Wine : A social and cultural history of the drink that changed our lives (eBook)

Wine: A social and cultural historyof the drink that changed our livesis a wine history with a difference. Most histories of wine (like HughJohnson's The Story of Wine, PaulLukacs's Inventing Wine, and RodPhillips's own A Short History of Wine)are chronological narratives that begin with wine in the ancient world and runthrough to modern times. Wine has been seen typically as the subject of broaderhistorical trends and events - how, for example, economic and diplomaticconditions favoured or interrupted the wine trade, and how changes in tasteaffected wine styles. Wine departs from these approaches byorganizing chapters by theme and by focusing much more on how wine has beenpositively and actively implicated in broad historical changes. It looks at theway wine has been used to demarcate social groups and genders, how wine hasshaped facets of social life as diverse as medicine, religion, and militaryactivity, how vineyards and wine cultures have transformed landscapes, and howsuccessive innovations in wine packaging - from amphoras to barrels to bottles- have affected and been affected by commerce and consumption.Wine neither sees the history of wine as the passiveresult of historical forces nor sees wine as a prime agent of historicalchange. Rather, it views wine as a critical actor in key trends in thehistories of society, culture, and the environment. Each chapter takes a singletheme and the material within each is organized chronologically. The book isformed of chapters that together provide a compact and theme-specific historyof wine in its own right, enabling readers to consume chapters asself-contained units, rather than as parts of a longer narrative whole. This isan ideal reference resource for wine lovers and historians alike.