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Overview
Today's wine industry is characterized by regional differences not only in the wines themselves but also in the business models by which these wines are produced, marketed, and distributed. In Old World countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, small family vineyards and cooperative wineries abound. In New World regions like the United States and Australia, the industry is dominated by a handful of very large producers. This is the first book to trace the economic and historical forces that gave rise to very distinctive regional approaches to creating wine.
James Simpson shows how the wine industry was transformed in the decades leading up to the First World War. Population growth, rising wages, and the railways all contributed to soaring European consumption even as many vineyards were decimated by the vine disease phylloxera. At the same time, new technologies led to a major shift in production away from Europe's traditional winemaking regions. Small family producers in Europe developed institutions such as regional appellations and cooperatives to protect their commercial interests as large integrated companies built new markets in America and elsewhere. Simpson examines how Old and New World producers employed diverging strategies to adapt to the changing global wine industry.
Creating Wine includes chapters on Europe's cheap commodity wine industry; the markets for sherry, port, claret, and champagne; and the new wine industries in California, Australia, and Argentina.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400838882 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/26/2011 |
| Series: | The Princeton Economic History of the Western World , #36 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 360 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations xiList of Tables xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Maps xvii
Introduction xxxi
Weights, Measures, and Currencies xxxix
Acronyms and Abbreviations xli
Part I: Technological and Organizational Change in Europe,1840-1914 1
Chapter 1: European Wine on the Eve of the Railways 3
What Is Wine? 3
Family Producers 7
The Production of Grapes prior to Phylloxera 11
Traditional Wine-Making Technologies 17
Markets, Institutions, and Wine Consumption 21
The Development of Fine Export Wines 24
Chapter 2: Phylloxera and the Development of Scientific Viti-Viniculture 30
The Growth in Wine Consumption in Producer Countries 31
Phylloxera and the Destruction of Europe’s Vines 34
Phylloxera and the International Response in Spain and Italy 41
Wine Making, Economies of Scale and the Spread of Viticulture to Hot Climates 48
La Viticulture Industrielle and Vertical Integration: Wine Production in the Midi 53
Chapter 3: Surviving Success in the Midi: Growers, Merchants, and the State 58
Phylloxera and Wine Adulteration 59
Politics, Phylloxera, and the Vineyard during France’s Third Republic 63
The Midi: From Shortage to Overproduction 65
From Informal to Formal Cooperation: La Cave Cooperative Vinicole 71
Part II: The Causes of Export Failure 77
Chapter 4: Selling to Reluctant Drinkers: The British Market and the International Wine Trade 81
The Political Economy of the Wine Trade in Britain prior to 1860 83
Gladstone and the Rise and Decline in Consumption in the Late Nineteenth Century 87
The Retail Market and Product Adulteration 92
Who Controls the Chain? Experiments at "Buyer-Led" Commodity Chains 98
Part III: Institutional Innovation: Regional Appellations 107
Chapter 5: Bordeaux 111
Claret, Trade, and the Organization of Production 112
The 1855 Classification and the Branding of Claret 115
Supply Volatility, Vine Disease, and the Decline in Reputation of Fine Claret 120
Response to Overproduction: A Regional Appellation 126
Chapter 6: Champagne 132
The Myth of Dom Perignon and the Development of Champagne 134
Economies of Scale, Brands, and Marketing 138 The Response to Phylloxera 141
Organization of a Regional Appellation 145
Chapter 7: Port 154
Port and the British Market 155
Product Development and the Demands of a Mass Market 159
Rent Seeking, Fraud, and Regional Appellations 164
Chapter 8: From Sherry to Spanish White 171
The Organization of Wine Production in Jerez 172
Sherry and the British Market 178
Product Innovation and Cost Control 183
Wine Quality and the Demand for a Regional Appellation 187
Part IV: The Great Divergence: The Growth of Industrial Wine Production in the New World 191
Chapter 9: Big Business and American Wine: The California Wine Association 195
Creating Vineyards and Wineries in a Labor-Scarce Economy 197
Production Instability and the Creation of the California Wine Association 204
The California Wine Association and the Market for California’s Wines 209
Chapter 10: Australia: The Tyranny of Distance and Domestic Beer Drinkers 220
Learning Grape Growing and Wine Making 221
Organization of Wine Production 225
In Search of Markets 230
Chapter 11: Argentina: New World Producers and Old World Consumers 240
Establishing the Industry 242
Redefining the Industry 248
The Limits to Growth and the Return to Crisis 256
Conclusion 263
Old World Producers and Consumers 263
New World Producers and Consumers 267
The Wine Industry in the Twentieth Century 270
Appendix 1: Vineyards and Wineries 273
A.1. Area of Vines and Output per Winery in France, 1924 and 1934 274
A.2 Number of Growers and Area of Vines by County, California, 1891 276
A.3. Winery Size in the Midi and Algeria, 1903 278
Appendix 2: Wine Prices 279
A.4. Farm and Paris Wine Prices, July 1910 279
A.5. Price List, Berry Brothers, London, 1909 281
Glossary 291
Bibliography 293
Index 313
What People are Saying About This
"Creating Wine draws on richly diverse primary sources from the New and Old World to explain how modern wine came into being during the first period of globalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Deftly written and immensely entertaining, it is hard to put down and is a must-read for anyone interested in the history or economics of wine and food. Bravo!"—James T. Lapsley, author of Bottled Poetry: Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to the Modern Era"Conventional wine histories typically give us the château, the region, or the country. Simpson's ambitious work instead puts at the center and in global perspective the wine sector as a whole. This viewpoint provides valuable insight into struggles over the commoditization of wine, tensions within commodity chains, the challenge to the Old World of the New, and battles between brand, terroir, and varietal. The result is a refreshingly new and engrossing modern history of a global trade."—Paul Duguid, University of California, Berkeley"Simpson fills a void in wine economics. We learn about environmental issues, overproduction, export crises, institutional responses, the eternal competition with beer, and the rise of wine production in the New World. All of this happened two hundred years ago, but the issues have not changed. This book has a lot to say and one learns a lot. A must-read for economists, historians, politicians, and wine lovers alike."—Karl Storchmann, New York University and Journal of Wine Economics "This book tells the fascinating story of the transformation of wine from a cheap table drink for Europeans into a highly diversified, quasi-luxury good for consumers all over the world. Simpson maps the worldwide expansion of wine production and describes in lively but rigorous style the challenges that producers and merchants faced and the different solutions they adopted in Europe and the New World."—Giovanni Federico, author of Feeding the World"Why is it that the wine industry in the New World is dominated by a small number of wineries whereas in Europe there is no such concentration? This fascinating book not only reveals that this difference was evident more than a century ago, it also explains why, and the reasons are just as relevant today as they were then."—Kym Anderson, Wine Economics Research Centre and University of Adelaide"This is an impressive work of scholarship that brings together a wide range of material about the transformation and globalization of the wine industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wine historians, economic historians, and significant segments of the general public will find much of interest."—John V. C. Nye, author of War, Wine, and Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900"Creating Wine is a boldly pioneering analysis of the complex process by which such forces as increased trade, rising consumer demand, and frequent economic crisis and disease ruptured the older wine economy and opened the way to a global wine industry in the twentieth century. However excellent, earlier studies in this area do not approach the level of concrete synthesis or analytic coherence this book provides. An impressive achievement."—J. Harvey Smith, Northern Illinois University