Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics [Hardcover]

Stephen Brook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2000

In a unique exploration of Bordeaux's wine trade, Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics gets behind the scenes to discover how the region's wines are produced, marketed and sold. The power of the press, merchants, negociants and consumers over Bordeaux's wine prices, culture and economic health is assessed and explained Bordeaux's key winemakers are featured and their contribution to the evolution of the region's - and the world's - wines is considered. Stephen Brook also reveals which properties are owned by whom, and assesses the impact of key business partnerships and rivalries upon the balance of power, wine styles and wine prices. Colour and black and white photographs help relate the extraordinary story of Bordeaux, and family trees clarify the history and portfolios of the region's most powerful wine families.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

About the Author

Stephen Brook is a leading writer on wine and travel. His book Pauiliac won the Andre Simon Special award in 1999. The following year The Wines of California won the Glenfiddich. Prix Lanson and Veuve Clicquot prizes for best wine book. In 1987 he won the Andre Simon award for Liquid Gold: Desert Wines of the World. Most recently he edited A Century of Wine which has been shortlisted for the 2000 Andre Simon prize. He is a regular writer on travel for The Times and is a contributing editor to Decanter.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mitchell Beazley (September 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840003634
• ISBN-13: 978-1840003635
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great text AND beautiful photos, February 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics (Hardcover)

Before, I would always wonder why Bordeaux wine is so expensive. Many had told me that it was, indeed, superior. I am glad that Stephen Brook took the time to explain in common language, all the factors that have made this wine region such a "hot-spot" for the wine industry.

This book is not only a look at this wine region and it's wines, but a must read for all who are interested in the power structure of Europe, especially France.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A critical examination of the Bordeaux trade, April 28, 2010

By 

Chambolle (Bainbridge Island, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bordeaux: People, Power and Politics (Hardcover)

To read the only other Amazon review of this book, one might surmise it is a glossy coffee table book and a rather neutral description of Bordeaux for the novice. It is anything but. For those seeking a more conventional, encyclopedic volume to serve as a reference, there is Brook's big and glossy "The Complete Bordeaux," which I can highly recommend, along with Clive Coates' "Grands Vins" and its later revised edition, "The Wines of Bordeaux."

"People, Power and Politics" is a different animal, a "tell all" volume in which Brook paints a less than flattering picture of the Bordeaux trade in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He draws back the curtain on the system of negociants, courtiers, importers, media mavens, banks, insurance companies and other moneyed interests that control the commerce in classified growth and 'cult' Bordeaux. He decries the frenetic 'en primeur' campaigns that have come to define the top tier Bordeaux market.

Brook also presents a scathing critique of modern Bordeaux, the wine. Overcropping. Slathering with new oak, overuse of concentrators, micro-oxygenation, the trend towards "ripeness is all," the Parker driven fruit bomb viticulture and vinification that now seem to define the successful estates. At the same time he describes the economic successes of Bordeaux over the past couple of decades, Brook describes a growing disillusionment, among wine professionals and serious amateurs, with the homogeneity and "internationalization" of Bordeaux reds, noting that many tasters admit they can no longer tell St. Julien from Pauillac from Margaux from St. Estephe. It all converges on a single, anonymous, over the top Californicated style.

Many of us who have been at the wine thing for twenty or thirty years or more cut our teeth on the Bordeaux of the 50s, 60s and 70s, only to find that by the mid 80s even the best wines went soft and grew dull -- more consistent, more friendly, but dull. Is it global warming, marketing savvy, Parker's silly 'scoring system,' or just changing tastes? Whatever it is, many of us now think of the region as "Bore d'eaux." While we may be tempted by the en primeur media campaigns to lay down lots of the "top rated" wines from the highly touted vintages, we drink them less and less and flip them at a profit more and more, as the wines simultaneously become far less interesting and far more ridiculously expensive and actively traded in secondary markets. When your not very interesting bottles of Lafite can be sold in Hong Kong for a few grand a pop, why drink them, when you can keep yourself in terroir driven, top quality reds from the Loire, the Rhone and Burgundy for months and months for the price of one or two bottles of that "98 pointer" Rothschild stuff?

Brook's book has a measured and thoughtful tone, but it does not sugar coat the message or shy away from asking these hard questions. As the cover blurb says, this is a "no holds barred exploration of Bordeaux." It ain't your father's Oldsmobile.