It’s not every day that a political scholar, who is also a wine snob, writes a book on the global history of wine. But Kathleen Burk, professor emerita of modern and contemporary history at University College London, has done just that. Burk regularly appears on TV and radio panels in the UK to weigh in on the state of the world, but she’s also a Californian who grew up in a family with vineyards, and a great appreciator of wine. It makes her book a solid read for history buffs and wine lovers alike, without having to be too much a fan of one or the other.
Burk sat down with Ravenous to talk about her latest, Wine: A Global History, which was full of tidbits I’d never heard before. We decided to get her to go down some rabbit holes with us, talking about the most unexpected stories and lines from the book that might have been too in the weeds for a global history, but are exactly the kind of thing you want to hear more about from the person who's done a boatload of research and has it all indexed in her brain.
She goes further into monk co-ops making wine, slavery’s role in the wine trade of imperialist nations, the unexpected places wine started in America, why you should be drinking Japanese wines, and the much-disputed birthplace of wine.
Courtney E. Smith: Tell me about the real birthplace of wine. You say the record varies between China, perhaps Georgia, or other Middle Eastern areas. Culturally, there are so many places it could have happened, and archaeologically — in the historic record — it's a little unclear, it seems?
Kathleen Burk: Well, I put China in partly because the Chinese think [it is] so. There are three types of fruit that have the enzymes by which you can judge wine: the grape, the hawthorn, and the grain. They found hawthorn seeds on the ground, and they found grape seeds. The hawthorns didn't seem to work, so we think maybe it was the first wine made from grain, which is called baijiu now.
[Editor’s note: The hawthorn is an aromatic note found in certain grape varieties. It can also be a type of fruit or blossom wine made from the hawthorn plant. Baijiu is a distilled liquor that literally translates to white liquor, and is the world’s most consumed distilled alcoholic beverage by volume.]
Now, the point of the Middle East. The first site identified was in Iran, near Shiraz, in the Zagros Mountains. Then the second one, which was about a millennium earlier, was also in Iran. As they kept digging, the third and earliest one turned out to be in Georgia. That was from a 2017 dig. I must say, my heart belongs to Georgia, partly for cultural reasons. When Christianity first came to Georgia, the first cross was made of grapevines. That speaks to me in a way. In Turkey, in the Anatolia area, we assume the culture of wine growing and wine drinking moved its way over to the Aegean through Anatolia. This was carried by all sorts of empires: the Persian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, and the Hittite Empire. It finally ended up in the land of Canaan, Parts of their territory included the Bekaa Valley, which is one of the great places where wine is made today. If you know your wines, Chateau Musar is from the Beqaa Valley.
There's a line in the book about the idea that monks making wine were operating as a cooperative. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
You were supposed to take care of yourself, but under the early rules, like [the monastic guides of] Saint Augustine and Saint Benedict, you also had to have enough food, space, and wine to take care of travelers who came by. That was your duty as men of God. There was an organization in the sense that the abbot was the most important person; he could tell you what to do. Remember, everyone drank wine because water could be dangerous. The monastery was a community. These were cooperatives only in the sense that everyone knew what it meant to be a monastery. They took care of themselves and the surrounding people if possible. Every person who needed a place to stay and a meal was entitled to stay at least one night in the monastery. If it was a king or a bishop with an entourage, they got 14 nights. It could be extremely expensive to keep an entourage like that, and it could almost bankrupt them — which, in my opinion, was sometimes done on purpose.
In your chapter on imperialism and South Africa, you provide interesting context. We rarely hear about enslaved people and wine, though we know they existed in the ancient world. Could you talk about that?
The Spaniards, starting with the Conquistadores like Cortés in Mexico, insisted from the beginning that if you were going to settle, you had to plant a certain number of vines to make wine [and use enslaved people for the labor]. In the Western U.S., all the imported vines that produced decent wine were safe. In the East, they were killed by native pests and diseases. From Mexico, the Conquistadores went down to Peru and Chile, and wine was made in all these places, as well as Argentina and Uruguay. That was the origin of wine in South America.
In South Africa, it was the Dutch. The Dutch didn't go there to colonize at first; they were trading people like the Phoenicians. They had the Dutch East Indies, also known as the Spice Islands, which were the most valuable commodity in the world. They needed a place to resupply ships, get fresh water, and get meat from the natives. Eventually, they established a settlement and decided to colonize it. To make wine and cultivate crops, they wanted slaves. They didn't get slaves from their local territory; they brought them from other colonies, like India. The labor-intensive part of growing and tending grapevines was done by slaves.
When the British took over Cape Colony in 1814 (as spoils of war after defeating Napoleon, since France had conquered the Netherlands), the British inherited this and kept slavery in place. Later, the British went to Australia and New Zealand. They used Australia first as a convict colony. They wanted them to drink wine rather than spirits because it was less alcoholic, so they planted grapevines. James Busby [father of the Australian wine industry and British Resident to New Zealand] then went to New Zealand and did the same thing. None of those countries had wine at all before their conquerors came.
Shifting to America: I was surprised to read about Missouri and Cincinnati, and the major early German influence on American wine. How did wine come to those places?
People kept trying to make wine from native American grapes, and it tended not to work. A group of Germans came to Pennsylvania, tried to grow grapes, failed, and went west to Indiana. They decided that wasn't going to work either, so they went to what is now Cincinnati along the Wabash River. There was a lawyer there who had made enough money to give up law and grow grapes to make wine. But a lot of areas could only grow certain types of native grapes, like Concord.
The Concord grape gets a lot of attention in your book—you were very descriptive of how bad it was.
Well, if you drink a decent wine and then you drink Concord, it's sweet and viscous. It's better as jam or jelly.
It kept being difficult along the Wabash River, so some farmers started moving to the islands in Lake Erie, which was successful. But in the end, in that part of the continental US, it was given up because you couldn't make a living from it. Down South, there was one grape that would grow: Scuppernong. They liked sweet wine there; wine that isn't challenging, without much acidity. When phylloxera [Editor’s note: This is a microscopic, aphid-like insect native to eastern North America that feeds on the roots and leaves of grapevines] devastated Europe, France lost 40 percent of their vineyards. It was discovered that phylloxera didn't thrive in sandy soil, but in other soils, they needed resistant rootstock. Missouri provided the brainpower, and Texas provided the native rootstock specimens. A lot of farmers contributed these rootstocks, which were shipped to France.
In your chapter on Japan, you mention people should be trying Japanese wines. Why are their wines exciting to you?
Japan started out using Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and in Hokkaido, Pinot Noir. But they have their own native grape called Koshu. It's really lovely: white, light, with a nice balance of acidity and delicate fruit. It gives off a wonderful aura and pairs wonderfully with poached chicken, sashimi, and sushi. Japan has the most mature wine culture in the Far East; very knowledgeable, and people enjoy drinking wine.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
