My latest book, Wine Wars II: The Global Battle for the Soul of Wine, has been recognized by Gourmand International as an outstanding “Wine & Sustainability” book. Four books (see list below) were identified for special recognition in this category, and all are entitled to wear Gourmand’s “Winner” logo for promotional purposes.
In the spirit of “shameless self-promotion,” I am proud to say that this is not my first Gourmand award. The Wine Economist was recognized as best wine blog in 2015, for example, and Money Taste, and Wine received the 2016 award for best wine writing.
Wine Wars originally appeared in 2011, when it received several awards, including the Gourmand award for best American wine book. Wine Wars II updates the first volume and expands its argument with a new set of chapters organized around the theme of “Wine’s Triple Crisis.”
I suspect that this new section, which examines the wine industry’s intertwined economic, environmental, and identity crises, may have caught the Gourmand gurus’ attention by extending the idea of sustainability beyond the natural environment to include economic and social factors, too. As we all know, sustainability to a complicated balancing act, with few simple answers and lots of work to be done.
Here is the list of winners in the special “Sustainability & Wine.” Congratulations to these authors and all the 2023 Gourmand winners (click here to download complete award list pdf).
Războaiele Vinului, the Romanian version of my book Wine Wars, has received the prestigious Gourmand award for best wine book translation at a gala ceremony in Macau.
Congratulations to the Romanian team who made this volume possible including especially Cătălin Păduraru, Lucian Marcu, and Radu Rizea. Here is a photo of Cătălin, me, and the world’s largest copy of Războaiele vinului taken in Iasi last fall.
And thanks to Gourmand for this recognition of my Romanian friends’ efforts. I am grateful to Gourmand for previous awards including Best Wine Blog (for The Wine Economist in 2015) and Best Wine Writing (for Money, Taste, and Wine in 2016).
My colleagues Pierre Ly and Cynthia Howson interrupted their research in China to journey to Macau to receive the Gourmand award. Here is a photo of Cynthia on the big Gourmand stage.
Wine Wars II, the updated sequel to my 2011 book Wine Wars, is now available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats. It received a special 2023 Gourmand International award for outstanding “Sustainability & Wine” book.
You will find Wines Wars II and the other wine books by Mike Veseth at all the usual online and brick-and-mortar locations (click on the Amazon, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, Powell’s or Barnes & Noble button to order your copy today).
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Globalization has pushed back the borders of the wine world, creating a complex, interconnected market where Old World and New World wines and producers compete head to head. Writing with wit and verve, Mike Veseth (a.k.a. the Wine Economist) tells the compelling story of the war between the market forces that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who resist them. This is the battle for the future of wine—and for its soul. The fight isn’t just over bottles bought and sold, however; power and taste are also at stake. Who will call the shots in the wine market of the future? Who will set the price? Whose palate will prevail? Veseth masterfully brings all of these questions together in the only book on the wine business written for all lovers of wine.
Wine Wars II begins by exploring wine globalization, where readers follow “Missionaries, Migrants, and Market Reforms” to faraway New Zealand and learn how to unlock the secrets of their local retail “Wine Wall” by mastering the “DaVino Code.” Globalization brings a world of wine to our doorsteps. Commodification helps us make sense of the resulting embarrassment of riches, but at a cost. Readers must decide if they are Martians or Wagnerians, consider why “They Always Buy the Ten Cent Wine,” and then probe the puzzle of “Outlaws, Prisoners, and the Great Escape.”
Who stands in the way of the global wine market’s assault on wine’s very soul? The“Revenge of the Terroirists!” Resistance is not futile, because ‘We Are All Terroirists Now,” but that doesn’t mean the future of wine is secure. A final section explores “Wine’s Triple Crisis,” environmental crisis plus economic crisis, plus identity crisis. Taken together these crises pose the most serious threat to wine as we know and love it. Each section of Wine Wars II ends with a suggested wine tasting that invites readers to experience the book’s ideas and arguments with all their senses by sampling a few carefully chosen wines.
Can the soul of wine survive – and thrive – in this unfriendly environment? You’ll have to read Wine Wars II to find out!
Table of Contents:
Prelude: Grape Expectations?
A Tale of Two Glasses
Got Wine?
A Toast to Wine Wars II
Flight One: Globalization – Blessing or Curse?
The DaVino Code
Missionaries, Migrants and Market Reforms
The Center of the Universe
Globalization Tasting
Flight Two: Navigating the Wine Wall
Martians versus Wagnerians
They Always Buy the Ten Cent Wine
Outlaws, Prisoners, and the Great Escape
A Blind Brand Tasting
Flight Three: Revenge of the Terroirists
Mondovino and the Revenge of the Terroirists
We Are All Terroirists Now
Silk Road Terroirists
Terroirist Tasting
Flight Four: Wine’s Triple Crisis
This Changes Everything: Wine’s Environmental Crisis
How to Make a Small Fortune: Wine’s Economic Crisis
Gourmand International has been spotlighting the best food and wine books and writing for 25 years and for this year’s big fair in Paris they are recognizing what they consider the “best of the best” of the last quarter-century.
I am happy to announce that my book Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated! has been shortlisted for the 25th anniversary best wine writing award (it previously won the 2016 best wine writing prize). Here is a quick summary of the book in case you haven’t read it yet.
As wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth peels away layer after layer of the money-taste-wine story he discovers the wine buyer’s biggest mistake (which is to confuse money and taste) and learns how to avoid it, sips and swirls dump bucket wines, Treasure Island wines and toasts anything but Champagne. He bulks up with big bag, big box wines and realizes that sometimes the best wine is really a beer.
Along the way he questions wine’s identity crisis, looks down his nose at wine snobs and cheese bores, follows the money, surveys the restaurant war battleground and imagines wines that even money cannot buy before concluding that money, taste and wine might have a complicated relationship but sometimes they have the power to change the world. Money, Taste & Wine will surprise, inform, inspire and delight anyone with an interest in wine – or complicated relationships!
I admit that it warms my heart to be on a short list with authors like Steven Spurrier (see below). And the nominees in the other categories (full pdf list here) read like Who’s Who of wine wriiting.
Very exciting. Big thanks to Gourmand International and everyone who helped make Money, Taste, and Wine such a success.
Războaiele Vinului, the Romanian version of my 2011 book Wine Wars, has been short-listed for the 2019 Gourmand International award for best wine book translation. Here are the books up for this prestigious award.
Austria: Georgischer Wein, Anna Saldadze, Claudia Tancsits (Leopold Stocker)
China: Dictionary for wine lovers, Bernard Pivot (East China Normal University) 9787567575172
France: L’anglais commercial du vin, Laetitia Perraut (Cafe Anglais)
Italy: Viaggio in Anfora, Kato Keiko. Masuko Maika, P. Bellomo (Velier)
Macedonia: Xinómavro, Stravroula Kourakou, Translation Alexandra Doumas (Foinikas)
Netherlands: Beer, Tadeáš Hájek, Translation Lander Meeusen (Createspace)
Portugal: Glossário Ilustrado do Vinho, Jorge Böhm (Dinalivro)
Romania: Războaiele vinului, Mike Veseth (Aser – Vinul.ro)
Russia: Madeira o vinho dos czares, Siiri & José Milhazes
Sweden: Cava, Spain’s Premium Sparkling Wine, Anna Wallner (Grenadine)
The bronze, silver, and gold medalist in this category, along with other winners, will be announced on July 4 at the gala Gourmand Awards ceremony in Macao.
Congratulations to the Romanian team who made this volume possible including especially Cătălin Păduraru, Lucian Marcu, and Radu Rizea. Here is a photo of Cătălin, me, and the world’s largest copy of Războaiele vinului taken in Iasi last fall.
And thanks to Gourmand International for this recognition of my Romanian friends’ efforts. I am grateful to Gourmand International for previious awards including Best Wine Blog (for The Wine Economist in 2015) and Best Wine Writing (for Money, Taste, and Wine in 2016).
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The Wine Economist will take a break next week. Sue and I will be in Sardinia where I am speaking at the Porto Cervo Wine & Food Festival.
I thought you might enjoy using your imagination to travel to China along with Cynthia Howson and Pierre Ly via this excerpt from their new book Adventures on the China Wine Trail: How Farmers, Local Governments, Teachers, and Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the Wine World, which won the 2020 Gourmand Awards gold medal for wine tourism books.
Many thanks to Cynthia and Pierre and to Rowman & Littlefield for giving permission for publication here. This selection is from Chapter 2: Sea, Sand, and Shandong. Enjoy!
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It was serendipitous that we ended up on the beautiful coast of Shandong, with its sandy beaches and romantic restaurants, on Qixi, the Chinese version of Valentine’s Day. We were travelling with our colleague, Jeff, an adventurous traveler with enough Chinese to get into trouble. This is even more so since Jeff’s then wife had stayed in Seattle and no matter how much he emphasized he was married, he seemed to get quite a bit of attention. That he found himself declining offers at 4:00 a.m. in the Qixi-themed night club was to be expected. The unsolicited calls to his hotel room from would-be escorts took him by surprise. We probably also got such calls, but since we didn’t understand them, we assumed a wrong number. For us, the city of Yantai was brimming with kitsch and romance. Our hotel bathroom was adorned with stickers with cute animals and hearts. And on the bed, we found towels folded into heart-shaped kissing swans.
We made the mistake of overfilling our schedule and requesting a meeting with renowned Chinese wine journalist, Jim Sun, just as he returned from a business trip on the erstwhile romantic evening. Of course, he and his wife were incredibly gracious as he led us through a tasting to showcase some of China’s best wine regions. It was only later that we considered the couple may have better things to do than a 7:00 p.m. meeting with economists.
His shop was in the perfect romantic space, near Yantai’s “World Wine Walk.” The pedestrian path connects the road to the crowded sunny beach and it’s lined with facades of shops named after world wine regions. A young man with a burgundy-colored shirt and black pants held his fiancée, whose red dress was a great match for the red circle shaped sign of a shop referencing wines of . . . Niagara. We never figured out why the gate that led to it was behind a giant yellow rubber duck, but this, too, was photo-worthy. In any case, Yantai is a must-see capital for a wine tourism enthusiast in China.
Yantai’s World Wine Walk: a great place for wedding pictures
What makes the city so special? It turns out that this is where Chinese wine began, longer ago than you might think, in the late nineteenth century. When we prepared for our first China trip, we jumped straight to the index of our brand-new 2013 Lonely Planet China, and searched for the word “wine.” Of course, this was no California or France travel guide. But we were pleased to find at least one mystery wine destination: the Changyu Wine Culture Museum, in Yantai. Back when we began our China wine adventure, that was the only place the Lonely Planet sent English-speaking tourists looking for wine in the country.
Changyu was the first winery, and to commemorate this, in 1992, they built the Changyu Wine Culture Museum. Only a short walk from the waterfront, conveniently located near other top sights, bars and restaurants, the museum attracts large groups of tourists who are happy to take the guided tour and hear the story. Since then, a booming wine industry has developed in the province, including many wineries designed as attention-grabbing tourist attractions.
When Changyu opened the first modern winery in China, founder Zhang Bishi had help from an Austrian Vice Consul and winemaker, Baron Max von Babo.i It is one of the first names you learn on the tour, but it could have been someone else. When the company was founded in the early 1890s, the first foreign consultant, an Englishman who had signed a twenty-year contract, fell ill before he was due to arrive and died of a toothache gone wrong. The Dutch winemaker that followed him turned out not to be qualified. Von Babo got the job and the rest is history.ii “Babo” might ring a bell for dedicated Austrian wine enthusiasts. It is another name for KMW, the standard measurement of grape ripeness still used today to classify Austrian wines. KMW was invented by Max’s father, August Wilhelm Freiherr von Babo, an important figure of Austrian viticulture and enology.
The place was designed to promote Changyu’s brand, of course, which is well known thanks to its overwhelming market share and supermarket shelf space. But there is a clear effort to teach visitors about wine and viticulture, with details on each aspect of production. Armed with knowledge from the museum, tourists can head out of the city toward Chateau Changyu Castel, a joint venture with the Castel wine group from Bordeaux. It’s close to a popular water park and the new construction we saw in 2013 gave a sense of ever-expanding options. There is a museum component here too, but this one is a ginormous working winery. Unlike our Beijing Changyu trip, there were large buses of tour groups, exiting en masse, walking through the vineyard (“Don’t Pick!” one sign said). They took the guided tour of the winery, observing the large stainless-steel tanks and taking pictures of the long rows of oak barrels, or in front of the display riddling station for sparkling wine bottles. On the way, our taxi driver told us he didn’t drink wine, but he recited with pride how the winery got started in 1892 by Zhang Bishi. We invited him along, and he enthusiastically took even more pictures than we did.
The winery tour included a tasting in the bar with views over the vineyard, as well as a percussion set, two foosball tables, and coin-operated barrel dispensers. Families seemed to have fun with the tasting, studiously following their guide’s instructions. But tastings weren’t presented as the highlight of the tours. At the museum, the tasting was in the underground cellar, with pre-filled glasses lined up and covered with plastic wrap, leaving the white wine samples awkwardly warm. Unlike in Napa, no one came here hoping to get tipsy. As one Chinese expert told us when we asked about these tours, if the tasting is deemphasized, it’s probably not the best part. We knew that Changyu wine had won international awards, so why did they serve underwhelming wines to visitors? These museums did a good job promoting wine culture in beautiful spaces, but the wines themselves seemed to be extras on the set rather than main characters. Three years later though, on a return visit to the museum, the wines on the tour were good. Did this reflect a renewed focus on wine quality, or did we show up on a good day? Time will tell.
Changyu and wine street are just the beginning of a wine tourist route along the coast. We drove north to see where thousands of families plan their beach vacations, just a short hop from Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul. Our hotel lobby was filled with an all-ages crowd, geared up with matching hats. The group was among two million visitors hoping to see a magical mirage at the Penglai Pavilion, one of the four great towers of China. Add glorious beaches, an ocean aquarium with dolphin shows, fresh seafood and nightlife opportunities, and you can see why investors see wine tourism dollar signs in the making.
Adventures on the China Wine Trail: How Farmers, Local Governments, Teachers, and Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the Wine World by Cynthia Howson and Pierre Ly. Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Reprinted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Notes:
i His employment contract, in English, is an auction item at Christie’s. See Christie’s, “Wine in China,” Christie’s, January 16, 2014, https://www.christies.com.
ii Michael R. Godley, The Mandarin-Capitalists from Nanyang: Overseas Chinese Enterprise in the Modernisation of China 1893-1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jonathan Ray, “Wine: Is China the New Chile When It Comes to Wine?,” Telegraph, January 18, 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/.
My new book Around the World in Eighty Wineshas received the Gourmand International 2018 award for best U.S. book in the wine and spirits tourism category and will now compete for “Best in the World” with winners from other countries. The global gold, silver, and bronze medals will be announced this May at award ceremonies in Yantai, China.
The Gourmand International awards are important and I have been fortunate to be recognized in the past for best U.S. and bronze medal “world’s best” wine history book (Wine Wars, 2012), world’s best wine blog (WineEconomist.com, 2015) and world’s best wine writing (for Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated, 2016).
Here is the list of international champions in the wine and spirits tourism category:
Austria – Kulinarische Tourismus und Weintourismus (Springer)
Canada – Les Paradis de la Biere Blanche (Druide)
China – Compass to the ocean of wine (Zhejiang S/T) 9787534179549
France – Des Vignes et des Hommes (Feret)
Georgia – Georgia, Miquel Hudin (Vinologue)
Germany – Seewein, Wein Kultur am Bodensee (Jan Thorbeke)
Portugal – Vinhos & Petiscos (Caminho das Palavras)
Scotland – I love champagne, David Zyw (Freight Books)
Singapore – Cracking Croatian Wine, Charine Tan, Dr Matthew Horkey
Switzerland – Randos bieres en Suisse Romande, Monika Saxer (Helvetiq)
USA – Around the world in 80 wines, Mike Veseth (Rowman & Littlefield)
I am especially pleased to see that Cracking Croatian Wineby Charine Tan and Dr. Matthew Horkey is also on the list. Sue and I met Charine and Matt at the 2016 UNWTO global wine tourism conference in Tbilisi, Georgia and we like and admire them a lot. Their books are valuable additions to the resources available to wine tourists in particular and wine enthusiasts generally.
I don’t know who will be named the “best in the world,”, but I appreciate this recognition. Good luck to Charine, Matt, and all the other national champions in all the categories.
The awards are for best wine book and best wine writing. I’ll paste the list of finalists in these categories below.Click on this link to see all the award listings.
Thanks to Gourmand International for this honor. Congratulations and good luck to all the finalists.
Best book of the year
Australia – Varietal Wines, James Halliday (Harper Collins)
Belgium – All Belgium beers, Stichting Kunstboek
France – Le Vin a la bonne etoile, Gerard Bertrand ( La Martiniere )
Germany – Deutsche Wein und Deutsche Kuche ( Callwey )
Italy – Prosecco on the road, Andrea Zanfi ( S & B )
South Korea Korean Wines and Spirits, Jeff Koehler ( Seoul Selection )
Spain – Economía del vino en España y el Mundo ( Cajamar Valencia )
Sweden – Whisky Rebellion, Richard Lundborg ( Bladh by bladh )
USA – Money, taste and wine, Mike Veseth (Rowman & Littlefield)
Wine writing
Australia – True stories, Barossa winemakers, Bernadette Kaeding
Bolivia – Diccionario Enciclopedico universal Del vino, Roberto Arce
Chile – Patrimonio vitivinicola ( Biblioteca Nacional )
France-Grainsensible, Olivier Humbrecht, ( Tonnerre de l’ Est )
USA – Money, taste and wine, Mike Veseth (Rowman & Littlefield)
Mike Veseth is the author of more than a dozen books, including four (soon to be five!) books about wine, business, and society.
You will find wine books by Mike Veseth at all the usual online and brick-and-mortar locations (click on the Amazon, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, Powell’s or Barnes & Noble button to order your copy today).
My first wine book analyzed the three global forces that I see shaping: globalization, commodification, and the thirst for authenticity. Wine Wars and Benjamin Lewin’s terrific In Search of Pinot Noir were named wine books of the year 2011 by Paul O’Doherty, the book reviewer at JancisRobinson.com. Wine Wars has also received a Best American Wine Book award from Gourmand International and the Silver Medal in the category of Best Business and Economics Book 2011 from ForeWords Reviews.
Globalization has pushed back the borders of the wine world, creating a complex, interconnected market where Old World and New World wines and producers compete head to head. Writing with wit and verve, Mike Veseth (a.k.a. the Wine Economist) tells the compelling story of the war between the market forces that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who resist them. This is the battle for the future of wine—and for its soul. The fight isn’t just over bottles bought and sold, however; power and taste are also at stake. Who will call the shots in the wine market of the future? Who will set the price? Whose palate will prevail? Veseth masterfully brings all of these questions together in the only book on the wine business written for all lovers of wine.
Inspired by Jules Verne’s classic adventure tale, Mike Veseth takes his readers Around the World in Eighty Wines. The journey starts in London, Phileas Fogg’s home base, and follows Fogg’s itinerary to France and Italy before veering off in search of compelling wine stories in Syria, Georgia, and Lebanon. Every glass of wine tells a story, and so each of the eighty wines must tell an important tale. We head back across Northern Africa to Algeria, once the world’s leading wine exporter, before hopping across the sea to Spain and Portugal. We follow Portuguese trade routes to Madeira and then South Africa with a short detour to taste Kenya’s most famous Pinot Noir. Kenya? Pinot Noir? Really!
The route loops around, visiting Bali, Thailand, and India before heading north to China to visit Shangri-La. Shangi-La? Does that even exist? It does, and there is wine there. Then it is off to Australia, with a detour in Tasmania, which is so cool that it is hot. The stars of the Southern Cross (and the lyrics of a familiar song) guide us to New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina. We ride a wine train in California and rendezvous with Planet Riesling in Seattle before getting into fast cars for a race across North America, collecting more wine as we go. Pause for lunch in Virginia to honor Thomas Jefferson, then it’s time to jet back to London to tally our wines and see what we have learned.
Why these particular places? What are the eighty wines and what do they reveal? And—spoiler alert!—what is the surprise plot twist that guarantees a happy ending for every wine lover? Come with us on a journey of discovery that will inspire, inform, and entertain anyone who loves travel, adventure, or wine.
If you want to know how something is changing, look to the extremes, the edges, where changes happens first. Extreme Wine In Extreme Wine, wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth circles the globe searching for the best, worst, cheapest, most expensive, and most over-priced wines. Mike seeks out the most outrageous wine people and places and probes the biggest wine booms and busts. Along the way he applauds celebrity wines, tries to find wine at the movies, and discovers wines that are so scarce that they are almost invisible. Why go to such extremes? Because. Mike argues, the world of wine is growing and changing, and if you want to find out what’s really happening you can’t be afraid to step over the edge.
Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated received the 2016 Gourmand International award for Best Wine Writing. As wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth peels away layer after layer of the money-taste-wine story he discovers the wine buyer’s biggest mistake (which is to confuse money and taste) and learns how to avoid it, sips and swirls dump bucket wines, Treasure Island wines and toasts anything but Champagne. He bulks up with big bag, big box wines and realizes that sometimes the best wine is really a beer.
Along the way he questions wine’s identity crisis, looks down his nose at wine snobs and cheese bores, follows the money, surveys the restaurant war battleground and imagines wines that even money cannot buy before concluding that money, taste and wine might have a complicated relationship but sometimes they have the power to change the world. Money, Taste & Wine will surprise, inform, inspire and delight anyone with an interest in wine – or complicated relationships!
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You might also be interested in some of the non-wine books …
The award comes from Gourmand International and will be presented in Yantai, China on May 28, 2016 at the annual awards ceremony. As the U.S. winner, Money, Taste, and Wine is a finalist for the “Best in the World” award in this category, the winner of which will be revealed in Yantai. Very exciting!
The other national finalists and winners in other categories of the awards will be posted on Gourmand International website in February.
Sincere thanks to the Gourmand International judges for this honor. Here is a video about the 2015 awards in Yantai. Enjoy!
My latest book, Wine Wars II: The Global Battle for the Soul of Wine, has been recognized by Gourmand International as an outstanding “Wine & Sustainability” book. Four books (see list below) were identified for special recognition in this category, and all are entitled to wear Gourmand’s “Winner” logo for promotional purposes.
Wine Wars originally appeared in 2011, when it received several awards, including the Gourmand award for best American wine book. Wine Wars II updates the first volume and expands its argument with a new set of chapters organized around the theme of “Wine’s Triple Crisis.”
I am happy to announce that my book 
Războaiele Vinului,
My new book
Austria – Kulinarische Tourismus und Weintourismus (Springer)
I am especially pleased to see that 
My recent book 
I’ve just learned that my new book 