Globalization Within the European Wine Industry: Commercial Challenges but Producer Domination

Abstract

Since 2000, a widespread consensus amongst practitioners and commentators has emerged that the European wine industry is ‘in crisis’. Public demonstrations, blockades and acts of industrial sabotage have grabbed the newspaper headlines whilst collective and public actors have accumulated diagnoses and proposals for reform (Berthomeau, 2001; César, 2002; EC, 2006; Wine & Spirits Intelligence Service Ltd, 2002). Many of these social mobilizations and analyses ascribe surpluses and price falls to an allegedly unregulated form of ‘globalization’ which, through encouraging new entrants in the form of New World wines, has led not only to market disruption but also to a change in the product itself. In short, globalization is perceived as a threat to European methods of growing grapes, transforming them into wine, selling this product and, more fundamentally, to the professional identity of all those involved in these processes.