Table of Contents

7 Foreword; 10 The Power to Banish Care Man's First Experience of Alcohol; 15 Where Grapes Were First Trodden The Misty Origins of Wine; 20 The Pharoahs and Their Wine The Ancient Empires Master the Vine; 27 Greece: The Wine-Dark Sea Dionysus and the First Theatre; 32 Drinking the God Wine and Sea-trade Flourish Together; 37 De Re Rustica Wine in Roman Italy; 44 Jewish Life and Christian Ritual "Wine Makes Glad the Heart of Man"; 49 A Greener Country Rome Expands - and Europe's Vineyards are Founded; 54 The Hope of Some Diviner Drink Mohammed Condemns Wine; 59 Inheritors of The Empire Charlemagne and the Rebirth of Europe's Vineyards; 64 Making and Tasting Medieval Wine Vineyard and Cellar Skills are Refined; 69 The Cloister and the Press The Monks' Superlative Burgundy; 76 England and Gascony: The Birth of Claret When the English Owned Bordeaux; 81 Merchants of Venice Trade in the Rich Wines of the Mediterranean; 86 Castilian Conquest Further Frontiers in Spain and the New World; 91 "Good Stall of Fertile Sherris" Sack, the Wine of Falstaff and Drake; 96 The Beverage Revolution New Rivals to the Vine; 101 Waggoners of the Sea The Dutch and the Growing Wine Trade; 106 Jug and Bottle Great Steps in the Technology of Glassmaking; 113 Bordeaux Reborn The First Chateaux Wines and their Markets; 118 The First Perfectionist Dom Perignon and the Refinement of Champagne; 123 Anything But Port The Accidental Birth of a Classic; 128 Tokay Essence Great Wine from Europe's Furthest Frontier; 133 Groot Constantia A Short-lived Wonder from the Cape; 138 Island of the Immortals Madeira's Masochist Wine; 142 Le Grand Theatre The Age of Confidence in Bordeaux; 149 Mapping the Cote Burgundy - the Pattern is Established; 154 Paris Cabaret Taxes distort the Wine Map of the Ancien Regime; 159 Cabinet Wine Germany Refines, Selects - and Discovers Riesling; 164 Three-Bottle Men The Growth of Connoisseurship in Georgian England; 169 Revolution and After Napoleon's Wars Herald a New Age; 174 Bodegas and Lodges The Rise of Sherry - and Port's Response; 180 Methode Champenoise Champagne profits from the Booming Ninteenth Century; 188 John Bull's Vineyard Australia - Discovery and Development; 194 East Coast, West Coast Spanish and Anglo-Saxon Traditions Merge in America; 200 The Golden Age Bordeaux and Burgundy at the Height of their Powers; 208 Zollverein Germany's Unification Widens the Horizon; 214 When Sorrows Come Oidium and Phylloxera Devastate Europe; 220 Risorgimento Wine and Politics in Ninteenth-century Italy; 225 Hispanic Revival Spain and South America in the Ninteenth Century; 230 Fifty Years of Crisis War, Slump, Poor Weather, and Prohibition; 235 The New World Challenges The Dramatic Renaissance of California and Australia; 241 The Old World Responds Tradition, Technology, and the Search for Market Identity; 247 Bibliography; 250 Index & Acknowledgements

About the Author

Hugh Johnson is recognized as the world's favourite wine writer. Hugh Johnson's first book and internationally bestselling Wine was published in 1966, and subsequent award-winning titles, including Story of Wine and Wine Companion, now in its fifth edition, have established him as one of the subject's foremost writers. He then went on to write The World Atlas of Wine, also now in its fifth edition and co-authored with Jancis Robinson. His annually updated Pocket Wine Book sells over 400,000 copies each year.Margaret Rand, Editor of this edition, is an award-winning wine writer and a former editor of Wine International. She is the co-author (with Oz Clarke) of Grapes & Wines and the General Editor of Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book and Mitchell Beazley's Classic Wine Library series. Margaret also contributes to a wide range of international publications.