Introduction: The Globalization of Wine – What is Involved and What is at Stake?

Wine is today one of the most widespread and complex commodities produced globally. The globalization of wine never involves just one single big process. Instead, wine globalization is made up of multiple processes, all overlapping and affecting each other, but not necessarily cohering or heading in any one unified direction. The globalization of wine is made up of clashing and contradictory processes, and it is precisely that which means things usually becoming more complicated over time. The globalization of wine is also always tied up in all sorts of ways with wider processes of globalization, themselves being social, cultural, economic, political and spatial in nature. Wine globalization is strongly shaped by these factors and the ways in which they intertwine, as well as to some degree acting upon them in turn too. This chapter introduces the book by sketching out major dynamics and phenomena of the globalization of wine. These are summarised under the headings: Wine Production (involving a globalization of ‘wine world(s)); Wine Consumption (involving globalization of ‘wine culture(s)’); and Wine Discourse (involving globalization of ‘wine field(s)’).