Short description:

A unique look at the meaning of the taste for wine in Britain, from the establishment of a Commonwealth in 1649 to the Commercial Treaty between Britain and France in 1860 - this book provides an extraordinary window into the politics and culture of England and Scotland just as they were becoming the powerful British state.

Long description:

A unique look at the meaning of the taste for wine in Britain, from the establishment of a Commonwealth in 1649 to the Commercial Treaty between Britain and France in 1860 - this book provides an extraordinary window into the politics and culture of England and Scotland just as they were becoming the powerful British state.

"...a superb contribution, not only to the growing field of food history but also to our deeper appreciation of the evolution of political and cultural life in England and Scotland." - David Hancock, The Journal of Modern History

"Great wine books, like great vintages, are often more hyperbole than reality. In fact, they are both rare. Charles Ludington's 2013 book, The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History, is unlike anything that has come before in its depth of research and its particular focus. At the risk of taking the analogy too far, Ludington has written a wine book for the ages." - Kevin D. Goldberg, Journal of Wine Economics

"...this is a very different book on wine that's wholly entertaining and excellently researched, particularly if you're a student of the era or are fascinated by how wine was perceived and manipulated politically in previous centuries." - Paul O' Doherty, Jancis Robinson

"Ludington employs a rich variety of quantitative data, with careful attention to the strengths or weaknesses of official figures as smuggling ebbed and flowed in reaction to policies. A variety of methodologies are creatively employed to produce a book that will fascinate a range of historians, students, and wine-lovers. This volume intrigues, entertains, and illustrates the power of a single commodity to reveal new and significant insights into past societies." - Beverly Lemire, The American Historical Review

"...imaginative, ambitious and well-researched [...] Charles Ludington presents a provocative theory analyzing how changes in alcohol consumption constituted power, influence and legitimacy in politics over two centuries." - David Gutzke, Reviews in History

Table of Contents:

Introduction Part I: The Politicization of Wine Chapter 1: 'A health to our distressed king!' The Politics of Wine and Drinking in England, 1649-1681 Chapter 2: 'What's Become of Rich Burdeaux Claret, Who Knows?' Fraud and Popular Taste in Revolutionary England, 1678?1702 Chapter 3: 'The Cross Ran with Claret for the General Benefit' The Politics of Wine in Scotland, 1680s-1707 Part II: Claret Chapter 4: 'The Interest of the Nation lay against it so visibly' Claret and English National Interest, 1702-1714 Chapter 5: 'A good and most particular taste': Luxury Claret, Politeness, and Political Power England, c. 1700-1740 Chapter 6: 'Firm and Erect the Caledonian Stood': Scotland and Claret, 1707?c. 1770 Part III: Port Chapter 7: 'Port is all I pretend to': Port and the English Middle Ranks, 1714-1760s Chapter 8: 'Claret is the Liquor for Boys; Port for Men': How Port Became the 'Englishman's Wine', 1750s-c.1790s Chapter 9: 'That other liquor called port': Port and the Creation of BritishIdentity in Scotland, 1770s?1815 Part IV: Drunkenness, Sobriety, and Civilization? Chapter 10: 'By G-d, he drinks like a man!': Manliness, Britishness and the Politics of Inebriety, c. 1780-c.1820 Chapter 11: 'Happily, inebriety is not the vice of the age': Sobriety, Respectability and Sherry, 1820s-1850s Chapter 12: 'Taste is not a mutable, but an immutable thing': British Civilization and the Great Nineteenth-Century Wine Debate