The great scourge of supermarket wine
In 1962, changes to retail licensing laws allowed supermarkets to begin selling alcohol. Ten years later, supermarket wine sales had grown from 5% of off-trade wine, beer and spirits to 25%, this staggering expansion was largely attributable to Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and the Co-Op, who were first to exploit an aspirational middle class increasingly preoccupied with continental luxuries. […]
The redundification of appellations
Since Virgil praised Falernian in his epic poem, the Aeneid, certain regions in varying nations have been revered for producing fine wines. The reasons why those places have excelled are broad, ranging from geographic factors to cultural and political influences on trade and economic opportunity. Long before Virgil, winemakers and bureaucrats in ancient Mesopotamia had […]