Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink
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Wine Politics Wine Politics How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink Tyler Colman UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2008 by Tyler Colman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Colman, Tyler. Wine politics : how governments, environmentalists, mobsters, and critics influence the wines we drink / Tyler Colman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–520–25521–0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Wine—Political aspects. 2. Wine industry. I. Title. HD9370.5.C65 2008 338.4'76632–dc22 2007032587 Manufactured in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10987654321 This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). To Michelle and Zander, with love Contents List of Illustrations ix List of Sidebars xi Preface and Acknowledgments xiii 1. What Is Wine Politics? 1 2. Soil and Society 7 3. Authenticating Origins 37 4. Baptists and Bootleggers 67 5. Who Controls Your Palate? 103 6. Greens, Gripes, and Grapes 125 7. Celebrating Diversity 145 Notes 149 Bibliography 167 Index 173 Illustrations figures 1. A tale of two vineyards: Château d’Issan, Margaux 44 2. Advertising restrictions in France 58 3. Growth in appellation wines, 1960–98 61 4. The fifty-seven appellations of Bordeaux 62 5. Casella Winery, home of Yellow Tail 104 6. U.S. wine imports by country of origin, 1994–2005 107 7. Conventional vineyard versus biodynamic vineyard with cover crop 132 8. Cow at Coulée de Serrant 137 9. Satellite image of Château Haut-Brion vineyards 142 tables 1. Comparative appellation controls 41 2. Three categories of French wines 43 3. French wine consumption per capita, 1960–2004 60 4. Federal excise tax on wine 82 5. U.S. wine categories and bestsellers in each, 2004 85 6. Big in the middle: Wine and spirits distributors 92 7. French wine exports to the United States, 2001–2005 108 8. The biggest wine firms and their brands, June 2006 112 9. Deciphering organic 135 ix Sidebars Why call it a château? 13 What is terroir? 42 Can cars run on Cabernet? 47 The politics of a Bordeaux label 49 From bulk to bottle: Mis en bouteille au château . à l’américaine 69 The politics of an American label 77 BATF to TTB: Collecting and protecting 80 xi Preface and Acknowledgments When I recently told someone at a cocktail party about the subject of this book, he exclaimed, “Politics and wine! My wife and I debate that every night! I want red, and she wants white.” This book is not likely to help resolve intrahousehold disputes over the evening’s wine. Nor is it likely to satisfy those wondering about the wine preferences of presi- dents Nicolas Sarkozy (he says he’s too busy to drink) or George Bush (a teetotaler since his fortieth birthday). Nor will it help those who seek hoary partisan orations from the well of the legislature disparaging other countries’ wines (as members of the U.S. House of Representa- tives actually did in 2006). If you are looking for a drinker’s guide to politics, this is not the book. But if you are curious about the business and politics of just how that wine reached your table tonight, then this is the book for you. The pol- itics of wine often operates out of the limelight. Celebrity winemakers may present themselves as all-powerful when it comes to making wine, but they too are subject to political forces. This book illuminates how distributors, mobsters, environmentalists, regulators, and critics all have a hand in producing, selling, and delivering the glass of wine we will drink tonight. Previous books have told the story of wine in America. Others have examined wine in France. But no other book has ever looked at the two countries side by side, studying the different paths taken by winemakers in France and America to produce the quality wines we enjoy today. Bat- tles with the soil and society have had different victors in each country, xiii xiv Preface and Acknowledgments and these outcomes have influenced both the rise in quality and the broad social acceptance or rejection of drinking wine. The term politics is often understood negatively, as an obstacle to a desirable result; that definition applies to the wine industry insofar as politics often reduces consumer choice in wine and raises prices. But in the United States, soon to become the world’s largest consumer of wine, shifting fortunes and odd alliances have now led to groups aligning to produce some positive results for consumers. In France, the current story is less positive. This book grew out of my PhD dissertation in the political science department of Northwestern University. I know it was the first—and perhaps it will be the last—dissertation on wine ever written in the department. But political economy frequently examines industrial sec- tors; and, fortunately for me, automobiles, machine tools, and semi- conductors had already been thoroughly analyzed. The issue of quality was central to the project, as the market mechanism has difficulty in judging it. Many people have helped me improve the book. The students in my wine classes in the food and wine program run jointly by New York University and the James Beard Foundation, as well as my loyal band of followers at the University of Chicago, have all helped make this a bet- ter book for a broad audience. They graciously read a few unadulter- ated dissertation chapters and then launched some hedonistic fruit bombs in my direction. My students have helped me translate the seri- ous ideas from my academic research into prose and a tone that, I hope, goes down easily. Many wine-industry participants from both sides of the Atlantic took time to talk with me about this book. I interviewed dozens of winemakers, civil servants, wine retailers, and environmental activists in France, the United States, and Brussels. I am grateful to them for enriching the book. I also consulted historical documents in archives in Paris and Bordeaux. The California Wine Oral History Series at the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, proved an excellent source for firsthand per- spectives on wine production in California, particularly from the early participants. Blake Edgar at the University of California Press and the two anony- mous reviewers provided me valuable advice. Good wine drinkers Terry Halliday and Stephen Salerno both commented on chapters of their own free will. Patrick Comiskey provided useful and detailed comments Preface and Acknowledgments xv on two chapters. And many other wine writers, particularly from the Wine Media Guild, gave me useful feedback along the way. But I owe the greatest debt to my family. My wife, Michelle, undoubtedly knows far more about the politics of wine than she ever wanted to. And our son, Alexander, known early on as “bambino vino,” makes me laugh every day. To them I raise my glass in a toast of gratitude, appreciation, and love. CHAPTER 1 What Is Wine Politics? The year 2005 was the best of times and the worst of times in Bor- deaux. While some producers’ wines fetched record prices, others went to the distillery to be turned into ethanol. The unusually dry summer gave way to sufficient rain to endow the vintage with a legendary qual- ity. Château Haut-Brion, whose wines many critics called outstanding or perfect, priced its wine at $500 a bottle. Other châteaux doubled or tripled their prices from the previous year. Wine from Château Petrus, always among the costliest, sold for $2,000 a bottle—where it could be found. Retailers in London and Los Angeles could not get enough of it. At the same time, however, many growers in the region were going out of business. In 2005, Bordeaux had about ten thousand wine-grape growers, roughly two and a half times the total in all of the United States. But that number was down from fifteen thousand a decade ear- lier. Producers of nondescript wine sold under the Bordeaux regional name could not sell their wine for consumption. Instead they sold 18 million liters of it to be distilled into ethanol for use as a fuel additive. Granted, high oil prices have stimulated a search for alternative fuels. But wine? What had gone so terribly wrong that wine bearing the Bordeaux appellation—often viewed as synonymous with qual- ity—was distilled so that cars could run on Cabernet? In a word, politics. 1 2 What Is Wine Politics? Jeff Lefevere, a wine consumer in Indianapolis, loves Sonoma Zin- fandel. Whenever they are in the area, Lefevere and his wife visit A. Rafanelli, their favorite winery in the Dry Creek Valley. They would love to purchase the hard-to-find wines directly from the winery. But the winery won’t send them wine. Are they debtors? Or under twenty- one? No, the reason for their blacklisting is simple: it is a felony to ship wine to residents of Indiana. American consumers can buy computers and clothes directly from producers, cutting out the middleman. But many wine consumers must live with distributor monopolies that restrict the range of wines available.