24,000 Liters of Wine in the Hold: 40 Years of Globalization
Remember that song “99 bottles of beer on the wall?” Singing down the numbers helped children endure long car journeys before tablets, even if it drove their parents to distraction. Well, it’s been rattling through my head all morning.
Why? Yesterday a review of a book on the wine globalization ended up in my inbox. Following the trail, I discovered that the kind of wine I buy is shipped in huge bags (bladders) that hold 24,000 liters (24 tons) and fit in a 20 foot container. That’s enough for 9999 bottles of wine with a lot more left sloshing in the bag. That song could get you half way across the US! An exaggeration of course, but still . . . it’s a long way from sailing ships with their barrels of Madeira that I was blogging about a few days ago.
The globalization of wine in the last forty years
Here are a couple of sentences from the review.
“In 1920, Europe accounted for 95% of wine production, and only 5% of it was exported to other countries.
Today, wine is produced in all continents, and world exports represent 40% of what is produced.
Although we have become used to large production and trade swings generated by globalization, these changes are huge for a commodity that represents less than 1% of consumers’ expenditure, and uses less than 0.2% of the world’s cropland.”*
Much of that globalization has come in the last 40 years. It’s transformed wine geography, with the New World now accounting for 25% of wine exports. China, which had 6% of the world’s grapevine bearing areas in 2006 leapt to 11% in 2016, about that of Chile and Argentina combined, or of the US.**
Science, refrigeration, transport
Now the ramping up of wine globalization in the last generation is old news to those who follow wine, I’m sure. It was news to me, though it fitted with what I already knew about the Janus-faced wine industry.
One face of the industry, since the French invention of terroir as a marketing device following the phylloxera aphid’s devastation of European in the late 1870s and 1880s, has emphasized prestige, scarcity, chateaus, cellars lined with barrels, and sweeping vistas of vineyards.
Chateau Changyu, Shandong, China. CC by SA 4.0
The other side has been all about business. After all, wine was France’s second biggest export when phylloxera hit. Whereas traditional globalization of viticulture and wineries had mainly involved moving plant cuttings from one region to another, now wine knowledge (science) and technology (including refrigeration) goes global overnight and wine itself moves briskly between continents in huge quantities to be sold to all of us, not just elites.
As to science, few non-commodity crops have received the intense scientific scrutiny that grape growing and wine making have been subjected to, whether it was French scientists tackling phylloxera, the Viticulture and Enology Department at UC Davis, the Wine Science Program at the University of Auckland, the Master’s Program in Viticulture and Oenology at the University of Adelaide, or its offshoot, the Indian Institute of Vine and Wine, or many other programs worldwide. Wine businesses have access to an astounding amount of research***
Refrigeration first came to my attention talking to people in the burgeoning Texas wine industry. Fermentation is best done below 85 degrees. That’s below the blistering temperatures of late summer and fall. Now winemakers in Texas, which has a long history of grapes but was always hard pressed to make good wine, simply ferment in refrigerated conditions. Wine world, welcome Texas. Many other hot places that can grow grapes but traditionally found it hard to make good wine are surely taking advantage of refrigeration (as, I am sure are all winemakers because of the control it gives). ****
Flat Creek Estate, Marble Falls, Texas
And transport? The container revolution of the late twentieth century was crucial here (and reefers, refrigerated containers). A few minutes perusing the wine entries in the blog of Kan-Haul are well worth it. Kan-Haul is a Dallas company that specializes in the bulk transport of liquid food products. (The posts on refrigeration, alcohol, vegetable oil, kosher foods and milk might make you watch what you’re passing on your next road trip with a bit more interest.) The materials used are also staggering: a flexible resin bag that can stand up to 24 tons!*****
Exploded view of a wine pac for container transport. Note that the “box” at the bottom is not cardboard wine box but a metal shipping container. Kan-Haul
The takeaway
I’ve learned that the wine I drink is the category described as “commercial premium blended,” and that it’s probably come to my regional market in a great bulbous red and black flexi pak. A far cry from chateaus and terroir.
But, my, am I glad! The first time I really drank wine was in the mid 1960s when I was in graduate school. The only alcohol English graduate-student budgets ran to was beer made in plastic garbage cans. None of the gadgets now available for brewing had yet appeared, so a new batch was always an adventure, and not always a pleasant one. Then came a trip to Provence and the discovery that we could take a container down to the vineyard. Oh dear! Even my unpracticed palate immediately determined that alcoholic content was just about all that wine had going for it.
Now for a reasonable price I can drink a wine that is better than that consumed by most people for most of history. Another win for modern food and drink.
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*From Victor Ginsburgh’s review of Kym Anderson and Vicente Pinilla (eds) Wine Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2018). An eye watering price.
The review appeared in the excellent Journal of Wine Economics available on-line. I find something of interest in almost every issue.
**Anderson and Pinilla also assembled a free on-line data base with wine statistics for 47 countries from the present back to 1835. Thanks University of Adelaide.
*** For science and wine in the nineteenth century, I highly recommend Dying on the Vine: How Phyllloxera Transformed Wine (2011) by my history and philosophy of science colleague, George Gale. Again, this is pricey so I hope you have access to Interlibrary Loan.
For the dependence of “natural” wine on science and technology, take a look at Ted Nordhaus, “On the nature of wine: and the cultural contradictions of artisanal capitalism” Breakthrough Journal (2018).
****For refrigeration and the amazing difference it has made, see Jonathan Rees, Refrigeration Nation (2013), though be aware that wine is not his focus.
Marc Levinson (2006). The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton University Press.
Arthur Donovan; Joseph Bonney (2006). The Box that changed the world: Fifty years of Container Shipping – an illustrated history. Commonwealth Business Media.
In France and Italy, we buy quite drinkable wine in Cubitainers, what you call Bag-in-Box in 5- and 10-liter boxes with a self-sealing spout. If you drink wine every day and are not rich, it’s a perfectly acceptable alternative to fine wines.
You have probably read “Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures” by Paul Lukacs (published 2012) — it would be quite relevant to this fascinating post. (My review here:
http://maefood.blogspot.com/2017/09/inventing-wine.html )
Too bad about the cost of so many good books!
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
I had no idea about that book. It sounds right up my street and I have ordered it. Thanks for continuing with your interesting blog.
We are remarkably fortunate to have so much available to us. I had no idea that wine was being shipped in such containers, but it’s brilliant that it is making good wine so much more widely available. Indeed, a win for modern food and drink — and for us, as well. Thank you.
It was a complete surprise to me too. Since I found out about it by a quick google, I’m a little surprised that it’s not been more widely publicized. But then it goes right against the grain of wine rhetoric.
Cool post! Any interest in covering how wine tastes have shifted? From what I’ve read and seen while traveling, white wine seems to have been far more common in Europe than we think. What WAS the wine the Romans drank? If it was white and sweet and watered down, that sure sounds a lot like grape Kool-aid to me!
Lillian, as I say, I am not a wine expert and wine history is an area all to itself. I’m tickled by the idea of Romans drinking grape Kool-aid and very open to the idea that wine in the past was not a bit like the stuff we drink today.