July 28 (Bloomberg) -- You really believe wine is about God and Nature, family sagas and romantic reveries of a year in Provence? Read Tyler Colman's new book, ``Wine Politics.''

The subtitle alerts you to the myths that Colman, who teaches wine classes at New York University and the University of Chicago, seeks to dispel: ``How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink.''

That's actually a bit more provocative than the book is -- mobsters are few and far between in these pages -- though its solid reporting and historic perspective clearly show that the enjoyment of wine has little to do with how it's made, labeled, distributed and marketed. Wine has been big business since the 19th century, and it gets bigger all the time.

Gallo, still privately held, sold an estimated 75 million cases of wine in 2005, generating revenue of $3 billion, while publicly traded Constellation Brands reported sales of $3.77 billion for the year ended in February. Just the two of them control about one-fifth of the wine sales in the U.S.

Colman focuses on the French and U.S. wine industries, with the last chapters on the globalization of production and distribution: Pernod Ricard owns brands in Australia and New Zealand, and LVMH owns wineries on five continents. He deftly chronicles French wine history, with its chronic booms and busts, and the powerful role of Bordeaux merchants -- many of them English and Dutch -- whose geographic advantage on the Garonne River allowed for swifter, more widespread distribution.

Fake Bordeaux

He also shows how France's national wine regulations, the first in 1905, were established by merchants to combat fraud that made the contents of a bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy a farce of blends from the Languedoc, Sicily, even Algeria.

Colman skips lightly through U.S. wine history, though his assessment of Prohibition and its repeal shows just how hopeless the Noble Experiment was. Bootleggers grew rich, while the wine- grape industry actually flourished because homemade wine was allowed.

By 1932, when the Depression was strangling the U.S. economy, neither political party's platform supported Prohibition. Labor unions lobbied for its repeal because the liquor and wine industry provided much-needed jobs. Repeal came quickly with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Bureau of Sin

Nevertheless, the government continues to classify wine not as an agricultural product but as alcohol, under the control of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whose name reeks of sin, sin and sin. Of course, it's still easier to buy a gun than a bottle of wine in the U.S., and if you're under 21, forget the latter entirely.

Colman also delves into the byzantine ways of those committees that pronounce on the appellations of wines, like France's Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO), whose members (producers, merchants, INAO agents, critics) blind- taste the new wines soon after harvest.

``If the wine fails to meet the criteria of the appellations,'' Colman writes, ``it is `declassified' or downgraded to a vin de table.... However, these tasting committees have become toothless in recent years, as almost all wines pass.''

Which, of course, encourages more fraud and scandal -- for example, in 1973, when the prestigious Cruse firm labeled non- Bordeaux wines as Bordeaux, precipitating a drop in prices nationwide that didn't recover until the early 1980s.

Naughty Ad

Colman has some fun with French advertising restrictions, printing two ads showing the same pretty woman holding a glass and smiling. The photo with her hair slightly over one sultry eye, her lips barely parted, was rejected under the anti-alcohol Evin Law; the one with a bright smile was approved. Oh, and the woman had to be in the trade -- winemaker Catherine Gachet; no mere models need apply.

One can only shake one's head over goofy U.S. laws like Utah's, which requires citizens to buy their wine and spirits only from one of 36 state-run stores; Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board is among the biggest wholesalers and retailers of wine in the country, generating $1.5 billion in sales and a $350 million profit.

Colman shows how the industry is increasingly driven by environmental issues such as sustainable agriculture, water availability and the effect of global warming on vineyards around the world.

He also looks at the critics, principally Robert M. Parker Jr., whose numerical ratings can send a winery's sales soaring or dropping the day they are published. Colman believes that Parker's influence may be waning, though, as he slows down and delegates the ratings of many regions to associates.

That Colman can contain so much history, data and anecdotes in a highly readable 144 pages of actual text is to say it is free from padding, despite evidence that some chapters started out as a dissertation.

If the book is a little short on juicy stories, rum runners and crooked pols, it goes a long way to dismiss the silliness of advertising and the emptiness of so much wine writing.

``Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink'' is published by University of California Press (208 pages, $27.50).

(John Mariani writes on wine for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: John Mariani at john@johnmariani.com.

Last Updated: July 28, 2008 00:01 EDT