Imperial Wine - by Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Book Synopsis

A fascinating and approachable deep dive into the colonial roots of the global wine industry.

Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britain's surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Here, historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative. This is the first book to argue that today's global wine industry exists as a result of settler colonialism and that imperialism was central, not incidental, to viticulture in the British colonies.
Wineries were established almost immediately after the colonization of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand as part of a civilizing mission: tidy vines, heavy with fruit, were symbolic of Britain's subordination of foreign lands. Economically and culturally, nineteenth-century settler winemakers saw the British market as paramount. However, British drinkers were apathetic towards what they pejoratively called "colonial wine." The tables only began to turn after the First World War, when colonial wines were marketed as cheap and patriotic and started to find their niche among middle- and working-class British drinkers. This trend, combined with social and cultural shifts after the Second World War, laid the foundation for the New World revolution in the 1980s, making Britain into a confirmed country of wine-drinkers and a massive market for New World wines. These New World producers may have only received critical acclaim in the late twentieth century, but Imperial Wine shows that they had spent centuries wooing, and indeed manufacturing, a British market for inexpensive colonial wines. This book is sure to satisfy any curious reader who savors the complex stories behind this commodity chain.

From the Back Cover

"Fascinating and surprising. Imperial Wine traces in meticulous detail how the apparently modern fashion for New World wines is in fact the legacy of Empire."--Lizzie Collingham, author of The Hungry Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

"Elegantly written and with impressive far-ranging research, which quite literally spans the globe, Imperial Wine will contribute to debates about the nature of British imperialism. Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre's principal strength is how she uses the story of wine and winemaking as a window into the nature of 'settler colonialism' and the integrative forces of the British imperialism. In doing so, she shows how imperialism turned Great Britain from a country of beer drinkers into a country of beer and wine drinkers."--Stephen V. Bittner, author of Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar

"Like a good wine, Imperial Wine hits many notes. The narrative is brisk and lively, but it also has nuance and depth due to the attention Regan-Lefebvre gives to the roles of British imperialism and settler colonialism in the rise of the 'new world' wines of Australia and South Africa."--Dane Kennedy, author of The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire

"This wide-ranging transnational history gives fascinating and often surprising insights into the connections between viticulture and Empire. It is a thought-provoking and learned page-turner."--Richard Toye, author of Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World he Made

Review Quotes

"Regan-Lefebvre's book invites a broad audience, including casual wine enthusiasts and undergraduates, into academic conversations about how British imperialism and colonialism worked ideologically, economically, socially, and environmentally."-- "Victorian Studies"

"Imperial Wine... [offers] a master class in historical storytelling. Carving out a space between academia and popular historical writing, it offers a compelling critique of the global forces underpinning the production, consumption, and circulation of wine across the British Empire."-- "Social History of Alcohol and Drugs"

"Imperial Wine teaches wine enthusiasts about the role of empire in shaping the wine world of the past, present, and probably the future, too. And it teaches students of imperialism that the influence of those forces continues even in something as seemingly simple as a glass of wine. Interesting. Well-written. Thought-provoking. I learned a lot."

-- "Wine Economist"

"A novel approach. . . . Imperial Wine is the vinous equivalent of a rags-to-riches story. Based on an impressive amount of research, it springs the occasional surprise."-- "TLS"

"As with any good history, Regan-Lefebvre's book sparks more questions than it answers. . . . This is, however, not a shortcoming of the book but a strong point: like a glass of rich red wine, the topic of wine in the British Empire certainly has legs. These legs-- and the ideas propounded in this book--will provide fertile ground for future discussion and scholarship in the years to come."-- "Gastronomica"

"Informed readers will appreciate its extensive coverage and writing style, in which lively and uncomplicated prose is enlivened with numerous wry asides. . . . It tells a compelling story of how wines from the former Empire came to win over British palates, and capture a major share of the global market. It is the first book that succeeds in explaining how this unfolded over the course of more than two centuries.​"-- "Journal of Wine Economics"

"It's a brilliant book from start to finish. Academic rigour and discipline structures every page. The weight of detail is formidable. The subject is uncomfortable, even ugly. But Regan-Lefebvre has a gift - she knows how to curlicue dry facts just enough to make them intriguing without losing their accuracy. She's delivered all this in what amounts to a cracking read. It is a fascinating book. A page-turner, even!"-- "JancisRobinson.com"

"Really fascinating . . . . Very accessible to the average reader who has any interest at all in the history of wine. Most important, however, is I think the author has contributed an original idea or at least fully fleshed out an idea concerning the significance and utility of the 'Old World' / 'New World' structure that has for so long now played a key role in discussions of wine history and the world wine marketplace."-- "Fermentation newsletter"

"Shows how the modern consumer's​ ​choice of an alcoholic beverage rested on centuries of canny merchant​ ​schemes, land grabs, and exploitation of Indigenous peoples​. . . . ​This book clearly proves that good commercial wine is one of the​ ​ways that the system convinces players that the game is worth playing​."-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

About the Author

Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre is Professor of History at Trinity College, Connecticut, and author of Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire. In 2019, she was named one of the "Future 50" of wine by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and the International Wine & Spirit Competition.