"A fascinating and approachable deep dive into the colonial roots of the global wine industry.
Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britain’s surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Here, historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative. This is the first book to argue that today’s global wine industry exists as a result of settler colonialism and that imperialism was central, not incidental, to viticulture in the British colonies.
Wineries were established almost immediately after the colonization of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand as part of a civilizing mission: tidy vines, heavy with fruit, were symbolic of Britain’s subordination of foreign lands. Economically and culturally, nineteenth-century settler winemakers saw the British market as paramount. However, British drinkers were apathetic towards what they pejoratively called ""colonial wine."" The tables only began to turn after the First World War, when colonial wines were marketed as cheap and patriotic and started to find their niche among middle- and working-class British drinkers. This trend, combined with social and cultural shifts after the Second World War, laid the foundation for the New World revolution in the 1980s, making Britain into a confirmed country of wine-drinkers and a massive market for New World wines. These New World producers may have only received critical acclaim in the late twentieth century, but Imperial Wine shows that they had spent centuries wooing, and indeed manufacturing, a British market for inexpensive colonial wines. This book is sure to satisfy any curious reader who savors the complex stories behind this commodity chain."
By:
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9780520343689
ISBN 10: 0520343689
Pages: 342
Publication Date: 05 April 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE. ORIGINS, C. 1650–1830 1 • Writing about Wine 2 • Why Britain? 3 • Dutch Courage: The First Wine at the Cape 4 • First Fleet, First Flight: Creating Australian Vineyards 5 • Astonished to See the Fruit: New Zealand’s First Grapes PART TWO. GROWTH, C. 1830–1910 6 • Cheap and Wholesome: Cape Producers and British Tariffs 7 • Echunga Hock: Colonial Wines of the Nineteenth Century 8 • Have You Any Colonial Wine? Australian Producers and British Tariffs 9 • Planting and Pruning: Working the Colonial Vineyard 10 • Sulphur! Sulphur!! Sulphur!!! Phylloxera and Other Pests 11 • Served Chilled: British Consumers in the Victorian Era 12 • From Melbourne to Madras: Wine in India, Cyprus, Malta, and Canada PART THREE. MARKET, C. 1910–1950 13 • Plonk! Colonial Wine and the First World War 14 • Fortification: The Dominions and the Interwar Period 15 • Crude Potions: The British Market for Empire Wines 16 • Doodle Bugs Destroyed Our Cellar: Wine in the Second World War PART FOUR. CONQUEST, C. 1950–2020 17 • And a Glass of Wine: Colonial Wines in the Postwar Society 18 • Good Fighting Wine: Colonial Wines Battle Back 19 • All Bar One: The New World Conquers the British Market Conclusion Appendix: Notes about Measurements Notes Bibliography Index
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre is Professor of History at Trinity College, Connecticut, and author of Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire. In 2019 she was named one of the “Future 50” of wine by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and the International Wine and Spirit Competition.
Reviews for Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World
Historical insights and sharp commentary. A must-read for students of wine history. * Australian Financial Review * Imperial Wine teaches wine enthusiasts about the role of empire in shaping the wine world of the past, present, and probably the future, too. And it teaches students of imperialism that the influence of those forces continues even in something as seemingly simple as a glass of wine. Interesting. Well-written. Thought-provoking. I learned a lot. * Wine Economist * Really fascinating . . . . Very accessible to the average reader who has any interest at all in the history of wine. Most important, however, is I think the author has contributed an original idea or at least fully fleshed out an idea concerning the significance and utility of the 'Old World' / 'New World' structure that has for so long now played a key role in discussions of wine history and the world wine marketplace. * Fermentation newsletter *
