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The Blood of the Colony
Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria
Owen White
Harvard University Press, 2020

The surprising story of the wine industry’s role in the rise of French Algeria and the fall of empire.

“We owe to wine a blessing far more precious than gold: the peopling of Algeria with Frenchmen,” stated agriculturist Pierre Berthault in the early 1930s. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Europeans had displaced Algerians from the colony’s best agricultural land and planted grapevines. Soon enough, wine was the primary export of a region whose mostly Muslim inhabitants didn’t drink alcohol.

Settlers made fortunes while drawing large numbers of Algerians into salaried work for the first time. But the success of Algerian wine resulted in friction with French producers, challenging the traditional view that imperial possessions should complement, not compete with, the metropole. By the middle of the twentieth century, amid the fight for independence, Algerians had come to see the rows of vines as an especially hated symbol of French domination. After the war, Algerians had to decide how far they would go to undo the transformations the colonists had wrought—including the world’s fourth-biggest wine industry. Owen White examines Algeria’s experiment with nationalized wine production in worker-run vineyards, the pressures that resulted in the failure of that experiment, and the eventual uprooting of most of the country’s vines.

With a special focus on individual experiences of empire, from the wealthiest Europeans to the poorest laborers in the fields, The Blood of the Colony shows the central role of wine in the economic life of French Algeria and in its settler culture. White makes clear that the industry left a long-term mark on the development of the nation.

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Bread, Wine, and Money
The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral
Jane Welch Williams
University of Chicago Press, 1993
At Chartres Cathedral, for the first time in medieval art, the lowest register of stained-glass windows depicts working artisans and merchants instead of noble and clerical donors. Jane Welch Williams challenges the prevailing view that pious town tradesmen donated these windows. In Bread, Wine, and Money, she uncovers a deep antagonism between the trades and the cathedral clergy in Chartres; the windows, she argues, portray not town tradesmen but trusted individuals that the fearful clergy had taken into the cloister as their own serfs.

Williams weaves a tight net of historical circumstances, iconographic traditions, exegetical implications, political motivations, and liturgical functions to explain the imagery in the windows of the trades. Her account of changing social relationships in thirteenth-century Chartres focuses on the bakers, tavern keepers, and money changers whose bread, wine, and money were used as means of exchange, tithing, and offering throughout medieval society. Drawing on a wide variety of original documents and scholarly work, this book makes important new contributions to our knowledge of one of the great monuments of Western culture.
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Crush
The Triumph of California Wine
John Briscoe
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Winner, TopShelf Magazine Book Awards Historical Non-fiction 

Finalist, Northern California Book Awards General Non-Fiction


Look. Smell. Taste. Judge. Crush is the 200-year story of the heady dream that wines as good as the greatest of France could be made in California. A dream dashed four times in merciless succession until it was ultimately realized in a stunning blind tasting in Paris. In that tasting, in the year of America's bicentennial, California wines took their place as the leading wines of the world.

For the first time, Briscoe tells the complete and dramatic story of the ascendancy of California wine in vivid detail. He also profiles the larger story of California itself by looking at it from an entirely innovative perspective, the state seen through its singular wine history.

With dramatic flair and verve, Briscoe not only recounts the history of wine and winemaking in California, he encompasses a multidimensional approach that takes into account an array of social, political, cultural, legal, and winemaking sources. Elements of this history have plot lines that seem scripted by a Sophocles, or Shakespeare. It is a fusion of wine, personal histories, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects.

Crush is the story of how wine from California finally gained its global due. Briscoe recounts wine’s often fickle affair with California, now several centuries old, from the first harvest and vintage, through the four overwhelming catastrophes, to its amazing triumph in Paris.
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Land and Wine
The French Terroir
Charles Frankel
University of Chicago Press, 2014
A tour of the French winemaking regions to illustrate how the soil, underlying bedrock, relief, and microclimate shape the personality of a wine.

For centuries, France has long been the world’s greatest wine-producing country. Its wines are the global gold standard, prized by collectors, and its winemaking regions each offer unique tasting experiences, from the spice of Bordeaux to the berry notes of the Loire Valley. Although grape variety, climate, and the skill of the winemaker are essential in making good wine, the foundation of a wine’s character is the soil in which its grapes are grown. Who could better guide us through the relationship between the French land and the wine than a geologist, someone who deeply understands the science behind the soil? Enter scientist Charles Frankel.

In Land and Wine, Frankel takes readers on a tour of the French winemaking regions to illustrate how the soil, underlying bedrock, relief, and microclimate shape the personality of a wine. The book’s twelve chapters each focus in-depth on a different region, including the Loire Valley, Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne, Provence, the Rhône valley, and Bordeaux, to explore the full meaning of terroir.  In this approachable guide, Frankel describes how Cabernet Franc takes on a completely different character depending on whether it is grown on gravel or limestone; how Sauvignon yields three different products in the hills of Sancerre when rooted in limestone, marl, or flint; how Pinot Noir will give radically different wines on a single hill in Burgundy as the vines progress upslope; and how the soil of each château in Bordeaux has a say in the blend ratios of Merlot and Cabernet-Sauvignon. Land and Wine provides a detailed understanding of the variety of French wine as well as a look at the geological history of France, complete with volcanic eruptions, a parade of dinosaurs, and a menagerie of evolution that has left its fossils flavoring the vineyards.

Both the uninitiated wine drinker and the confirmed oenophile will find much to savor in this fun guide that Frankel has spiked with anecdotes about winemakers and historic wine enthusiasts—revealing which kings, poets, and philosophers liked which wines best—while offering travel tips and itineraries for visiting the wineries today.
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Local Vino
The Winery Boom in the Heartland
James R. Pennell
University of Illinois Press, 2016
The art and craft of winemaking has put down roots in Middle America, where enterprising vintners coax reds and whites from the prairie earth while their businesses stand at the hub of a new tradition of community and conviviality.

In Local Vino, James R. Pennell tracks among the hardy vines and heartland terroir of wineries across Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio. Blending history and observation, Pennell gives us a top-down view of the business from cuttings and cultivation to sales and marketing. He also invites entrepreneurs to share stories of their ambitions, hard work, and strategies. Together, author and subjects trace the hows and whys of progress toward that noblest of goals: a great vintage that puts their winery on the map.

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The Poisoned Chalice
Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism
Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait
University of Alabama Press, 2011
Examines the introduction of grape juice into the celebration of Holy Communion in the late 19th century Methodist Episcopal Church and reveals how a 1,800-year-old practice of using fermented communion wine became theologically incomprehensible in a mere forty years

This work examines the introduction of grape juice into the celebration of Holy Communion in the late 19th century Methodist Episcopal Church and reveals how a 1,800-year-old practice of using fermented communion wine became theologically incomprehensible in a mere forty years. Through study of denominational publications, influential exegetical works, popular fiction and songs, and didactic moral literature, Jennifer Woodruff Tait charts the development of opposing symbolic associations for wine and grape juice. She argues that 19th century Methodists, steeped in Baconian models of science and operating from epistemological presuppositions dictated by common-sense realism, placed a premium on the ability to perceive reality accurately in order to act morally. They therefore rejected any action or substance that dulled or confused the senses (in addition to alcohol, this included “bad” books, the theatre, stimulants, etc., which were all seen as unleashing unchecked, ungovernable thoughts and passions incompatible with true religion). 
 
This outlook informed Methodist opposition to many popular amusements and behaviors, and they decided to place on the communion table a substance scientifically and theologically pure. Grape juice was considered holy because it did not cloud the mind, and new techniques—developed by Methodist laymen Thomas and Charles Welch—permitted the safe bottling and shipment of the unfermented juice.
 
Although Methodists were not the only religious group to oppose communion wine, the experience of this broadly based and numerous denomination illuminates similar beliefs and actions by other groups.
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Religion And Wine
Cultural History Wine Drinking United States
Robert C. Fuller
University of Tennessee Press, 1996
Wine, more than any other food or beverage, is intimately associated with religious experience and celebratory rituals. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in American cultural history. From the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to the Francis­cans and Jesuits who pioneered California's Mission Trail, many American religious groups have required wine to perform their sacraments and enliven their evening meals. This book tells the story of how viniculture in America was started and sustained by a broad spectrum of religious denominations. In the process, it offers new insights into the special relationship between wine production and consump­tion and the spiritual dimension of human experience. Robert Fuller's historical narrative encompasses a fascinating array of groups and individuals, and the author makes some provocative connections between the love of wine and the particularities of religious experience. For example, he speculates on the ways in which Thomas Jefferson's celebrated knowledge of wine related to his cultural sophistication and free-thinking outlook on matters of religion and spirituality. Elsewhere he describes how a number of nineteenth­-century communal groups-including the Rappites, the Amana colonies, the Mormons, and the spiritualist colony called the Brotherhood of the New Life ­helped to spread the religious use of wine across a vast new nation. Fuller describes and analyzes the role of wine drinking in promoting community solidarity and facilitating a variety of religious experiences, ranging from the warm glow of ri­tualized camaraderie to the ecstasy of immediate contact with otherwise hidden spiritual realms. He also devotes a chapter to the rise of temperance and prohibi­tionist sentiments among fundamentalist Christians and their subsequent attack on wine drinking. The book's concluding chapter features an insightful analysis of the ritual dimensions of contemporary wine drinking and wine culture. According to Fuller, the aesthetic experiences and communal affirmation that some religious groups have historically associated with the enjoyment of wine have passed into the prac­tice of popular-or "unchurched"-religion in the United States. 
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Spirits and Wine
Susan Newhof
University of Michigan Press, 2014

It's a mystery and a ghost story, all wrapped up in one.

A newly married couple buys an old house in a small lakeshore town in West Michigan and finds it haunted by the dramatic secrets of its past inhabitants. As the couple settles in, disturbing events prompt them to investigate who those residents were, what happened to them, and why one spirit remains active. Could the Spanish influenza epidemic in the region, which resulted in the deaths of an unprecedented number of young, healthy adults in Michigan and elsewhere in 1918---19, and the resulting slew of orphans, have something to do with the spirit now haunting their house?

They are determined to discover the truth about their house, even if it jeopardizes their own safety.

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Vintage Moquegua
History, Wine, and Archaeology on a Colonial Peruvian Periphery
By Prudence M. Rice
University of Texas Press, 2011

The microhistory of the wine industry in colonial Moquegua, Peru, during the colonial period stretches from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, yielding a wealth of information about a broad range of fields, including early modern industry and labor, viniculture practices, the cultural symbolism of alcohol consumption, and the social history of an indigenous population. Uniting these perspectives, Vintage Moquegua draws on a trove of field research from more than 130 wineries in the Moquegua Valley.

As Prudence Rice walked the remnants of wine haciendas and interviewed Peruvians about preservation, she saw that numerous colonial structures were being razed for development, making her documentary work all the more crucial. Lying far from imperial centers in pre-Hispanic and colonial times, the area was a nearly forgotten administrative periphery on an agricultural frontier. Spain was unable to supply the Peruvian viceroyalty with sufficient wine for religious and secular purposes, leading colonists to import and plant grapevines. The viniculture that flourished produced millions of liters, most of it distilled into pisco brandy. Summarizing archaeological data and interpreting it through a variety of frameworks, Rice has created a three-hundred-year story that speaks to a lost world and its inhabitants.

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Volcanoes and Wine
From Pompeii to Napa
Charles Frankel
University of Chicago Press, 2019
There’s a reason we pay top dollar for champagne and that bottles of wine from prestige vineyards cost as much as a car: a place’s distinct geographical attributes, known as terroir to wine buffs, determine the unique profile of a wine—and some rarer locales produce wines that are particularly coveted. In Volcanoes and Wine, geologist Charles Frankel introduces us to the volcanoes that are among the most dramatic and ideal landscapes for wine making.
            Traveling across regions wellknown to wine lovers like Sicily, Oregon, and California, as well as the less familiar places, such as the Canary Islands, Frankel gives an in-depth account of famous volcanoes and the wines that spring from their idiosyncratic soils. From Santorini’s vineyards of rocky pumice dating back to a four-thousand-year-old eruption to grapes growing in craters dug in the earth of the Canary Islands, from Vesuvius’s famous Lacryma Christi to the ambitious new generation of wine growers reviving the traditional grapes of Mount Etna, Frankel takes us across the stunning and dangerous world of volcanic wines. He details each volcano’s most famous eruptions, the grapes that grow in its soils, and the people who make their homes on its slopes, adapting to an ever-menacing landscape. In addition to introducing the history and geology of these volcanoes, Frankel's book serves as a travel guide, offering a host of tips ranging from prominent vineyards to visit to scenic hikes in each location.
            This illuminating guide will be indispensable for wine lovers looking to learn more about volcanic terroirs, as well as anyone curious about how cultural heritage can survive and thrive in the shadow of geological danger.
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The War on Wine
Prohibition, Neoprohibition, and American Culture
Victor W. Geraci
University of Nevada Press, 2023

The development of an American wine ethos.

The history of wine is a tale of capitalist production and consumer experience, and early Americans embraced the idea of having their own wine culture. But many began to believe that excessive alcohol consumption had become a moral, ethical, economic, political, social, and health conundrum. The result was a national on-again, off-again relationship with the concept of an American wine culture. 

Citizens struggled to build a wine culture patterned after their diasporic European custom of wine as a moderating beverage that was part of a healthy diet. Yet, as America grew, untold attempts to create a wine culture failed due to climate, pests, diseases, wars, and depressions, resulting in some people considering the nation an alcoholic republic. Thus began an anti-alcohol culture war aimed at restricting or prohibiting alcoholic beverages. 

With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), a culture war started between wet and dry proponents. After the repeal of Prohibition, the decimated wine industry responded by forming the Wine Institute to rebrand wine’s role in American society, after which neoprohibitionists attempted to restrict alcohol availability and consumption. To confront these aggressive actions, the Wine Institute hired politically trained John A. De Luca to navigate the new attacks and pushed for rebranding wine as a cultural spirit with health benefits.

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Wine
A Cultural History
John Varriano
Reaktion Books, 2011

For oenophiles, casual wine-drinkers, and aesthetes alike, an informative and entertaining history sure to delight even the most sensitive palates.

From celebrations of Bacchus in ancient Rome to the Last Supper and casual dinner parties, wine has long been a key component of festivities, ceremonies, and celebrations. Made by almost every civilization throughout history, in every part of the world, wine has been used in religious ceremonies, inspired artists and writers, been employed as a healing medicine, and, most often, sipped as a way to relax with a gathering of friends. Yet, like all other forms of alcohol, wine has also had its critics, who condemn it for the drunkenness and bad behavior that arise with its overconsumption. Wine can render you tongue-tied or philosophical; it can heal wounds or damage health; it can bring society together or rend it. In this fascinating cultural history of wine, John Varriano takes us on a tour of wine’s lively story, revealing the polarizing effect wine has had on society and culture through the ages.
 
From its origins in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the expanding contemporary industries in Australia, New Zealand, and America, Varriano examines how wine is made and how it has been used in rituals, revelries, and remedies throughout history. In addition, he investigates the history of wine’s transformative effects on body and soul in art, literature, and science from the mosaics of ancient Rome to the poetry of Dickinson and Neruda and the paintings of Caravaggio and Manet.
 
A spirited exploration, this book will delight lovers of sauvignon blanc or pinot noir, as well as those who are interested in the rich history of human creativity and consumption.

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Wine
A Global History
Marc Millon
Reaktion Books, 2013
Look. Swirl. Sniff. Taste. Savor. Whether you’re tasting a refreshing white or an aromatic red, these well-known steps are the only proper way to take the first sip of wine.
 
Oenophiles have never been rare, but over the past decade, wine culture has exploded. Amateur wine enthusiasts join dedicated collectors at tastings and on vineyard vacations, and young professionals pack trendy wine bars. Even Hollywood has gotten in on the action—movies like Sideways, Bottle Shock, and French Kiss relate the deep love we have for a glass of pinot noir, a bottle of chardonnay, and the grapes that produce them. But how did wine surpass all other beverages to achieve global domination? In Wine, Marc Millon travels back to the origins of modern man to find the answer, discovering that this heady drink is intertwined with the roots of civilization itself.
 
Wine takes us from Transcaucasia some eight thousand years ago across the Mediterranean Sea, following wine as it spread along with classical civilization throughout Europe, and showing how, thanks to the myths of Dionysus and Bacchus, many of the major wine-producing regions were established in Western Europe. Millon then details how the Spanish conquistadors first brought European grapes to the New World to develop wines for the Catholic mass, and he depicts how wine production traveled to the distant lands of Australia and New Zealand. Today, it is even part of the burgeoning economies of India and China. Millon also explores the types of wine developed in each region, describing the many varieties of grapes and the process of fermentation and storage.
 
Crisp and concise, with a hint of cherry and a soupcon of citrus, Wine provides the perfect introduction for wine novices seeking to impress at their first tasting while offering an engaging chronicle for experts looking to learn more about this most mysterious and magical of beverages.
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The Wine of Eternity
Short Stories from the Latvian
Knuts Lesins
University of Minnesota Press, 1957

The Wine of Eternity was first published in 1957. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Ever since the small Baltic nation of Latvia became a part of the Soviet Union in 1940, its identity has been blurred to Western eyes. Many of its people have left their country in voluntary or forced exile. But, wherever they are today, the Latvians still cherish and preserve a rich national heritage of folklore and culture. Much of this is revealed in these stories, the work of an established Latvian writer who became a wartime refugee from his country.

This volume makes the work of Knuts Lesins available in English for the first time, although his writing has been published extensively in Europe in the original Latvian. In addition to the stories, the author provides a background sketch of the history and culture of Latvia. While much of the fascinating folklore of the country is interwoven in the stories, they are not primarily folk tales. They are perhaps best described as penetrating glimpses into human lives at moments of crisis or decision which reveal an individual's character and philosophy.

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Wine of Reunion
Arabic Poems of Rumi
Nesreen Rumi
Michigan State University Press, 2017
Exciting to those unfamiliar with Rumi’s verse as well as to the veteran scholar, this volume, following on Love Is My Savior, offers more of the little-known Arabic poems of Mawlana Rumi. These poems take the reader on a journey of spiritual search, ecstatic union, universal salvation, and mystic reconciliation, in which Rumi reveals his soul and welcomes everyone to his spiritual feast. This dual-language volume, with its informative introduction, is one of the first to bring Rumi’s Arabic poems into English, and it opens a treasury of Rumi’s mystic thought and electrifying poetry. The poems pulsate with desire and longing, with erotic meaning, and with ecstatic celebration. Rumi found in his mystic poetry a vehicle for the expression of the endless spiritual bounties of love. The reader will find, at the center of his faith and doctrine, love and a strong belief in universal salvation and unlimited generosity.
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Wine, Wealth, and the State in Late Antique Egypt
The House of Apion at Oxyrhynchus
T. M. Hickey
University of Michigan Press, 2012

The "glorious house" of the senatorial family of the Flavii Apiones is the best documented economic entity of the Roman Empire during the fifth through seventh centuries, that critical period of transition between the classical world and the Middle Ages. For decades, the rich but fragmentary manuscript evidence that this large agricultural estate left behind, preserved for 1,400 years by the desiccating sands of Egypt, has been central to arguments concerning the agrarian and fiscal history of Late Antiquity, including the rise of feudalism.

Wine, Wealth, and the State in Late Antique Egypt is the most authoritative synthesis concerning the economy of the Apion estate to appear to date. T. M. Hickey examines the records of the family's wine production in the sixth century in order to shed light on ancient economic practices and economic theory, as well as on the wine industry and on estate management. Based on careful study of the original manuscripts, including unpublished documents from the estate archive, he presents controversial conclusions, much at odds with the "top down" models currently dominating the scholarship.

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Wood, Whiskey and Wine
A History of Barrels
Henry H. Work
Reaktion Books, 2024
A unique and enlightening account of the significant, but rarely acknowledged, function of wooden barrels over the past two millennia.

Barrels—we rarely acknowledge their importance, but without them we would be missing out on some of the world’s finest beverages—most notably whiskies and wines—and of course for over two thousand years they’ve been used to store, transport, and age an incredibly diverse array of provisions around the globe. In this comprehensive and wide-ranging book, Henry Work tells the intriguing story of the significant and ever-evolving role wooden barrels have played during the last two millennia, revealing how the history of the barrel parallels that of technology at large.
           
Exploring how barrels adapted to the requirements of the world’s changing economy, Work journeys back to the barrel’s initial development, describing how the Celtic tribes of Northern Europe first crafted them in the first millennia BCE. He shows how barrels became intrinsically linked to the use of wood and ships and grew into a vital and flexible component of the shipping industry, used to transport not only wine and beer, but also nails, explosives, and even Tabasco sauce. Going beyond the shipping of goods, Work discusses the many uses of this cylindrical container and its relations—including its smaller cousin, the keg—and examines the process of aging different types of alcohol. He also looks at how barrels have survived under threat from today’s plastics, cardboards, and metals.

Offering a new way of thinking about one of the most enduring and successful products in history, Wood, Whiskey and Wine will be a must-read for everyone from technology buffs to beverage aficionados who wish to better understand that evasive depth of flavor.
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