Through the Grapevine: The Real Story Behind America's $8 Billion Wine Industry

From Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton, U.S. presidents have extolled the virtues of wine. "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as its common beverage", said the first. "There is some evidence that wine is good for your heart, if you use it in moderation", said the second. Despite these endorsements however, and although the vine was a native species to the New World continent that its first Viking explorers proclaimed as Vinland, wine is a product that has never caught on with the general American public. It is still seen as the drink of a specialized and recondite fraternity that only the extremely astute, talented, and wealthy can penetrate. Wine books and wine columns very often reinforce that image. They cater to the tastes and proclivities of a small elite, and use a vocabulary that makes the nonspecialist reader feel like the truck driver who showed up in an afternoon tea party with New York interior designers. I was almost turned away when, early in the book, I came across a sentence that read the following: "Cabernet Sauvignon is considered exceptional when it emits aroma and flavor analogous to cassis, cedar, expensive aged tobacco, briar, and a certain stoniness. Pinot Noir should have hints of cherries and truffles, while Chardonnay should display some or all of a dazzling combination that includes citrus fruit, cream, pineapple, flint, pears, and butter." But that sentence proved an isolated occurrence, and I found Through the Grapevine an easy-to-read and even exceptionally well-written book. In fact, the essay is much more enjoyable than the prose of wine columnists (most of whom, note the authors, could get away with literary homicide) and more akin to a business reportage, covering each and every aspect of the wine industry. "The economics of the grape has turned wrathful in the 1990s", note the authors in their typical style. Today, wine is market-driven and it is a market "as jammed as a L.A. freeway". The wine boom of the 1960s and 1970s was detonated primarily by small producers, vintners who often plunged into winemaking as a second career or quasi-hobby, and who began experimenting with new techniques and new aromas, making small quantities of high-quality wine. They were rejoined by the big producers, the Gallos and the Mondanis, sons of Italian immigrants for whom wine was part of the daily diet and who brought to their trade their entrepreneurial spirit, their clanic solidarity, and their pride in producing a good wine at a good price. Later on, large corporations such as Nestle and Seagram as well as foreign investors and venture capitalists also joined the fray. They all contributed in making the glass of generic white wine a cultural icon of the 1980s, an emblem of Yuppiedom that stuck to the product an image of elitism and snobbery. The authors turn to every aspect of making wine and bringing it to the public. They include in their reporta