Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183622 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the long list of books about wine, few have focused exclusively on the story of its trade—the business of getting the fermented product from vineyard to consumer. Pellechia (Garlic, Wine and Olive Oil), a New York City wine merchant and former vintner, seeks to address the subject with his ambitious historical survey. The oldest archeological evidence of wine making dates to about 6000 B.C., from a site in what is now the country of Georgia. Wine was traded in Hammurabi's Mesopotamia and in pharaonic Egypt, and its production expanded exponentially in tandem with the Greco-Roman empires. After the fall of Rome, the Christian church sanctioned wine making and its trade, and with the coming of the Renaissance and the early modern period, the business progressed in step with other improvements in transportation, politics and commerce. Pellechia has done his research, packing a lot into a short book about a large subject, and while his exposition and style are workmanlike, his effort and enthusiasm come through. The story comes to fuller life the closer it gets to the present day; maps and parenthetical observations offer additional touches of color. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Among the first commodities exchanged among the peoples of the world, wine offered traders portability, constant demand, and relatively steady supply. Pellechia focuses on the commercial and mercantile facets of wine history rather than on the beverage's gustatory value. Because grape growing began in the Mediterranean basin, it was only natural that the first trade routes sprang up with the Phoenicians, whose far-flung empire made transportation of wine essential. Greeks, with their trusty amphorae, took over much of this market before Romans brought the entire Mediterranean region under their sway and learned to reap great benefit from shipping wine throughout their realm. Former barbarians learned the value of wine trade, setting the stage for the explosive growth of international markets that commenced with the dawn of the age of exploration. The great blight that destroyed European vines actually encouraged trade in the nineteenth century. At present, the only significant restraint on wine trade remains the plethora of national and local laws and regulations left over from urges toward Prohibition. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Thomas Pellechia has been in the wine business for twenty years. In 1985, he founded a small boutique winery, Cana Vineyards, in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. His articles on wine have appeared in a variety of publications including Wine Enthusiast, Wines & Vines, Slow Food International, Slow Wine International (Italy), and Decanter (UK). He lives in Upstate New York.

Customer Reviews

Boring read
This was an extremely boring read, and read like a junior high text book. Way too much information, very few anecdotes. I can't remember anything interesting to take away from the book, and am sad I plowed threw the whole thing (I was on vacation, and that was the only book I brought.) I am a wine specialist and educator, and found no inspiration in this. Find another wine history book.

An enjoyable history of wine, civilization and commerce.
This is an enjoyable and highly informative book. I had no idea of the way that wine was so intricately tied up in the progress of civilization. The book covers a vast swath of history and almost the entire planet while describing the evolution of wine and the wine trade.

The author seems to hold few biases and gives an even-handed treatment to the various aspects of this story. The only bias that I detected was towards wine merchants. This is not surprising since he makes his history as a merchant very clear. But I was disappointed that the final sentence, and particularly the final phrase, of this book were so focused on the importance of wine merchants. I read this book as a result of an interest in wine and history. Wine merchants are a necessary part of the story, but from my point of view they're just one cog in the wheel.

As another reviewer mentioned, the author's writing style leaves a little to be desired. This is not a major fault. It's just that I found his sentence structures and choice of words to be a bit awkward at times.

Although I've raised a couple of critical points, I still enthusiastically recommend this book. It's a fairly quick read, is filled with easy-to-digest information, and pulls together many facets of the story of wine. If you like wine and history, this is the book for you.

Greg's Review
I found the book extremely interesting in so many ways, eg. Geography, History, the evolution of wine storage over the centuries, the comparison of regulations from Nation to Nation.

We all should have heard of Babylon (even from Boney M a few years ago) but how many of us would have known that it was roughly where Baghdad stands today. Who would have known that the earliest remnants of wine grapes found (so far) were in the Republic of Georgia?

A wonderful learning book.