Journal of Wine Economics Volume 14 | 2019 | No. 2

If the body of law regulating the American wine industry was not so absurdly incon- sistent and infuriatingly intrusive while at the same time mute on what would seem to be critical issues, it would be humorous. Attorney Jordan Lipp and his wife, Heather, a finance executive and wine blogger (www.10kbottles.com), offer the reader “Part cocktail trivia and part Myth Busters – a book explaining thirty-eight bizarre rules that most of us wine drinkers only have a vague notion about, yet they define what is in our wine, how we buy it, and how we enjoy it” (p. 2). Many of these rules were enacted after the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealed the 18th Amendment that led to the era of Prohibition. Section 2 of the repeal has been interpreted to cede to the states the regulation of alcohol within their borders. The result is a hodge podge of laws, some of which have come into conflict with the Dormant Commerce Clause that prohibits states from discriminat- ing against interstate or international trade. And then there are the federal regulations. “Prohibition may have officially ended in 1933, but our nation is still reeling from its effects,” (p. 129), the Lipps confirm.

The book’s 38 chapters are grouped in five parts: Naming and Identifying Wines; Making Wines; Labeling and Warnings on Wines; Selling, Shipping, and Consuming Wines; and Crime, Religion, State Warnings, and Home Winemaking. A Summation and Final Thoughts conclude the short volume.

Part One (Chapters 1 to 8) deals with the laws pertaining to the percent of a variety that must be in a wine labeled with its name, naming wines for foreign wine regions such as Champagne, the percent of wine designating a particular American Viticultural Area (AVA) that must come from it, and the percent of a vintage dated wine that must have been harvested in that year. These regulations might seem unex- citing and perhaps irrelevant, but they remain at the heart of contemporary high- stakes conflicts. For example, Chapter 6 looks at the efforts to protect the name, Napa Valley. Ironically, a Napa-based winery has recently been challenged for its labels by the state of Oregon based on some of the regulations mentioned in Part One.

As this is being written, a labeling dispute is raging between Copper Cane Wines in Napa Valley and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC). Two of Copper Cane’s wines, Elouan and “The Willametter Journal,” are made from Pinot Noir grapes grown in Oregon, but are produced in California. The 2017 Elouan is labelled with the names of the three Oregon AVAs, where the grapes were grown, along with the tagline “The Coastal Standard. Purely Oregon, Always Coastal” and a statement by the winemaker, Joseph Wagner: “We produce wines that define Oregon’s coastal regions. For our Pinot Noir, we bring together three diverse valleys along Oregon’s coast…” There are a number of problems including the fact that these three valleys are not on the coast where Pinot Noir grapes could not be expected to ripen. Furthermore, each of the valleys listed is a separate AVA that is noncontiguous with the others. If an AVA is listed on the label, 85% of the grapes must come from it. The label of “The Willametter Journal” refers to the wine being sourced from the Territory of Oregon, ignoring its becoming a state in 1859 and implying that the grapes come from the Willamette Valley AVA. Upon review at the request of the state of Oregon, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) reversed itself and ordered changes to seven labels they had previously approved. In the meantime, the OLCC revoked Copper Cane’s certificate of approval to do business in Oregon. The decision is under appeal.

A key concern in the Copper Cane case is the fact that the winery, which produces the wine from Oregon grapes is in California, a state that has more relaxed standards for additives and percentages. Yet in Chapter 19, the authors declare “the location of the winery…is too boring a topic for a chapter…” (p. 99). Amusingly, though, they admit “this topic is not too boring for a lengthy footnote!” (p. 99, footnote 1).

The Introduction to Part Two is a brief and simple description of how wine is made with enough references to pooping out alcohol and burping out carbon dioxide in less than three pages to delight most three year olds. And if a reader still has not had enough, these bodily functions reappear at the beginning of Chapter 9. Striving for approachability can lead to excessive cutesiness.

Laws that address what additives are permitted in wine are discussed in Chapters 9 to 14 with the last answering the question that is the book’s title. Spoiler alert: tech- nically speaking, the answer is that fermented apple juice can be added to grape wine and not have to be called apple wine. In fact, there is no requirement for a winery to list any ingredients on a bottle (Chapter 12).

Otherwise, wine labels are regulated at least as much as the liquid they describe, but with some surprising, although not always unwelcome, exceptions. Chapters 15 to 23 that comprise Part Three cover what is required to appear, what may appear, and what is strictly prohibited on a bottle of wine. Among the topics addressed, the authors explain the historical reason no nutritional information including calories must be listed, while wishing that it was, and why, mercifully, there is no quality rating for wine like there is in many European countries.

The folly of Federalism in the realm of fermented beverages is laid out in Part Four (Chapters 24 to 33). Each state dictates its own rules for selling and serving wine, charging corkage, and receiving shipments. While there are no longer any totally dry states, there are still dry counties and municipalities. During my undergraduate days in Evanston, Illinois, for example, no alcohol could be sold within city limits. The reason was the charter of Northwestern University was amended in 1855 to ban the sale of fermented beverages within four miles of campus and had nothing to do with the fact that the township was later to become the headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. This, of course, did not stop upperclassman from making runs to liquor stores that lined Howard Street, the border between Evanston and Chicago, and sharing the haul with those of us who were underage. In June 1972, before I returned for graduate school, Evanston permitted the sale of alcohol with a meal, however that is defined. Chapter 24 includes examples of how that ambiguity has been resolved, mostly for the worse. Since liquor stores did not appear in Evanston until after I graduated, I was forced to acquire my wine in neighboring Skokie and occasionally in Chicago.

“Trying to figure out the labyrinth of state regulations on shipping wine in the United States makes it seem like it would be easier to ship Uranium than wine from one state to another,” (p. 146) the authors complain. In fact, keeping track of the evolving laws reg- ulating the shipment of alcohol between states has led to the creation of businesses that assist wineries with compliance. While after Granholm v. Heald, the case that the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly decided in favor of out-of-state wineries wanting to ship to states under the same rules as wineries within them, thus, giving dominance to the Dormant Commerce Clause over the 21st Amendment, things have gotten somewhat better, but each state still has its own limits and peculiarities.

Two other issues were recently litigated that again pit the two constitutional clauses against each other. In November 2018, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Lebamoff Enterprises, Inc. et al. v. Bruce Rauner, et al. and Wine & Spirit Distribution of Illinois overturned a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that permitted Illinois to prohibit out- of-state retailers from shipping liquor to its residents citing the Dormant Commerce Clause as the basis for the decision. On 26 June 2019 in a seven to two decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Clayton Byrd held that Tennessee’s two-year residency requirement for out-of-state residents to obtain a retail liquor license violated the Dormant Commerce Clause and was not saved by the 21st Amendment.

Part Five (Chapters 34 to 38) is a collection of “several miscellaneous laws about wine that we just did not feel belonged in the other parts of this book” (p. 163).

This self-published paperback, while certainly a worthwhile read, suffers from a lack of careful editing. There are missing words, too much repetition of ideas, and errors (“chalk full” (p. 125) instead of chock full). While the extensive, mercifully same-page, footnotes cite the primary sources of the regulations, secondary sources, especially The Oxford Companion to Wine, 4th Edition by Jancis Robinson et al., are referenced for wine related claims and even for a discussion of the Italian government quality rating system (Chapter 21) where primary sources are available. A list of references or bibliography and an index would have been useful.

Despite its flaws, Is There Apple Juice in My Wine? is a breezy account of an inher- ently ponderous subject that affects all aspects of the U.S. wine industry. For the investment of a few hours and the price of a modest bottle of wine, a reader can enjoy a somewhat frothy, opinionated, but well-informed overview of the regulations behind many of the controversies still raging and gain insight into what may actually be in that bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.18

Ever since I read Maltman’s papers (Maltman, 2013a, 2013b), I bristle when I hear the term “minerality” used in a description of a wine. Geologic1 minerals have no smell or taste, he insists. How incredibly naïve it is, then, to think that a wine is a medium for transporting flavors from the land in which the vines that grew the grapes are planted. After all, when we smell flowers or taste berries in a wine, we know it is not because it contains them. But as others acknowledge: “Although many tasting terms are metaphorical…, there is a strong temptation to interpret ‘mineral’ rather more literally…” (Robinson, 2015, p. 465). Of course, not doing so could undermine a fundamental tenet of terroirists. Since the beginning of this century, “minerality” and “mineral” appear ubiquitously in wine writing. Maltman claims that “apparently it has now become the most widely used taste descriptor” (p. 176). To me, it comes across as a vinous verbal tick that signals an indolent vagueness wrapped around a desire to flaunt a tuned-in palate. At times, I requested more specificity from visitors to a tasting room where I worked when they claimed to have detected minerality, then sought validation from me, which, of course, I never gave. So I was amused and humbled as I was preparing this review when I read a tasting note that I had written while sampling a 1967 Chablis Grand Cru Vaudésir from Domaine Mary Drouhin in 1976: “Taste very flint and earth (sic)…Very earthy, minerally finish” (Hulkower, 1976). Oh, the irony! What was I thinking? Or more precisely, since I was still a novice, who or what was I channeling? The pervasive tasting-note meme clearly has its roots going back many decades.

Since a long-practiced habit dies hard, a strong jolt is required to dislodge it. Maltman’s excellent book is intended to be just that. The retired Professor of Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University in Wales and amateur vigneron deploys his formidable twin-pronged knowledge and pedagogical prowess in this volume aimed specifically at wine professionals, especially those who are perpetuating the myth of minerality in their writing. So ingrained is the idea that we can taste minerals in wine that numerous labels include the names of or references to rocks, minerals, and land features. In the Preface, Maltman advises: “…these days it’s almost oblig- atory in the wine world to know something about the geology of wine-producing areas and of particular vineyards” (p. xi). But he cautions: “…geology is a highly conceptual subject and not easy to pick up quickly” (p. xi). So will those who are too lazy to be more precise in their descriptions be too lazy to read this challenging work? One hopes that they are as receptive to Maltman’s message as the celebrated British wine writer Andrew Jefford who in the Foreword states: “…he is a scientist – and wine lover – with an open and enquiring mind who merely asks that we should understand what the technical terms mean before we use them and that we respect the journey toward understanding which science has so far permitted us” (p. x).

In the 12 chapters comprising the book, Maltman’s approach is to teach geology literally from below the ground up, starting at the atomic level with the ele- ments (Chapter 1) that build the minerals (Chapters 2 and 3) that make the rocks (Chapter 4 to 8) that weather and erode and mix with biological material, called humus, to make the soil (Chapters 9 and 10). Chapter 11, Vineyards and the intended audience, Chapter 12, Epilogue: So is Vineyard Geology Important for Wine Tasting? complete the lessons.

Maltman reminds us: “…all rocks and soils are made from (geologic) minerals, not some more than others” (p. 173). Throughout the book, Maltman drives home the point that no geologic mineral can be sensed in a wine. For example, regarding slate, which is prevalent in many vineyards, most famously in those on the Mosel and Rhine in Germany, he asserts: “…like most rocks, slate lacks any taste or odor. To have taste, a substance has to dissolve, and manifestly that is not the case with an inert material that makes practicable kitchen countertops and durable roofs” (p. 99).

There is another type of mineral, however, nutrient mineral, and therein lies some of the confusion. In addition to water, a vine only needs sunlight for photosyn- thesis and essential nutrients to thrive. Maltman explains, “Mycorrhizal fungi living in the soil can extract some [nutrients] directly from geologic minerals and transfer them into the vine’s roots but otherwise complex weathering processes and ion exchange have to act to release the elements into the soil’s pore water” (p. 167). These nutrients are sometimes called mineral nutrients because they are extracted from the ground. But, he notes, “most nutrition typically comes from the top few tens of centimeters or so of the soil” (p. 167). In particular, “the greater part of the nutrition comes from the organic matter in the soil” (p. 173). The critical process of cation (positive ion) exchange in soil water with the vine roots is master- fully explained in Chapter 2. Vine roots that grow deeper into bedrock are in search of water, not nutrients.

So since vines absorb nutrient but not geologic minerals, can we taste those? Well, for one thing, wines do not have much of them. “In normal wines, mineral nutrients typically comprise less than 0.2%, in total,” Maltman informs us (p. 176). Based on studies using water, a far less complex beverage than wine, “[i] t’s possible that the tiny amounts can interact to produce some aggregate effect, but, tellingly, tasters report that as the presence of metal ions becomes increasingly detectable, the water becomes more and more disagreeable” (p. 177). He concludes “describing a wine as mineral or possessing minerality should not be referring to actual minerals – geologic or nutrient – but should be recalling some cue, some mental association” (p. 177).

For those willing to face the scientific facts but not all the details, the last chapter is a valuable summary and a firm persistent pushback on popular beliefs regarding the connection between the taste of wine and geology. The flavor of wine is largely created by our senses of smell and taste. Maltman reiterates, “The taste components mainly involve ions and compounds in solution and geologic min- erals are practically insoluble” (p. 217). Sodium chloride is an exception and gives a salty taste. But because “growers avoid salt in vineyard soils, and grapevines try to reject sodium…wine normally contains little salt, less than the minimum…most people require to be present in water in order to recognize it: a perception of saltiness in wine is usually metaphorical” (p. 217).

What is it then that is creating the impression that we are smelling and tasting rocks? Highly aromatic organic compounds like microorganisms are likely a source. A popular term in wine notes these days is petrichor, the smell of rocks after a rain, which is caused by “the vaporization of certain organic oils (lipids, carotenoid, etc.) …” (p. 219). Maltman addresses the iodine smell of the ocean in some Chablis and makes the case that any iodine present would be in too small a concentration to be perceptible and “has to be a metaphor and unrelated in any direct way to the actual vineyard geology” (p. 219). Investigations are underway looking at bacteria lodged in the cleavages of minerals as a possible influence on wine, but nothing is clear yet.

Maltman has produced an important work that should give pause to those addicted to glibly tossing around “mineral” or “minerality” when referring to a wine’s smell or taste. Though geology is a hard subject relying on its own sometimes confusing terminology and a bit of chemistry, his explanations, leavened with sly, wry, and even, once in a while, lame humor, as well as numerous charming digres- sions, are lucid. He draws from his deep and detailed knowledge of vineyards, wines, and wine growing regions around the world to continually relate the geology to the interests of the intended readership. Black and white illustrations mer- cifully breakup the dense text, but sometimes are not sharp enough to highlight the features of interest. Fortunately, two dozen of them are also included as vivid color plates, albeit without the captions, so flipping back and forth is required. Most chap- ters conclude with an annotated list of suggested references. A six-page two-column index assists the reader in finding a definition or first mention of a term and is essen- tial in the absence of a glossary.

Despite all of the science refuting the notion of minerality in wine, I still per- ceive saltiness in a manzanilla or a grower champagne and chalk in a Pouilly- Fuissé. Is it real or is it a metaphor? Who am I going to believe, Maltman or my own palate? In the end, as Maltman, I accept that science must prevail and that even- tually it will render these questions false dichotomies.

Neal D. Hulkower
McMinnville, OR
nhulkower@yahoo.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.19

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” so the saying goes. Nor often by its title. Who could guess the content behind titles like Ulysses, Twelfth Night, The Sound and the Fury, or A Study in Scarlet? There are exceptions, of course. Adam Smith was not hiding anything when he chose the title: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. And, A General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money pretty much sums up what John Maynard Keynes had in mind.

However, for most books, one needs context to even guess what the title means. R. Jared Staudt’s The Beer Option is an example. His title is a play on words from The Benedict Option, the New York Times bestseller (Dreher, 2017). For those unfamiliar with Dreher’s book, its title is based on the monastic movement of Saint Benedict (480–547 AD). Monks in the Benedictine order withdrew from the prevailing culture, but not fully; they sought to influence and redeem the world around them. This required Benedictine monks to be in the world, but not of the world. Dreher’s “Benedict Option” is a blueprint for Christians to withdraw from the prevailing secular culture—but not too much.

The Beer Option does not have a separatist agenda that matches The Benedict Option. However, a theme that runs through Staudt’s book is that a proper appreci- ation of beer produces a proper appreciation of life—and that way of life stands apart from the vagaries of contemporary culture. Dreher writes, “Recognizing the toxins of modern secularism…Benedict Option Christians look to Scripture and Benedict’s Rule for ways to cultivate practices and communities” (p. 18). Staudt lauds homebrewing as a “practice” and brewpubs as a “community.”

Staudt divides his book into four parts. The title of each section helps unpack what may be cryptic in the book’s title: (1) A Catholic History of Beer; (2) Beer and Culture; (3) The Experience of Beer; and (4) Beer and Cultural Problems. The first three sections are the heart of the book, the first providing a historical foundation for the book’s theme; the second, a taxonomy of what the author means by culture and its nexus with malt beverages; and the third, a description of how the production and consumption of beer can enhance human flourishing. The first three sections assemble the material in a readable fashion and do so in a decidedly Roman Catholic grain (pun intended). The last section is idiosyncratic, describing the sinful side of beer (alcohol abuse) and a comparison of beer with mar- ijuana. I found the section on “Beer versus Marijuana” out of joint with the rest of the book.

There are two links that Staudt develops between The Beer Option and The Benedict Option. The first is that the brewing of beer and the enjoyment of its con- sumption are agents of human flourishing. Staudt defines a “Catholic culture” as one that “provides nourishment and comfort for humanity” (p. 67). He contends that the production of beer as well as the consumption of beer by families and small commu- nities facilitates such a culture. Hence, the book has material on “Feasting, Fasting and Friendship” and “The Economics of Homebrewing.”

The second link is that brewing in monastic orders was, and is today, an impor- tant means of preserving and modeling a “Catholic culture.” The sections of the book on “The Rise of Monastic Brewing” and “The Renaissance of Benedictine Brewing” illustrate this connection. The Benedictines (and other monastic orders) have a centuries-old tradition of religious communities that brewed beer and con- tinue to do so. Within Roman Catholicism, beer has an ancient sacramental nature, as expressed in this Roman Ritual:

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant, through the invocation of thy holy name, that whoever shall drink it may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (p. 2)

Saint Arnold of Metz was more frugal with words: “From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world” (p. 116).

As Staudt’s book makes clear, monks did not totally spiritualize beer or confine its consumption to the monastery. Beer was a means to be “in the world but not of the world.” This duality of malt beverages continues to this day. There was and there remains a commercial aspect of monastic brewing that brought the beer, if not the monks, into the marketplace. Fans of craft beer in the United States are familiar with “Trappist beer” and “Trappist ale”—even if they are unaware of the religious roots of this particular malt beverage. Staudt argues that monasteries were the first “firms” to produce beer to scale.

It would be a stretch to write a book called The Beer Option: Brewing a Protestant Culture. One reason is because Protestants, going back to the roots of the Reformation, place more emphasis on the Bible than Roman Catholics. And in a traditional Protestant exegesis of the Bible, beer has no place. The conventional wisdom is that the (English) Bible, when it refers to alcoholic beverages, puts its chips on wine and “strong drink.” James Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, for example, contains hundreds of references to wine, from Genesis 9:21 to Revelations 18:13 (Strong, 2009). Strong drink shows up in places such as Proverbs 20:1 and Isaiah 28:7. However, even though Strong’s Concordance is “exhaustive,” there is no reference to beer.1

Staudt’s book contends that the Hebrew word shekar (שֵׁכָר) probably means beer. This would be consistent with the history of beer, which dates back to Mesopotamia and would put beer “on the map” both historically and geographically as a beverage known in Biblical time and place.

So, what exactly is a “Catholic culture” with regard to beer? One telling response is from the writings of, arguably, the most famous Roman Catholic novelist of the 20th century: J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional work, commercial establish- ments for consuming beer were not the bars and honkytonks of country and western music. Rather, Tolkien created literary pubs like the Prancing Pony and the Green Dragon as venues of healthy and flourishing communities. In The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1965), when the hobbits returned to the Shire, the community no longer had the camaraderie that beer offered. In the fight to restore the previous culture of the Shire, the inns were reopened and the fine beer of the past was once again brewed. With all that has been written to describe the social pleasures of drink- ing beer, few verses match the fetching words of Frodo’s song (p. 170):

There is an inn, a merry old inn beneath an old grey hill.
And there they brew a beer so brown That the man of the moon came down one night to drink his fill.

Staudt sees the Renaissance of craft beer in the United States, with its brewpubs and beer festivals, as real world examples of what Tolkien admired in his world of fantasy. He applauds social events for Roman Catholics that involve beer consump- tion, such as “Pint with a Priest,” “Prayer, Penance, and Pub Nights,” and (my favor- ite) “Beer and Brats with the Bishop.”

Contrary to common portrayal, life in the Benedictine monastery was not one of prayers and solitude. It also involved productive work. Staudt quotes John Henry Newman about the Benedictines: “their poetry was the poetry of hard work and hard fare, unselfish hearts and charitable hands” (p. 108). As Staudt depicts them, “The monks embody the Christian balance of being in the world but not of the world, a balance that models the relationship between beer and culture. Even as the monks retreat from the world, they become the best brewers in the world!” (p. 110).

I began this review by discussing the book’s title: The Beer Option. A rowdy fra- ternity at an American university might glance at this title and think, “Here’s a book worth reading.” However, intemperate beer drinkers will find Staudt’s book disap- pointing, particularly the section called “Drunkenness and Temperance.” Indeed, The Beer Option is, in part, a tract for sobriety in beer consumption—although sobri- ety is an ancillary theme in Staudt’s book. G.K. Chesterton, the creator of the Father Brown mystery novels and a notable apologist for Roman Catholicism, had this to say to consumers of beer and wine: “we should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them” (p. 111).

Oenologists who read the Journal of Wine Economics might wonder: Could Staudt’s thesis about beer be applied to those monasteries whose spiritual output is prayer, but whose commercial output is wine? The answer is yes. Staudt’s book sets forth a Catholic Culture and its connection to beer. A book similar to this one could be written about a Catholic Culture and wine. As Staudt writes:

Beer is a creature of both God and man. God has established in His providence everything human needs (sic) to create it…. Beer does not simply spring forth from the earth; we take the fat of the earth that God has given us, and we shape it and bring about a higher development (p. 67).

Families and monasteries that have produced wine for generations would second this. Staudt writes, “Wine may surpass beer for its subtlety, but beer certainly offers a greater variety of flavors …” (p. 131). He adds, “Drinking beer is much more enjoyable and even healthier than simply eating barley!” (p. 67). The same is true about drinking wine rather than eating grapes.

The Beer Option will not be as influential as The Benedict Option. Nonetheless, in the burgeoning supply of books about the beer industry in the past decade, Staudt’s contribution quenches a niche demand and does so like a Black Habit Ale.2

Kenneth G. Elzinga
University of Virginia
elzinga@virginia.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.20

When I first opened the package containing this massive volume about the fabled Domaine de la Romané-Conti (known by oeneophiles around the world as DRC), my first thought was the episode of Seinfeld, first aired in 1994, in which Kramer pro- motes on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee a new book he has written—a coffee table book about coffee tables. The book has folding legs on its back cover, so that the book itself becomes a coffee table. Kramer’s book was small compared with this new offering by Gert Crum, with stunning photography by Jan Bartelsman. At considerably more than a foot high and nearly a foot wide, and weighing in at close to 10 pounds (and priced quite modestly at 100 Euros), this book could well function as a respectable coffee table in many a Manhattan apartment!

This luxurious version with updated text and new photography is the latest revi- sion of Crum’s award-winning 2005 treatise. This is not a reference book per se, if for no other reason than its dimensions and heft preclude one keeping it anywhere other than on a large living room coffee table. Rather, it is a compendium of well-written essays plus stunning photographs that together tell the story of this most remarkable domaine, beginning nearly 800 years ago when the Abbey of Saint Vivant acquired four and a half acres of vineyards in Vosne, known as Cru de Clos. Apparently the monks were too immersed in prayer to have time to cultivate the vineyards, so they leased the property to others. In the 17th century, the de Croonembourg family obtained the land through marriage, and named it La Romanée, but for reasons that have never been documented.

In 1760, André de Croonembourg sold the domaine to Louis François I de Bourbon, the Prince of Conti. Two years later, the Prince added his own name to the vineyard; henceforth Romanée-Conti. This may have revealed some degree of narcissism, but the Prince was clearly a devout hedonist and lover of the grape, as he refused to sell any of the wine produced, keeping it all for his household consumption!

Over the subsequent hundred years, the Romanée-Conti vineyard was sold from one family to another until Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet expanded the domaine with new holdings in Échezeaux, Grands Échezeaux, and Richebourg. It was only “very recently”—in 1933—that La Tâche was added to the Domaine. Since 1942, two families have co-owned DRC—the de Villaine family and the Leroy/Roch family.

Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy, now 87 years old, is well known as the owner and proprietor of Domaine Leroy. (I wrote about her in a previous review in this journal (Stavins, 2014)). In 1974, she became co-managing director of DRC with Aubert de Villaine. Together they helped build DRC’s reputation to its current heights, but a series of disagreements, including her displeasure at de Villaine’s involvement in the “Judgment of Paris” wine tasting, led to her being ousted in 1992. At the Paris competition, de Villaine had favored the French Cabernets over those from California, but had committed the sin of judging the California Chardonnays to be the approximate equal of those from the motherland (Ashenfelter and Quandt, 1999). To this day, Aubert de Villaine, now 80 years of age, remains co-owner and co-director of DRC with Henry-Frédéric Roch.

Today, DRC produces seven red wines from Pinot Noir grapes in seven vine- yards (of seven distinct Grand Cru appellations): Romanée-Conti (4.5 acres produc- ing about 450 cases per year); La Tâche (15 acres); Richebourg (8.7 acres); Romanée-Saint-Vivant (13 acres); Grands Échezeaux (8.7 acres); Échezeaux (11.5 acres); and, since 2008, Corton (7 acres). In addition, the DRC produces from a vine- yard of Chardonnay grapes in Montrachet (1.7 acres).

As is well known, the wines of DRC are among the most expensive in the world, with Romanée-Conti itself at the very pinnacle. According to wine-searcher.com, currently the minimum retail price in the United States for a bottle of the 2016 vintage is $21,000. To place that in context, note that a bottle of 1945 Romanée- Conti sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2018 for $558,000.

Why do these wines command such staggering prices? An initial answer that is little more than tautological for readers of this journal is that the supply is miniscule (see the numbers noted earlier) and the demand is massive. So, why is the demand so great? Part of the answer is associated with the quality of the wines, due to superb terroir, high-density plantings, old vines, low yields, and only minimal intervention in the winery. Of course, much the same can be said of many other great, but consid- erably less costly wines. Surely, a larger share of the answer has to do with pedigree, prestige, and the existence of extreme wealth in many parts of the world.

The book takes two chapters to cover DRC’s long history, a chapter to describe the terroir, a chapter for a close examination of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and two more chapters to describe the procedures used in the vineyards and the wineries. One long chapter takes us through each of the eight Cru of DRC, and another features an interview with Aubert de Villaine, which is among the most interesting and satisfying parts of the entire book. A final chapter provides Michael Broadbent’s complete tasting notes going from the 1940 vintage through the 2013 vintage. From the first page to the last page, the beautiful photography of Jan Bartelsman illustrates the text; indeed, in many cases, the text is no more than extended captions for the photos.

At the end of this review, Burgundy aficionados may be offended by my bring- ing into the discussion the existence of new world Pinot Noir, and even more so by my referencing one of my favorite wine films, Sideways, which I reviewed in this journal about 13 years ago (Stavins, 2006). A high-point of the film is when Maya (played by Virginia Madsen) asks Miles (Paul Giamatti) why he is so into Pinot Noir. His response, which is both moving and revealing, is this:

“I don’t know. It’s a hard grape to grow. As you know. It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot’s most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.”

That is what makes Pinot Noir wines so distinctive, with the best coming from Burgundy—the highest expression of special terroir. And, of course, no wines of Burgundy are more celebrated that those of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

Having gotten through this massive volume about the history and the wines of DRC without ever having tasted even a drop of any of these legendary wines, I should mark the occasion by opening a bottle. But, alas, I cannot afford even the “humblest” of DRC wines, or, for that matter, nearly any other Grand Cru Classé Burgundy. Much to my surprise, however, just now I found listed in my cellar data- base three bottles of 2007 Domaine Chandon de Briailles from the Les Bressandes vineyard in the Grand Cru appellation of Corton. If you will excuse me, I will close this review, and make my way downstairs to my cellar, with corkscrew and glass in hand.

Robert N. Stavins
Harvard University
Robert_Stavins@hks.harvard.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.22

The global history of temperance has been overwhelmingly weighted towards the United States and the so-called British “dominions” of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. In some of the latter, there were established wine lobbies, but these were never very large or cohesive. The temperance movements, on the other hand, were well-organized, globally-connected, typically led by Protestant evangelicals and very largely driven by ordinary women. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was a veritable colossus that straddled North America, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. The literature on temperance in France and Italy—which were both the most prodigious producers and consumers of wine—is relatively sparse, contributing to the impression that there really was nothing much to report given a consensus that wine was part of the national patrimony. And yet, as Bohling demonstrates, there was a profound transformation in French drinking habits after WWII. Overall alcohol consumption per capita declined and there was a marked shift from the consumption of cheap, “industrial” wines to those that emanated from designated appellations. Joseph Bohling provides an emi- nently convincing explanation for this outcome that explicitly links the production and consumption sides of the equation. Churches and women are pretty much absent from this particular story. This is much more about the efforts of modernizing technocrats to extend the reach of the state in alliance with the defenders of quality wine. Lined up on the other side were wine producers in the south of France and Algeria, whose interests were rarely aligned, as well as home distillers of alcohol across the regions. The latter advocated a free market for alcohol on the grounds of a defense of cultural heritage and of rural livelihoods, and expected their parliamen- tary representatives to fight in their corner. Bohling undertakes a meticulous unpick- ing of shifting alliances over roughly half a century until a point in the 1990s when the sober revolution eventually triumphed within the embrace of the European Union.

When it comes to the production side of the equation, Bohling eschews any temptation to draw a straight line from the sponsorship of the first legislation designed to tackle fraud and to promote appellations at the start of the 20th century, to the ultimate victory of a quality agenda. He highlights the ability of entrenched interests to repeatedly thwart reform through their blocking powers in the National Assembly. The net result was that the wine surplus needed to be dealt with by means of distillation and conversion into fuel at considerable public expense. The prodigious output of Algeria, which was defined as an integral part of France, presented an additional complexity. If wine was construed as quintessen- tially French, as its defenders insisted it should be, the prickly question that arose was where the boundaries of the “real” France began and ended.

In a revisionist vein, Bohling maintains that serious efforts to both refine the system of appellations and tackle overproduction actually began with the Vichy regime, which was relatively unencumbered by vested interests. But after the war a return to the status quo was accompanied by a renewed resistance to reform. Bohling argues that the ground really began to shift once defenders of public health and the advocates of economic modernization began to take an interest in alcohol consumption. Each maintained that while individual lives were being destroyed by excessive drinking, France as a country was being hobbled by its addic- tion to alcohol. Interestingly, some of the critics of the existing system, like René Dumont, whose writings on Africa were seminal, drew direct parallels with the tra- vails of the French empire. For a historian of global temperance, what is striking is that parallel arguments in favor of temperance had been made in other parts of the world at an earlier juncture. The difference in the French case was that the state would intervene directly to address the surplus and the manner in which it was con- sumed. The relative strength of the National Assembly in the Fourth Republic allowed vested interests to momentarily ward off reform. Bohling reveals that the government of Pierre Mendès France actively promoted an anti-alcohol agenda, exploiting its latitude to legislate by decree. It also established a High Commission for Studies and Information on Alcoholism (HCEIA), which began to find common ground with the National Institute of Appellations of Origin (INAO) and the National Confederation of Wine and Spirits (CNVS) in the 1950s. Although the regime collapsed in the context of the Algerian crisis, the government of Charles de Gaulle placed its own backing behind the alliance and drove the reform process forward.

Aside from the transformations in French politics, the game changers were the independence of Algeria, which reduced the need for France to absorb the vast pro- duction of this ex-colony, and the efflorescence of an increasingly urbanized middle class that embraced new consumption habits. In other parts of the world, temperance advocates were forced to strike compromises, which typically took the form of local option provisions that culminated in a patchwork of wet and dry areas. The compro- mise in France was between anti-alcohol advocates and the proponents of fine wine. The shared public message of “Drink Well, Drink a Little, in Order to Drink for a Long Time” was one that temperance purists elsewhere would no doubt have found difficult to swallow. In the French context, however, it seemed to underline that certain modes of wine consumption could still be construed as desirable provided they were associated with moderation. As the “quality coalition” exploited its access to government, the producers of cheap wines felt under attack. The losers were not just the large liquor concerns, but also the many small producers of the Languedoc who actively resisted what they regarded as a campaign from Paris to deprive them of their livelihoods. This has, of course, been dealt with extensively in Smith (2016).

In perhaps the most original chapter, Bohling looks more closely at the cam- paign against drunk driving and shows how a coalition of interests, including the promoters of regional tourism, the insurance companies, and government techno- crats, raised the stakes in the 1960s and 1970s. This was partly justified in terms of the promotion of designated wine routes whose potential was supposedly being blighted by the everyday reality of death on the roads. Here, Bohling hits on the irony of wine tourism being sold through idyllic images of a timeless French coun- tryside whereas in fact the anti-alcohol lobby had fought against the consumption (of beer, cider, and much else) to which rural populations had stubbornly adhered. Towards the end of the book, Bohling also addresses the potential threats surround- ing European integration in the shape of a fresh inundation of cheap wine emanating from Italy. He demonstrates that the French authorities were highly successful in promoting their preferred version of interventionism which sought to reduce the volumes of wine produced while promoting the nomenclature of places of origin. Although this form of protectionism clearly pandered to the narrow interests of quality wine producers in the wealthier regions of France, the model travelled to other parts of Europe and also came to include products such as cheese—thereby establishing a new set of international norms for agriculture more broadly, and a new set of controversies.

Bohling’s rich history sutures together a history of wine production and a history of consumption in a manner that makes infinitely more sense than consider- ing each of these separately. Its strength resides in its close analysis of the politicking surrounding wine and the role of key lobby groups, institutional actors, and individ- ual campaigners in retarding and effecting change. It is an account that is mostly written from the center, although regional dynamics are invoked at various junctures in the story. Again, it is not strictly speaking a social history of wine, but it does offer a convincing account for why drinking patterns changed. The book is also a tremen- dous pleasure to read. For anyone seeking to understand the history of intervention- ism in the French wine industry, and the victory of the campaign against alcoholism, this book should serve as the first port of call.

Paul Nugent
University of Edinburgh
Paul.Nugent@ed.ac.uk
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.21