Journal of Wine Economics Volume 14 | 2019 | No. 3

For many centuries, France has played a fundamental role in the production, con- sumption, and trade of wine. Throughout the 19th century, when a veritable interna- tional market was taking shape, France’s dominance was reinforced not only because it was the leading country in terms of production and exports, but also due to two important consequences of the phylloxera plague which hit the European wine-growing industry for the first time, precisely in France, during the final decades of the 19th century. First, the need to find a remedy for this vine disease led to the development of the science applied to the growing and production of wine. Second the country’s need to supply wine for domestic consumption and to maintain its exports, gave rise to the development of wine production in traditional wine-producing countries, such as Spain but also in new producing countries such as Algeria or new world countries.

For the first time in English, this book comprehensively addresses the study of the production, consumption, and trade of wine in France from the beginning of the activity to the present day. Throughout the nine chapters, the analysis is carried out from a perspective of the country as a whole and also from a regional point of view. An international readership of academics interested in the subject or simply wine enthusiasts who do not understand the French language, are able to learn about this fascinating history and gain an insight into how France was able to obtain this central position and maintain it until today, despite the increasing challenges posed by old and new producing countries.

The chapters of the book address the issue in chronological order. Almost half of the book is concerned with the period before 1800 and the rest to the last two centuries.

This is a titanic task and to carry it out the author has had to go to great lengths to summarize all the literature, principally, but not exclusively, published in French on this subject. This is its greatest merit for those who do not know this literature in depth and also its weakness for those who have previously read and worked with this literature. However, even these specialized readers will enjoy it due to the quality of the summary, the access to studies that they have not consulted, the details that they will find to delve deeper into the subject, and the agility with which the book is written. In short, despite being based largely on secondary sources, the book constitutes an interesting contribution and an essential reference on the subject.

The book also highlights certain regularities or trends that can be detected throughout history.

First, the heterogeneity of the product that we call wine is made undoubtedly clear, a quality which forms part of the charm and attractiveness of enthusiasts. Different varieties, highly varied regional developments, different methods of production by winemakers have made wine, throughout history in France and the rest of the world, a diverse product which has evolved significantly over time. The difference between the type of wine that is drunk today and that of just a couple of centuries ago is enormous.

The commercial nature of wine in France throughout history is also unquestion- able. Even though a large part of the harvest was consumed until the beginning of the 20th century by the producers themselves, its domestic and international trade is a key element for understanding the development and transformation of the product.

A third interesting feature is the fact that wine in France has historically been subject to a higher degree of public regulation and intervention than the majority of other products, if we exclude wheat-bread, which in most western European coun- tries constituted the basis of the human diet and was regulated to prevent supply crises and famines. Throughout the 20th century, the regulation of the production and trade of wine has increased, reaching its climax with the control of the volume of production or the establishment of controlled designation of origins, mechanisms of public intervention which has extended to the European Union from France.

Finally, the book also enables us to understand how wine has contributed to con- structing the French identity. The avant-garde position of this country in terms of technology, production, and trade has been developed throughout its history and is intertwined with certain decisive moments of this history.

Obviously, in a book of this kind, we can identify certain minor problems, aspects that have been insufficiently addressed or small details, but this would draw attention away from the great work undertaken, which undoubtedly is the summary text of reference on French wine.

Vicente Pinilla
Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
vpinilla@unizar.es
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.44

Most of us know very little, if anything, about Bulgarian, Romanian, or Moldovan wines, and the average wine store in the United States. is unlikely to have an appre- ciable inventory of these. I did a casual search for Bulgarian wines in www.wine- searcher.com and in most instances have found either no stores in the United States that carried the wine or at most one. The situation is similar for Romanian or Moldavan wines and the average reader would encounter substantial difficulties in building a representative cellar of these wines. Nevertheless, some of these wines can be found in some western European countries.

In any event, this volume would be a most reasonable beginning for somebody who would want to deepen his/her acquaintance with the wines of these three Balkan states. The book is divided into three parts and each part follows the same basic pattern: after a brief introduction we have chapters on history, followed by dis- cussions of the modern era, the relationship of the European Union (EU), the prob- able future, grape varieties the wine regions in the various countries, and profiles of the most important producers. Most importantly perhaps, these substantive chapters are followed by excellent summary statistics on wine production and related terms, and an equally useful bibliography. The tables provide a complete listing of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for Bulgaria as well as the acreage planted, the vine- yards harvested by geographic region, and the acreage devoted to the several major varieties. For Romania we get historical wine production trends and grape varieties planted, export and import statistics, and regional varietal distribution.

Similar statistics are provided for Moldova.

The cultivation of wine clearly has a long history in the region, and in Bulgaria, for instance, there is reason to believe that wine was drunk in the 9th century: Khan Krum is reported to have fashioned the skull of a defeated enemy into a wine cup.

There is clearly some similarity among these countries. Wine cultivation has a long history in each and they were all subject to Ottoman rule after the 16th century, which did not advance the cause of wine growing and drinking, as peasants were forced to sell their land. They were all impacted by the arrival of phylloxera in the later 19th century with which they all coped in the usual way, that is, grafting vines onto American root stocks. A notable exception was Bessarabia, a region of Moldova, where there were objections to the “Americanization” of wine growing and where they tried to rely, largely unsuccessfully, on pesticides and fumigation techniques. But this was clearly a period that encouraged research into the cultiva- tion of wine. All three countries fell within the Soviet orbit after 1945 with various forms of collectivization, and Bulgaria had established as many as 3,000 col- lective farms. In Romania privately owned land was largely expropriated without compensation and small landholders were permitted to retain 0.25 hectares. They all took advantage of the liberalization that followed the break-up of the USSR and ended up getting more or less technical and financial help from the West, par- ticularly from the EU.

Local varieties (most of which I had never heard of) continue to be planted along- side more familiar ones such as chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, and aligoté among the whites and cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, and cabernet franc among the reds. The local varieties are likely to be unfamiliar to western drinkers such as the red Bulgarian wines Mavrud or Gamza (known in Hungary as Kadarka) or the white Dimiat known as Smeredevka in Serbia. One interesting white grape is Raksiteli which is an important grape in the country of Georgia. Romanian varieties include the white Fetească Albă and Frảncuşă, while in Moldova we find whites such as Alb de Oniţcani and Bastardo. It is a pity that we are not given much information about the sensory impression that these and other local grape varieties make. All three countries have introduced some classification of wines by PDO or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) which bodes well for the future. However, the impression one gets is that none of the wines produced in this region is particularly memorable, and while the book does a good job in describing the climate and the varieties grown, there is relatively little conveyed about the sensory characteristics of the wines and their quality. It is clear that in some regions there is an excess of semi-sweet or sweet wine produced which may suit the Russian taste, but much of the quality was initially at least quite poor, due to inferior equipment left over from the Soviet period. The author remarks in the dis- cussion of Moldovan wines that in 2006 she witnessed some of the worst wine making she has ever seen. While Moldova, for example, does export wine to Poland, China, Romania, Russia, Czech Republic, and Ukraine, some of its wines are just plain bad, dirty old, and green. On the basis of this book I am not eager to invest a lot of time and effort to explore the wines of Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova.

Richard E. Quandt
Princeton University
requandt@gmail.com
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.45

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a “muckraker,” or purveyor of muckrak- ing journalism (Muckraker, 2019), was a term used pejoratively by President Theodore Roosevelt, but which generally had a positive connotation among the public at large. The muckrakers were the journalists who, in the words of the Encyclopedia, “provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States.” The better known of these journalists include legends such as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker— Ida Tarbell’s writings are, for example, generally regarded as responsible for the break-up of the Standard Oil trust. While the muckraker movement of that time had largely disappeared between 1910 and 1912, the tradition of exposing the power of large corporations has not. The best known of these, John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, analyzed the uses and abuses of corporate power in a number of books, including The New Industrial State (1967) and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), while Van Beemen himself cites more modern authors who have analyzed corporates both in a positive light (e.g., Bais and Huijser, 2005) and with a focus on the actual or potential damage that they can do (e.g., Bakan, 2004). So what shade of muckraking is Heineken in Africa, given its highly critical approach? Does it represent a fair picture of Heineken’s footprint in Africa?

Van Beemen’s book is divided into 15 chapters plus a Postscript and an Epilogue. The Chapters alternate: eight chapters on individual country operations (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Burundi, Congo, Rwanda, and Mozambique) and seven thematic chapters (the conquest of Africa, African beer wars, etc.)

Heineken itself does not think the book is very fair. In a communication with the editor of this Journal, they say that “We have made it a priority to carefully consider the content of this book, and we do not agree with many of the claims the author makes.” While accepting that they make mistakes, they object to being typecast as “… a company where misbehavior is systemic…” However, the reader (or at least this reader) needs to place a story such as this in context with questions such as: Is it realistic? Is it fair? Is it a good read?

First, there is a lot of thorough homework that went into the book (and recall that Heineken itself only disagrees with MANY of the claims made by the author, not all of them), and in the process we learn a lot about the African continent, about corporate life in Africa, and about Heineken. Where the first two are concerned, I take the author’s word, while keeping a pinch of salt at hand regarding what he says about Heineken itself. Africa is a continent of infinite variety, and generaliza- tions should be vigorously discouraged: this book hardly makes that mistake, follow- ing Heineken in the numerous countries where it has been operating for up to 100 years (but not directly in South Africa during the apartheid years).

Second, Africa is a difficult place to work in for a number of reasons. This is not a generalization, especially when one regards the logistics of transporting and handling bottles of beer around in a neighborhood with poor infrastructure and a notorious amount of red tape, and the author, in my opinion, does not give enough credit to these difficulties. What, after all, do you do when it takes a year to get a visa to get into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or when the Ethiopian government bans beer advertising and announces that it is going to increase excise duties on beer by more than 45% (Yewondwossen, 2019) on the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund?

He also does not give sufficient credit to truths such as the fact that running a big cor- poration is a sufficiently difficult challenge, while running one in difficult markets such as India and much of the African continent poses real challenges. Of course, saying this could become an excuse for corrupt business practices, but it is no less real as a challenge to a legitimate business such as selling beer to the citizenry of the continent. How else does one explain the sustainability of more than 100 years of engagement? To my mind only a prohibitionist would argue that the countries within which Heineken has oper- ated would have been better off if this particular corporate citizen had not engaged on the continent. After all, even if the Mozambican government has subsidized Heineken’s entry into their market with a (lengthy) tax holiday it is paying salaries and wages, and will (hopefully) eventually pay taxes. And it is a fair stretch of the imag- ination to take the blame for the genocide in Rwanda away from the superpowers and the United Nations, and lay it at the feet of Heineken. Could they have done better under those circumstances? Of course they could, but so could everybody else.

It is probably also fair to argue that Van Beemen does not recognize (or at least is not explicit about) the fact that beer is itself difficult to work with, although one must be careful: a company that has brewed and sold beer for as long as Heineken will have internalized these difficulties by now. Nevertheless, combine the fact that it is a fast moving consumer good with a relatively low specific (value to weight) ratio, and that consumers generally have very specific taste and brand preferences based on the beers that they grew up with, and you have a case study in the difficulties of operating in non-traditional markets with non-traditional products.

In short, the book would have benefited with a chapter or two that analyzes features of the individual and collective markets in which Heineken operates, and that analyzes the implications of working with a product with the particular charac- teristics of beer.

Finally, the chapter on South Africa resonates to this reviewer, and is a good example of another lacunae in the book. One can argue that Heineken’s eventual direct entry in the South African market had positive spin-offs. The South African market was long dominated by South African Breweries, which, in Van Beemen’s words, is “the jewel in the crown of South African industry,” a sentiment that many would share, but a near-monopoly nonetheless. Heineken brought competition (also in Mozambique), forcing SAB to change its supply chain management practices, and arguably resulting in a more internationally competitive barley industry. The more general point here is that, like all corporates, Heineken has done good things, even if some of that has been done under duress: from governments and temperance pressures, from environmental- ists, from labor unions, etc., and that this book hardly mentions any of these initiatives.

These are some of the lacunae that a reviewer is expected to identify. However, they do not detract from the fact that this is a good and entertaining read, that it challenges its readers to dig below the surface, and that is has in all probability changed at least some of the business practices of this particular African corporate citizen. It should also not detract from the real examples of corporate mismanage- ment and corporate damage that has been done to countries and individuals by Heineken. The story of the “promotion girls” generally, and one particular promo- tion girl and the current CEO of Heineken International that is told in the Epilogue bears witness to the size of the footprint of this particular corporate elephant. Africa’s economies are on the move, and multinational corporations, whether homegrown or foreign, and whether established on the continent or new, are the name of the game. We need more books such as this to educate governments on what to look out for, but we also need more contextually balanced analyses.

Nick Vink
Stellenbosch University
nv@sun.ac.za
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.47

La vid y el vino en el Cono Sur de América Argentina y Chile (1545–2019). Aspectos políticos, económicos, sociales, culturales y enológicos (The vine and wine in the Southern Cone of America Argentina and Chile [1545–2019]. Political, economic, social, cultural, and oenological aspects) is a thought-provoking book. In a very sys- tematic effort, Vine and Wine in Argentina and Chile describes the history of the wine industries of Argentina and Chile since their beginnings as part of royal Spain in the 16th century and until nowadays worldwide presence. Lacoste does so in a story- telling style to convince readers of his pre-eminent argument: “the outstanding issues of the viticulture of Argentina and Chile appear in the field of the identity of their wines and their heritage dimensions” (p. 165). The book is structured in four chronological parts and is presented with drawings, pictures, labels, and cartoons.

The first part, “Artisan Viticulture,” is dedicated to the years 1545–1860 (315 years). Lacoste introduces the history of vines and wine development in the Americas through the presence of Spanish conquistadores and the Catholic church. At the beginning of this section, he explains the primary importance of Potosí (today Bolivia) as the main city and destination at the time for vine and wine prod- ucts. Lacoste pays special attention to the development of the new vitis-vinifera type of grapes once these European vines adapted to the distinctive South American cli- mates and soils; he particularly focuses the analysis on the local grape varietals País (Chile) and Criolla (Argentina). Lacoste describes customs and habits of the time, and the development of local techniques for vine growing and winemaking through the intersection of the know-how of Spaniards, slaves, and aboriginal people for the creation of this region’s initial wine industry practices.

The second part, “Take Off of the Wine Industry,” covers the years 1860–1930 (70 years). This is a period of great expansion of the wine industry for both countries. Lacoste explains that this major transformation of the wine industries of the Southern Cone of South America was encouraged by these main factors: the increase in population (immense influx of European immigrants—especially to Argentina), a prosperous economy, the revolution of transport (a strong expansion of railways and steamboats), and the devastating phylloxera plague in the vineyards of Europe. He describes the exponential growth of vines planted and wine produced, the “discovery” and promotion of Malbec and Cabernet in Argentina and Chile, and what he considers the beginning of the implementation of “the French para- digm” in these countries, an industrial process where farmers and winemakers should “minimize the importance of their own grape’s place of origin and their local peasant traditions” (p. 63), privileging French and European foreign winemak- ing practices. For this historical period, Lacoste emphasizes his concept of “big wine factories” that produce an industrial product opposed to an artisanal product respectful of ancient and local traditions, local grapes, the environment, and sustain- ability. At the end of this part, he discusses the incorrect use of the names of wines for the marketing of local products (“All adopted the culture of imitation, copying, and falsification of the reputed Denominations of Origin of the Old World producers,” p. 87).

The third part, “Wines for the Domestic Market,” describes the period 1930–1990 (60 years). Lacoste presents a time when the wine industries change drastically and are fundamentally oriented to their local markets. Huge variations in stock, produc- tion, logistics, and marketing practices happened at a time of crucial political changes in both countries with the appearance of dictators and populist politicians, Perón in Argentina and Pinochet in Chile. He suggests that Perón incentivized a wine industry focused on the local market, with a strong government presence to “fight the oligopoly” (p. 164), and always contingent to a macroeconomic disaster: inflation, no access to credit, corruption, and disproportionate public spending. He then men- tions that Pinochet stopped Allende’s agrarian reform, deregulated the activity, pro- moted exports, and facilitated the concentration of the industry in large companies. Lacoste then recounts the cases of Giol and Greco, both cases of government inter- vention in the wine industry of Argentina. In a controversial perspective, he finds the opportunity to link the Cuban revolution to the industry “through the agrarian reform in Chile, the action of the Montoneros [a leftist terrorist group] in Argentina, and the claims to make wines with identity” (p. 92).

The fourth and last part, “To the Conquest of the World,” presents the last 29 years (1990–2019). Lacoste summarizes as the main strengths of the period: the improve- ment of the quality of Argentinian and Chilean wines (nowadays comparable to those of the Old World and other New World producers), the expansion of exports, and the local strengthening of the culture of wine appreciation. He recog- nizes as weaknesses: the market concentration (almost 90% of Chile’s wine market is owned by three major companies, and almost 50% of the Argentine market is owned by four major companies), and the lack of development of local territories as Denominations of Origin and Geographical Indications as a means to balance the hegemony of brands. Lacoste recommends that both countries need to learn from each other’s experiences: “in Chile, it is urgent to advance in the decentraliza- tion of the industry, and the case of FeCoVitA [a major cooperative company from Argentina that Lacoste calls ‘a treasure’] can serve as an inspiring model; on the other hand in Argentina, the chronic macroeconomic problems that come from constants fiscal deficit and inflation, could be improved from the emulation of the fiscal discipline of the Chilean model” (p. 164).

The way I see this book is one with a strong agenda. Lacoste is a firm believer in the need for government intervention in the wine industry against the creation of a commercial oligopoly and opposes neoliberal capitalistic practices; those beliefs play a fundamental role in how the storyline is presented regarding the wine history of Argentina and Chile. The book is also one that can make policymakers from both countries reflect on the importance of the preservation of local territories, traditional customs, and original products, and a necessary book that needs an English version to broaden the discussion of such important topics.

Emiliano C. Villanueva
Eastern Connecticut State University
villanuevae@easternct.edu
doi:10.1017/jwe.2019.46