Creating Chianti: Bettino Ricasoli and the Development of Italian Wine Culture, 1850–2000

Italy is a country with an age-old tradition of wine drinking that can be traced to the Romans, when the country belonged to the Mediterranean area characterized by wine consumption, as opposed to the area of Northern Europe, which was instead characterized by beer consumption. At the time of unification, in 1861, drinking of table wine was widespread throughout the country across all social ranks (around 90 litres a year per capita, with peaks in excess of 100) and, among the lower classes, was seen as a male consumption practice. Nonetheless, there was no market in the modern sense, namely there were no brands that were also known internationally.

Bettino Ricasoli was the first to produce a wine that would become well known, "Chianti",  and to build a brand for this product that would be able to compete with the monopoly held by the fine French wines. His was an operation driven by both business and patriotic motives, given the political commitment of the baron from Florence whose aim was to extend Italy's own strong identity to the field of food and wine culture. Within the space of twenty years, his efforts were rewarded with the creation of a highly successful brand.

The paper examines the subsequent fortunes of the Ricasoli wine estate through to the present day (including its being a forerunner in dealing with the challenges of globalization) and looks into the characteristics of today's Italian wine market. In addition to quantitative data, it analyses the specific features of Italian winemaking (characterized by small-scale and geographically very diverse businesses). Lastly, it analyses the change in consumers, where gender is no longer the main distinguishing trait and where values linked to Italy's identity instead prevail, especially the value of wine as an integral part of the country's material culture.