Rule Britannia! Britannia ruled the wine world in Europe, at least between the 18th century and well into the 20th century. This is all the more remarkable since only until recently has the United Kingdom produced anything vinous worth mentioning, and not all that much at that. Even more ironically, as an example of always hurting the one you love, a vine disease, oidium tuckeri, passed from England to France via Belgium in 1851 and wreaked havoc for a decade until it was found that dusting with sulfur would stop its spread. England’s more enduring positive impact was as a thirsty market for French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese wines. Hence it was the most important stimulus for elevating their quality. As Hugh Johnson affirms: “Great wines are made by their markets” (p. 245).

Alongside the growing wine trade, wine writing began to flourish in Britain start- ing in 1775 with the publication of Observations, Historical, Critical and Medieval, on the Wines of the Ancients and the Analogy between them and Modern Wines by Sir Edward Barry. “Writing about wine from the consumer’s point of view had in the past been almost a branch of medicine…” (p. 317) explains Johnson. “Such writing was to become the specialty of the English, for the simple reason that English wealth, at the top of the social ladder, had accumulated the most varied cellars of top-quality wines on earth” (p. 317). Building on this tradition, Johnson presents his masterful overview of the evolution of the world’s most cherished bev- erage, not surprisingly in an unabashedly Anglocentric way.

Following the Foreword by Andrew Roberts (more on this later), Johnson’s Preface addresses his wariness of the word “history” and the limited degree to which he updated the story after 30 years. On the former, he recognizes that “scholars have made [the word history] their own and will challenge any unqualified pretender” (p. 11). His reluctance to go on with the story stems from his belief that it would be “as much about money as it is about wine, or taste or pleasure” (p. 14). Moreover, he asks: “It would further our knowledge – but does it further our understanding? In any case…I have limited myself to the story of wine at the time when it took over a large part of my life, and became my enduring pleasure” (p. 15).

Gustave Flaubert declared that “Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.” Having eschewed the “h” word, Johnson instead, after consuming thousands of wines, including one that was 421 years old, and digesting dozens of references, penned his tale that unfolds across 43 chapters organized into five parts. The nine chapters of Part One cover the period from “Man’s First Experience of Alcohol” to when “Mohammed Condemns Wine.” (I’m using chapter subtitles which are more descriptive of the content than the titles.) Part Two, with ten chapters, begins with “Charlemagne and the Rebirth of Europe’s Vineyards” and ends with “Great Steps in the Technology of Glassmaking.” The 11 chapters of Part Three cover the period from the end of the 17th century into the 19th century. Part Four comprises ten chapters, which dwell on the turbulence caused by revolution and wars. They address their impact on the maturation of the wine industry primarily in Europe but with excursions to the New World and take us to the dawn of the 20th century. The first of three chapters of Part Five is an overview of the first half of the 20th century featuring “War, Slump, Poor Weather and Prohibition” and is followed by two containing updates since the first release of the book. Up-to-date information is also spliced into the text throughout, for example: “…the oldest pips of cultivated vines…were found in Soviet [as it was then] Georgia…” (p. 24). Mercifully, an index of 19 pages each containing three columns of smaller text is included to facilitate refreshing the reader’s memory. A bibliography lists references by chapter. Unfortunately, there are no maps or illustrations.