Vintages and traditions

In the 1930s, worldwide economic crises and a series of poor harvests inspired many independent winegrowers in southwest France to form regional cooperatives. Today, more than one thousand French wine cooperatives produce almost half the nation's wine, and, although many are located in or near such prestigious regions as Bordeaux and Medoc, the wines they produce have never shared the commercial success or prestige of their estate-bottled counterparts. In this richly layered study of the wine industry, Robert C. Ulin discusses the relationship between anthropology and history and explores the issue of "inventing tradition." Based on field research in the Medoc and Dordogne regions, the book challenges the widespread assumption that the area's elite wines enjoy especially favorable conditions of climate and soil. The author traces the source of Bordeaux's "cultural capital" to English export schemes during their occupation of the region from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and describes the development of the grands crus as a reaction to Portuguese and Spanish competition. Ulin details as well the origins of the esteemed chateau labels created by bourgeois vinters with invented ties to an aristocratic past. . Extensive interviews with winegrowers from the Pauillac, Listrac, and St.-Estephe cooperatives flavor the text with the daily concerns of the harvest, issues of family succession and gender, the cycle of labor in the vineyards, and the unavoidable rupture between viticulture (growing grapes) and vinification (processing grapes into wine). The book concludes with a discussion of the challenges posed by the European Union's liberalized trade regulations and the acquisition of French vineyards by multinational corporations.