Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics

Focusing on Bordeaux, one of the world's key wine-producing regions, Stephen Brook's Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics reveals the compelling, often cutthroat passage of some of the greatest bottles (and lesser ones, too) from Bordeaux's premier producers to market. The "much abused [selling system of] Bordeaux," says wine expert Nicholas Firth, "apparently the most chaotic means of distribution of any major product, is the most effective means of distributing the products of thousands of estates to a hundred countries." Taking this as his premise--and conclusion--Brook, a leading British wine writer, provides an incisive exploration. Not a book for the general wine reader, Bordeaux will, however, be of immense interest to those who wish to investigate the commercial life of the region in depth.

In chapters such as "Rise of an Empire" and "Power Groups: Who Owns What," Brook offers commentary on the winemaking, winemakers, and wine styles in modern Bordeaux; Bordeaux's economic structure; how producers market their wines; the place of old families and corporations; and much more. Throughout, evocative color photographs depict the locale, while detailed investigations of pertinent families--with family trees included--pinpoint old clans and new, corporate and other owners. Fair-minded and intriguing, the book will add immeasurably to the understanding of the world it so readably evokes. --Arthur Boehm