Scholar of Modern Wine History™

October 5th to November 30th, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. No Class on November 9th.

Scholar of Modern Wine History™ is an advanced, eight-week program examining how wine became what we now recognize as modern wine—a global system shaped by trade, religion, law, technology, and culture.

1. Bordeaux, Port & Sherry: How Merchants Built the Modern Wine Trade
Merchant houses, contracts, credit, blending, fortification, shipping, export markets, and the birth of wine as a commercial system.

2. Champagne, Chianti & the Fight for the Name: How Wine Became Law
Appellations, protected names, fraud control, classification, regional identity, and the state as arbiter of authenticity.

3. Phylloxera and the Lost Vineyards of Europe: How a Bug Rebuilt Wine From the Roots Up
The death of the old vineyard, American rootstocks, grafting, nurseries, research stations, and the invention of scientific viticulture.

4. Rheingau, California & the Clean-Wine Revolution: How Science Changed the Taste of Wine
Refractometers, filtration, stainless steel, cultured yeast, lab analysis, temperature control, and the rise of technical enology.

5. Marlborough, Mendoza & the Global Shelf: How Wine Became a Worldwide Brand
Varietal labeling, export markets, supermarkets, importers, brand identity, affordable consistency, and the postwar globalization of wine.

6. Burgundy, Barolo & the 100-Point Scale: How Wine Became Prestige
Historical vineyard hierarchy, classifications, critics, scores, auctions, scarcity, cult wines, and wine as luxury capital.

7. Beaujolais, Jura & the Natural Wine Revolt: How Wine Rebels Rewrite the Rules
Grower resistance, anti-industrial farming, organic and biodynamic movements, low-intervention wine, consumer rebellion, and authenticity as counterpower.

8. The Future of Wine
Climate change, declining consumption, new regions, new beverages, DTC, data, AI, and the breakdown of postwar wine assumptions.

The Origin of Modern Bordeaux

The Birth of Napa Valley

Rather than presenting wine history as a sequence of regions or styles, this course follows the forces that permanently reshaped wine across time. Each class focuses on a historical pressure—commerce, faith, land ownership, regulation, science, globalization—and traces how wine responded, adapted, and hardened into the structures we still rely on today.

Students will explore why certain grapes dominate global vineyards, why specific regions continue to define quality and prestige, why oak, blending, and aging matter culturally as much as technically, and why modern wine education, classification, and pricing look the way they do. The goal is not nostalgia or romantic storytelling, but clarity: to understand how wine evolved from a local agricultural product into a regulated, branded, and institutionalized system.

Each session includes a guided tasting  selected to reinforce historical shifts rather than sensory mechanics. Tastings are used to illustrate consequence—how history shaped style, structure, and expectation—rather than to analyze flavor causality.

Course Structure (Eight Weeks)

Across eight classes, students will examine:

• Wine’s transformation into a traded commodity under empire and long-distance commerce

• The role of religion in preserving wine through political collapse

• The emergence of land, ownership, and reputation before modern terroir theory

• The deliberate design of wine through technology, aging, and fortification

• The rise of regulation in response to crisis, fraud, and national identity

• The shift from tradition to technical authority in the modern era

• Globalization, critics, and the convergence of international styles

• Contemporary reactions that challenge—and redefine—the historical rulebook

By the end of the program, students will understand not just what modern wine is, but why it exists in its current form, and which historical decisions continue to shape production, education, and perception today.

Advanced Placement Course

Scholar of Wine History™ is designed for advanced students and functions as a core intellectual component of both the Advanced Sommelier Program and the Master Program in Wine. It is intended for students seeking a deeper, more structured understanding of wine’s historical foundations—one that connects past decisions to present realities with rigor and coherence.

This course provides the historical framework necessary to contextualize modern wine knowledge, offering students a unified narrative that explains how centuries of cultural, economic, and institutional forces brought us to where we are now.