The History of Wine — The Drink Nobody Could Control

In 1976, the best French experts tasted wines blind and ranked a Californian above their own. One judge demanded his ballot back. France refused to publish the results.
A microscopic insect the size of a pinhead arrived from America on a trading ship and destroyed two thirds of all European vineyards in twenty years. The way Europeans saved their wine is so strange that producers still prefer not to talk about it.
A list written by Napoleon's officials in 1855 still determines which wine costs a thousand dollars and which costs twenty. In a hundred and seventy years not a single line has changed.
This is the story of a drink that eight thousand years ago was nothing more than fermented juice from a wild berry in a clay jar in the Caucasus. And which since then emperors, popes, critics and governments have all tried to control. Nobody succeeded.