Can I read Quality: Wine and Alcoholism in the Age of Mature Socialism on EtoBox?

Quality: Wine and Alcoholism in the Age of Mature Socialism by Stephen V. Bittner is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Quality: Wine and Alcoholism in the Age of Mature Socialism about?

The final chapter traces the emergence of a Soviet culture of connoisseurship in the 1970s and 1980s. It highlights efforts by Soviet vintners to improve the quality of their wines and to ween consumers from so-called bormotukha, low-quality wines sweetened with beet sugar and strengthened with grain alcohol that comprised the vast majority of Soviet production. Vintners were motivated by concerns that alcoholism was becoming a principal threat to public health, and that bormotukha, which often had an alcohol content as high as 19%, was contributing to the epidemic. The solution, in their view, was to encourage Soviet consumers to purchase conventional dry wine, which they presented in the press as a more cultured and refined drink than vodka and bormotukha.

Author

Stephen V. Bittner

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published

2021

Language

EN