Alder Yarrow, headmaster of the excellent and humorous Vinography wine blog, recently posted a piece on the travesty of wine and social class in America (read it) and it struck home. His basic premise is that wine is associated with the wealthy in America because of our original inability to grow grapes easily. By the time we figured out how to make the fruit flourish, beer and liquor, with plentiful ingredients at hand, had taken over the public's alcohol desires. And of course religion, the Puritans and Prohibition didn't help the matter either.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2009.