wine, networks and scales: intermediation in the production, distribution and consumption of wine

Wine as a product arises from human connections in know-how and trade as much as from the natural environment in which grapes are grown. At each stage of decision-making about growing grapes, making wine, selling and drinking it, people with different roles are networked together into systems of production and distribution. The authors in this collection offer new studies of the individuals and groups who act as connectors in these networked systems, intermediating in the delivery of wine from growers’ vines to consumers’ glasses. These actors operate at multi-layered scales of geography or within multiple regimes of governance, all the while taking account of arbitrations of quality and taste. This collection highlights how intermediators in many different wine countries and periods of history are, and have been, significant agents of continuity and change in the wine industry.

Mikaël Pierre holds a PhD in history from the University of Newcastle, Australia and University Bordeaux Montaigne. He focuses his research on wine history and transnational connections. He has published several works on the wine trade in Bordeaux and French-Australian transfers.

Julie McIntyre is a senior lecturer in Australian history at the University of Newcastle. She has published widely on wine, as recognised with honours including an International Organisation of Vine and Wine: OIV Jury ＂Special Mention for History＂ and a Fulbright Scholarship to University of California (Davis).

Corinne Marache is professor of contemporary history at University Bordeaux Montaigne. Specialist in societies and rural areas, she devotes part of her research to terroirs and local products. She has published, in particular, with S. Lachaud and B. Bodinier, Men, Landscapes and Territories of Wine (2014).

Stéphanie Lachaud-Martin is a lecturer in modern history at the University Bordeaux Montaigne. She is specialist in rural and wine history of the 17th and 18th centuries in France, after a doctorate on the Sauternes vineyard and the direction of several books on the wine world.