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At the start of the twentieth century wine was a beverage with a very limited range. Essentially it was made as a bulk product by peasants in southern Europe and was consumed by all classes in the country of origin. A small amount of premium wine found its way to the tables of the rich in the capital cities of Europe and the European diaspora. Some outposts of production existed in the United States and the colonies of Europe, but they were insignificant both qualitatively and quantitatively. The Bordeaux vintage of 1900 was highly regarded, but the production and consumption of that style of wine was marginal to the substantive function of the drink.

The Years of Decline

Despite the great opening vintage, the first decades of the century were not happy ones for wine producers. By 1900 phylloxera had completed its devastation of the European viticultural landscape, often leaving vineyards replanted with low-quality hybrid vines that brought viral disease in their wake. Algeria was widely planted and produced large amounts of cheap vin ordinaire (ordinary wine). Agricultural depression and the flight of the population to the cities exacerbated the situation; then came World War I. Meanwhile, for the producers of prestige wines a continual flood of impostors from poor-quality viticultural regions seeking to gain the premium offered by reputation devalued that reputation and reduced their profits.

The response was to define a system that, it was argued, would protect both the producer and the consumer. By defining the boundaries of a given region and allowing only wine from grapes grown there to carry the name of the region, producers could maintain a price premium, and consumers could have certainty about the nature (and by extension the quality) of what they were drinking. The first nationwide appellation system was developed in Portugal, but it was perfected in France from 1935 onward in the appellation controlée system with the legal enshrinement of the definitions of "quality wine" and "table wine."

This codification of a classification system helped producers in prestigious regions but did little for the bulk producers, still almost all agricultural peasantry with little capital to invest in the technical advances in the winery. In these regions a strange combination of corporatist government and anarcho-syndicalism produced wine cooperatives that were controlled by local small-scale grape growers and to which they could sell their produce. Cooperatives in turn could raise the necessary capital to invest in production facilities.

The Technological Revolution

The development of both the science of biochemistry and the technology of agricultural engineering started a revolution in wine production that expanded even more rapidly after World War II. Originating in the work of Louis Pasteur in the second half of the nineteenth century, enology and viticulture developed a rational, scientific base. It was no longer enough to continue practices merely because they had been adopted by one's forebears. Universities like Bordeaux and Montpellier in France and later the University of California at Davis and Adelaide in Australia began both to research wine and to teach those who would grow grapes and make wine. As the science developed, so did the wines. Control of yeast and bacteria meant that off-dry and medium-dry wines could be safely marketed. This allowed massive expansion of styles like German liebfraumilch, which dominated the white wine market in the United Kingdom until the 1980s. This technological change came late to wine, perhaps because it was an agricultural, often peasant-based product, but it became crucial as, with the development of the railways and the new markets of industrialized nations, wine had to travel some distance and had to remain stable enough to be drinkable.

Technical development involved three key areas. First was the understanding of the importance of anaerobic handling, the need to control oxygen contact both to preserve fruitiness in wine and to avoid bacterial spoilage. Second was the recognition of the significance of hygiene during wine making and handling, again to avoid spoilage. Underpinning both of these was an increased control of all stages of the process: temperature control, specially cultured yeasts, prepared bacteria to stimulate the malolactic fermentation, and the addition of enzymes that enhance the development of "natural" aromas in the wine (such as pectinase and apiosidase). A modern winery could be a tank farm with a central computerized control room that monitored what each batch of wine was doing.

Viticulture developed at the same time. Spurred originally by the need to combat phylloxera, then by the requirements of rapid new plantings in the Americas and Australasia, pest control, soil management, irrigation, and controlling the canopy of the vine to maximize sun exposure have been led by science. The result has been to raise the quality of the most basic wines, so even at the cheapest end of the market the consumer can expect to get a fruity, fault-free wine rather than one dominated by oxidative flavors and coarse tannins. The converse, some critics claim, has been to make wines more homogeneous. This, they argue, means that wines have lost their personalities, and wines from across the world increasingly resemble each other. Certain wine makers have reacted against such a clinical approach to let the wine develop in its own way. But even when producers indulge in so-called "dirty wine making" in pursuit of individuality, they do it from a position of knowledge, not faith, as their predecessors would have done.

A New World of Wine

At the start of the twentieth century the production of wine was firmly European. This was not so by the start of the twenty-first century. Although France, Italy, and Spain still dominated in quantitative terms, together producing over 50 percent of all the world's wine, their international reputations increasingly were challenged by the "new producing" countries, those of the New World. In the U.K. market, something of a yardstick, Australia became the second most popular country of origin after France.

This growing international reputation for the new producing countries reflected a rapid increase in their production. Consumption in the wine producing countries of Europe dropped dramatically, and at the same time national governments and the European Union pursued policies designed to reduce production, particularly in the bulk wine producing regions around the Mediterranean. In the new producing countries the reverse was true. From a low base, consumption rose, but production of wine grapes rose even more dramatically, driven not just by domestic demand but by the desire to penetrate new markets in northern Europe, North America, and eastern Asia.

The newer wine producing countries have been at the forefront of structural changes in the industry. In the early twenty-first century Australia had over 56,000 grape growers, each with an average holding of 1.25 hectares (3 acres), making the industry highly fragmented. In New Zealand, the most concentrated of all producing nations at that time, the largest company (Montana) was responsible for over 60 percent of all wine made. The California producer E. & J. Gallo made more wine in a year than the whole of Australia or the whole of the Bordeaux region. This does not mean that Europe does not have large companies. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the French-based Louis Vuitton Moët–Hennessy produced more wine each year than any other company in the world. Nevertheless, Europe does have a more fragmented industry.

Wine production in the new producing countries tends to be dependent on access to capital rather than inheritance. This has had another consequence, for access to capital facilitates greater use of the equipment modern technology offers. The focus on control and hygiene mentioned above is particularly significant—some would say obsessively so—in these countries. Again it is not true that wine producers in Europe disdain technology, as some in the erstwhile colonies would claim. Some Bordeaux châteaus have state-of-the-art equipment, and the champenois (people of Champagne) are world leaders in the production of sparkling wine. Crucially, however, fragmentation makes widespread access both to the technology and the attitudes that accompany it less likely.

Changing Market

As the geography of production has changed, so has the geography of consumption. Changes in income patterns, reflected in the development of consumer culture, as well as travel, both voluntarily with holidays and forced in migration or war service, have made wine more accessible to many. Technology allows better wine to be made cheaper, and the blurring of class difference means wine is perceived less as the drink of the elite in many countries. A nascent wine culture in East Asia has offered the world's producers yet more opportunity to sell their wares and, with that region's focus on the label as a status symbol, has generated a rapid escalation in price of the world's most prestigious wines.

Wine in Society

While the consumption of wine has spread widely, so too have the forces opposed to it multiplied. Historically, opposition to wine was limited to the religion of Islam. Before about 1800, moderate consumption of alcohol was almost universally accepted in western Europe, although the religious maintained that drinking to excess was wrong. However, two social movements combined to change that widespread tolerance. The social anomie of industrialization and the shift to the city resulted in widespread abuse by the poorer classes. At the same time a new religious conservatism, allied to socially concerned evangelicalism, saw in alcohol the work of the devil. Temperance is a misnomer. It means restraint rather than prohibition, but the temperance movements came to work for prohibition. The movements were most successful in the United States with the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. But the impact of temperance movements was felt in strict limits on alcohol use in places as diverse as New Zealand, Wales, Canada, and Scandinavia.

Formal prohibition failed, but its influence lived on in a neoprohibitionist approach, mainly in North America and to a certain extent in Scandinavia. Justifiable concern about the effects of driving under the influence of alcohol is confused with an absolute need to protect people from themselves and to deny them the possibility of moderate enjoyment of wine.

At the end of the twentieth century, however, another factor came in into play, the relationship between wine and health. While abuse of alcohol contributes to a range of diseases, most notably cirrhosis, science has rediscovered what doctors have known down the centuries, that moderate consumption of wine can have positive health effects. Scientists have also provided the objective evidence for this, for instance, showing the impact red wine can have on improving the balance the beneficial high-density lipoprotein component of cholesterol in the vascular system. This change in outlook was typified by the broadcasting of "The French Paradox" on television in the United States in 1991. Sales of red wine jumped dramatically overnight, followed by a prolonged battle between the wine industry and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms about the health labeling on bottles of wine.

The Twenty-first Century

What does the twenty-first century hold for the wine industry and the wine consumer? The pace of technological change is increasing. Disputes have developed over gene modification and the possibility of creating new varieties in the laboratory. Perhaps ultimately great wines will be recreated in test tubes. The mass production of 1961 Chateau Lafitte would horrify some but could please many.

The geography of production continues to change. The quality of wine produced in southern Europe has improved gradually, but many poor-quality sites have been abandoned because of a lack of markets for the wines. Meanwhile, as long as demand in the English-speaking and East Asian countries rises, the new producing countries will probably continue to raise their production. However, in the short term it is possible that they will suffer a glut of grapes for which no market exists. Then what happens when China begins to select appropriate sites for the production of high-quality wine?

Historically wines were sold on the basis of their geographic origins. Increasingly they are sold by the variety of grape used, and it seems likely that this trend will continue. Chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon currently dominate worldwide, but previously sherry and lambrusco reigned. The balance could yet shift to, for example, nebbiolo and manseng.

The current catchphrase is, people drink less but better. That probably hides the true shift in consumption, but it is a useful rule of thumb for how consumption changes. Critically in the late twentieth century, wine, like every other production industry, was taken over by marketing. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as part of the marketing manager's job is to ensure that consumers are satisfied with what they get. If that means more palatable wine, then consumers benefit. On the other hand, the tendency of marketing to "segment" its customers into large groups means that those who seek the unusual or the different may find it increasingly hard to find the grape variety or region of their choice in price-point driven supermarkets that command up to three-quarters of the retail market in many Western countries. The signs, however, indicate that the gradual shift back is to greater diversity.

See also Alcohol; Beer; Fermentation.

Steve Charters