview of the wine regions in both countries. Each has its own sep- arate volume in the For Dummies series for which I can offer no opinion, but neither are up-to-date. Likely for the benefit of more knowledgeable readers, there is more discussion in these chapters of high-end wines than what might be expected for mere dummies. In contrast, the brief summaries of the wine scenes in the other countries should be enough to whet the appetites of the uninitiated but leave the cognoscenti thirsty for more. Missing are suggestions for low- and moderately-price wines from the Eastern European countries cited as well as some others, for example, Bulgaria, from which great value bottles are appearing in the United States.

The wine scenes in the United States, which gets its own chapter, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa are described in Part 4. With 18 pages, California, of course, claims the most ink in the chapter entitled “America, America.” The reader looking for more is referred to the authors’ California Wine for Dummies, released in 2009, which I have not read. Oregon, Washington State, and New York are each discussed in under five pages. Covering the countries in three continents, the 20-page chapter on the Southern Hemisphere concludes the part, making no mention of Uruguay, which produces moderately-priced wines that should appeal to those looking for good value.

Two chapters comprise Part 5, one on Champagne and other sparkling wines and a second on fortified and dessert wines. Both are very well done and provide a broad if somewhat shallow overview. A plug for McCarthy’s Champagne for Dummies, released in 1999, of course, is included.

If you began reading this book uncertain if you are a “dummy for wine” and dis- cover that you are, Part 6 provides advice on buying and collecting wine, learning more about your new favorite adult beverage, and describing and rating it. The rec- ommendations are well presented and sound. The lists of books, magazines, newslet- ters, and online resources (pp. 354–360) are particularly good.

On the other hand, Part 7 could have been entirely left out. “The Ten Common Questions about Wine” and “Ten Wine Myths” repeat some of the information con- tained in earlier chapters for no apparent reason and with no obvious benefit.

The three appendixes in Part 8 are a useful pronunciation guide and a glossary of wine terms, and a less useful, incomplete vintage chart with ratings of wines from a few regions produced from 1996 to 2015, but curiously missing 2003 to 2005. A two- column, 18-page index facilitates locating even minor topics in the text.

Despite the impressive credentials of the authors, occasional inaccuracies and imprecisions crept in. For instance, the Muscadet grape is referred to (p. 167) but it is not the name of the grape but the name of the region where the Melon de Bourgogne grape produces a wine that is sometimes called Muscadet. Another example, Hillcrest Vineyard was established in 1961, not 1962, as the first post- Prohibition winery, not the first, in Oregon (p. 252). The French were adulterating clarets with Syrah in the 19th century making the claim that Australia invented the “completely original formula” of Shiraz with Cabernet Sauvignon (p. 264) open to question.

Ironically, the one major problem with this book is that its intended audience is broader than the title suggests. In their attempt to be all things to readers of all levels of wine expertise, the authors have produced a work that covers too much and too little. A guide for the novice learning about wine should be more focused on the basics and include many recommendations that are not expensive. Is a dummy going to pay more than $25 for a bottle of wine or three figures for a cork extractor? It should also be portable so it can be consulted in a shop or restaurant. This gangly volume is certainly no vade mecum.

Untypically, the book’s dedication “to all who have the courage to buy a book called Wine for Dummies” (p. 430) appears almost as an afterthought at the end of the book on an unnumbered page. The reader is praised as “intelligent, not dummies, because you have the wisdom to realize that in the complex world of wine, everyone has something more to learn” (p. 430). True enough. Admittedly, I did learn a few things reading this book. But unless you are on the less knowledge- able end of the wine wisdom scale, consulting specialized references would be more enlightening.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.8

Wine and Place is best described by its sub-title: A Terroir Reader. It is a reference par excellence. Every library and serious wine aficionado should have a copy of this lively book on the shelves. And, of course, this includes the libraries of wine economists

even though most of the pages are devoted to topics not directly related to our field.

This reviewer appreciates that Wine and Place does not shy away from controver- sies. For example, anyone who has much experience tasting wine is familiar with minerality. But there is an open question about exactly what that descriptive term means. After all, basalt—which is associated with minerality—has no aroma or flavor. Some go so far as to say that minerality is so vague a description as to be meaningless. The authors devote 26 pages (pp. 197–222) to teasing apart this controversy.

A Browsable Book but with a Linear Narrative

Patterson and Buechsenstein have divided their subject into nine chapters, each devoted to a particular topic. Then they add excerpts, often lengthy excerpts, from various writings on the subject. In the book’s “Introduction,” the authors advise the reader, “We do not expect many people to sit down and read through this book cover to cover in rapt concentration. More likely, the self-contained chapters should provide food for thought, a chance to meditate on discrete aspects of terroir, whether the minutiae of soil composition or the perils of promotional hyper- bole” (p. 4). In other words, the reader is invited to treat this book as a volume of short stories or as a reference book, dipping in where interested and bypassing other topics. The authors make a point of selecting material reflecting a variety of opposing viewpoints. After adding their own opinions and critiques of an expert, they add narrative which smoothly segues to the next excerpt and the next chapter.

The Book’s Ten Theses Framework—Does Terroir Even Exist?

In addition to the nine chapters, the “Introduction” is essential reading. Think of it as Chapter 0. There the authors explain in some depth the “framework” motivating their chapter narratives—“Ten Theses on Terroir.” The ten are numbered using Roman numerals, in order to stress their importance no doubt. Let’s examine a few of the ten theses, starting with:

“I. We believe the effects of terroir are real and undeniable. … This is true for both macro- climate regions—Alsatian Riesling is different from Austrian, from German, from Finger Lakesian—and for specific vineyards and sites.”

II. We believe that many if not most of the standard depictions of this phenomenon, however, are worthy of skepticism. …” (pp. 4–5)

It’s hard for this reviewer to argue with those sentiments. And the book’s first chapter, “The Lure and Promise of Terroir,” presents a balanced historical perspec- tive on both sides of the controversy over whether the independent effects of terroir are real or imaginary. The opening excerpt is a passage from Matt Kramer’s Making Sense of Burgundy (1990). Kramer develops the idea of “somewhereness”—the word

Kramer coined to describe how terroir expresses itself in wine.

“The ideal is to amplify terroir without distorting it. Terroir should be transmitted as free as possible of extraneous elements or style or taste. Ideally, one should not be able to find the hand of the winemaker. …” (p. 12)

That “ideal” terroir purity may be expecting too much. But it is consistent with state- ments made to this reviewer by a number of winemakers: “We try to get the best fruit we can, then not screw it up.”

Let’s jump to Thesis VI.

“VI. A pair of observations that aren’t strictly speaking, thesis statements, but need to be included in our [the authors’] initial salvo.”

First, we note that two critical dimensions are almost entirely missing from standard dis- cussions of terroir. First, … precious few rigorous sensory studies have been conducted …

Second, … almost no attention has been paid to what the vines do, to the photosynthetic and physiological mechanisms that actually create the chemical behind the distinctive flavors and aromas of terroir-driven wines. …” (pp. 5–6)

Their second point is well-taken. As far as this reviewer knows there has been little, if any, terroir research into wine grape plant biology. How do the vines translate terroir into fruit? Attention researchers: additional work is needed.

But their first point seems overstated. There has been recent work on the relation- ship between terroir and the chemical makeup of the underlying sensory flavors of grape juice. Significant research progress has been made in the science of the taste of terroir since the book was written. This is, of course, one of the hazards faced by authors writing about selectively about prior research—previously unstudied topics eventually get studied. This reviewer will mention such research below.

The Book’s Chapters—A Wide Spectrum of Disciplines

There are nine chapters in the book: “The Lure and Promise of Terroir,” “History and Definitions,” “Soil: The Terre in Terroir,” “Climate: Limits and Variations,” “Grapevines: Bringing Terroir to Life,” “Winemaking: The Human Element of Terroir,” “Sensory: Validating Terroir,” “Marketing: Terroir for Sale,” and “The Future of Terroir.” Let’s dip into a couple of the chapters – “Soil” and then “Marketing.”

Chapter 3, “Soil: The Terre in Terroir”

This is the first of several chapters featuring some hard science technical discussion. (The “Climate” and “Grapevines” chapters are also quite technical.) In the “Soil” chapter, there are several scientific studies excerpted beginning with Kevin Pogue (2010) who was interested in the effect of basalt on wines. Basalt has high iron content. Iron is important for wines, with higher concentrations creating longer wine aging potential. Working in the Columbia Valley AVA in Washington, Pogue measured available iron in soil depths accessible to roots. He found that more access to basalt meant more available iron. But he did not directly test the grapes or the wine.

In the late 1960s, Gerard Seguin (University of Bordeaux) took a different approach. He looked for similarities in the soils of great winegrowing regions. He dis- covered that the physical structure of the soil mattered more than its chemical compo- sition contents. Good drainage, access to an aquifer early in the growing season, and rainfall after the grape harvest to replenish the aquifer during the winter are important factors. This optimal, seasonal water availability explains the importance of gravel, slate, and other loosely packed soil structures in making great wine.

But here are three instances where the march of research progress overtakes the authors’ manuscript.

1. Their manuscript was completed before Dr. Kathryn Nora Barnard (2016) actu- ally studied the chemical composition of the taste of the wine produced from grapes grown at various terroir sites in the Willamette Valley (Oregon). (Earlier she performed a similar terroir and taste analysis for Missouri wine (2009).) Although the Willamette Valley wines were tasted, the analyzed results are not yet public.1 Yet this reviewer feels including Dr. Barnard’s Missouri 2009 results in this book would have been useful.

2. In the commercial sector, James Cahill (2018) manager of the Soter Vineyard’s new North Valley label, has recently done considerable work on the relation between the terroir—physical soil composition, exposure, and climate—of diverse Soter fields and the resulting distinct pinot noir taste profiles.

3. Orley Ashenfelter and Karl Storchmann (2010) have studied terroir effects in the Mosel Valley. They rely on data from a detailed survey of the altitude and angle of all of the vineyards in Mosel. Using well-known results from physics they calculate the quantity and quality of sunlight on each vineyard. They add other explanatory variables such as soil composition and use the data as predictors of land prices. Ashenfelter and Storchmann then use their model to predict the impact of global warming on vineyard prices in that region.

And let us not overlook that the book mixes in dashes of wry humor. For example, the authors note that although terroir has a significant effect on human efforts to make wine, humans in turn can have a significant effect on the terroir.

“Tom Burgess remembers planting his vineyard on the steep slopes of Howell Mountain by cracking the bedrock with dynamite to make room for vine roots. … When Jan Krupp devel- oped the 650 acres of Stagecoach Vineyards in the region of Atlas Peak, he ripped an esti- mated half million tons of boulders …” (pp. 66–68)

Chapter 8: “Marketing: Terroir for Sale”

As economists we are interested in certain aspects of marketing including pricing. This chapter on marketing includes valuable information as well as many entertain- ing anecdotes. One example is the history of Bordeaux which, as it happens, was largely invented in the late 1800s by the vineyard owners in the region. A more illu- minating tale is the story of Chalk Hill California chardonnay. Today that label is one of the top premium chardonnays in the United States. But in 1996 their wines were relegated to American grocery store shelves at very low prices. As a consumer of those wines back then, this reviewer remembers that the wine was a true bargain. The owners decided to make a commitment to change the marketing of their brand. Note that they did not improve the wine itself very much. Instead they worked with consultants and focus groups to identify the unique elements their chardonnay offered. And, sure enough, those elements were partially the result of terroir in the form of the chalky soil in which the grapes were grown. They achieved what every business owner dreams of: higher price, higher revenue, and very little change in cost.

How to Know If You Need This Book

This book is essential for your library if you are at all serious about wine. As the authors advise, use it as a reference book when you need information about a topic or just a few pithy quotes. The authors have performed a real service cataloging and connecting a well-selected multitude of writings and presentations about terroir.