The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000-1500, Susan Rose, (Continuum, London and New York, 2011) xviii, 197pp., hardback, £65.00 ISBN 978 0 8264 2584 3

This book explains both how and why wine became so widely traded but also its importance in medieval life.  The revenue from the charges and taxes on wine was often of great importance to a government and the fortune of a regime reflected in the wine trade.  The skills of vine growing and wine making at an early date spread into Europe from the Near East and became part of the fabric of life among all the peoples living on the shores of the Mediterranean.  Cato the Elder discussed the subject as early as 160 B.C. Viticulure was of course most ful1y developed and documented in France and French wines were commonly imported in England, along with Rhenish wine from the Rhine and Moselle regions and sweet wines from Italy, the Iberian peninsula and eastern Mediterranean.  Susan Rose writes lucidly also of the routes used for the transport of wine and the part wine played in food, drink and medicine in this period.  She also draws attention to the fading of the trade in the early medieval period, and the factors involved.

There are scholarly end-notes and a carefully compiled list of reading to help the reader who wishes to explore further.  The index is perfectly adequate as are the maps and tables supplied.  The photographs used are not sharp enough but there are good reproductions of the woodcuts in Pietro de Crescenti's Libri Commodorum Ruralium of 1492 and his De Avicultara.  It is a valuable study of a subject which will appeal widely but available only at a high price.