TABLE OF CONTENTS The world of wine is a vast one, encompassing a complete range of people. The aficionado with a cellar of 10 000 bottles worth over a million dollars in Dallas, the teacher in Trier who manages the family's 1 ha vineyard in the Mosel valley at weekends, the Italian aristocrat whose ancestors have been making wine for many centuries and the Portuguese peasant who has been drinking cheap red wine, made by his neighbour, daily for all his life. Critically, it will have become clear through the course of this book that what each person drinks is not merely the result of their choice, but the result of political, economic and social influences and constraints. It may seem like a platitude but the wines that each of us enjoy depend not just on our taste preferences but also on what is technologically acceptable, what is fashionable, what reputation and scarcity allow us to afford and what is politically appropriate. All of these factors in turn are subject to the ebb and flow of historical circumstance.
However, the engagement that each of us have with the product, how winemakers view what they produce and what consumers drink, may have many differences as well as some similarities. Some of the differences in how wine is viewed relate specifically to the approach of those who make it, others are more about the symbolic meaning of wine. It is possible to highlight the differences further, often by...
