French Wine

Rod Phillips offers a concise yet thorough account of French winemaking, spanning roughly 2,500 years. He begins with the arrival of vines in ancient France, carried by Etruscans, Greeks and Romans, who planted the country's first vineyards.

From there the book follows wine across many layers at once. It charts how vineyard acreage grew and shrank at regional and national scales, and how output rose and fell over both short and long periods. It also weighs the impact of climate swings on grape growing, the rise of distinct wine regions and legally defined appellations, and shifts in cultivation and winemaking techniques. Commerce receives attention too, both within France and abroad, along with how foreign and domestic buyers received French wines.

Phillips also examines quality, showing how some regions and estates came to be seen as prestigious, how the idea of terroir has changed, and how rules on production, sale and fraud took shape. Consumption habits and the links between wine and gender, class, health, religion and national identity complete the picture. The book suits readers interested in the social and economic past as well as in wine itself.