THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the scientific and industrial revolutions. In this period, empirical work allowed the development of the greatest sparkling wine in the world in Champagne, and yet more growth in the wine trade. At the same time, the rise of the middle classes provided a burgeoning market for what until then had been predominantly consumed by those who produced it. The influence of this nascent consumer revolution can be seen by the early nineteenth century, when the two most expensive wines in the world were tokay and constantia-not from France or Italy, but from Hungary and South Africa. Sixty years later, the spread of railways led to the next development. When wines from Italy or the south of France could be delivered in Berlin or London or Paris within 24 hours, producers no longer needed to seek a market only in the nearest town.

One other important legacy of the nineteenth century was the work of Louis Pasteur. Enology as a science is based on biochemistry, and was one of the later branches of science to develop. Louis Pasteur contributed substantially to our ability to control the processes involved in winemaking--and thus our ability to make good wine. He was a scientist of wide interests, and one who enjoyed wine as well. Pasteur didn't discover yeasts, but he showed that microscopic organisms were responsible for fermentations, When he was commissioned by the French government to investigate wine spoilage, he discovered the various bacteria that cause it and offered means of preventing their activity. It was due to this man more than any other that winemaking became a science, and that the drink we now enjoy can be produced so reliably and cheaply.

What had been a golden age came to an end in the 1860s when the pest phylloxera arrived from North America. It ravaged vineyards, first in France, then through the rest of Europe, until the solution of grafting was discovered. At the same time, the widening trade in wine provoked widespread fraud, as producers of cheap wine tried to pass their product off as grand vin. Then came war, and prohibition in the USA-and general depression to wine producers around the world.

The response to the fraud problem in Europe was to develop a system to protect the producers of quality wine by guaranteeing its origin. This process, which developed into the French Appellation system also gave rise to the European idea of labeling "quality" wine, which has a specific demarcated origin, and "table" wine, which does not. The European system is the basis for all quality control systems-and is reflected in other parts of the world-as with American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the United States and Geographic Indicators (GIs) in Australia.