While wine has been consumed in nearly every part of the world throughout human history, the beverage itself has undergone many changes in both taste and roles. In this fascinating history, Lukacs, author of The Great Wines of America and winner of the James Beard and Cliquot Book of the Year Awards, charts the evolution of a drink that was once as indispensable as water to its current status as a pleasure and a cultural choice.
Wine is some 8,000 years old, but the wines that people buy and drink today are for the most part quite new. Modern wine exists as the product of multiple revolutions scientific, industrial, social, even ideological. Though the same basic chemical substance as its ancient forebear, it is in every other respect very different. Contemporary wines both taste unlike those from earlier eras and are valued in novel ways. For many thousands of years, wine was a basic need. Today it is a cultural choice, and the reasons why millions of people choose it tells us as much about them as about the contents of bottle or glass. In Inventing Wine, Paul Lukacs chronicles wine ‘s transformation from a source of sustenance to a consciously pursued pleasure, in the process offering a new way to view the present as well as the past.
