How Today’s Tariffs Echo the Long, Strange History of Alcohol and Politics

If you’re having trouble following the news about U.S. tariffs on wine, beer, and spirits from Europe, count yourself in good company: On MSNBC this week, University of Michigan economics professor and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics Justin Wolfers called the on-again, off-again tariffs “crazy math.”

At press time, the EU still has a hold on its plans to unleash reciprocal actions against U.S. imports, though the bloc has published a white paper naming the various American import categories that could be targeted with tariffs if a political solution isn’t found soon. The 218-page list dedicates more than four pages to U.S. drinks, including beer, non-alcoholic beer, wine, sparkling wine, cider, perry, alcoholic bitters, bourbon, rum, brandy, vodka, gin, arrack, liqueurs, and cordials, as well as “denatured ethyl alcohol and other spirits of any strength.”

In addition to the ongoing situation with the EU, newspapers have highlighted the removal of almost all American drinks from store shelves in Canada, while the American Association of Wine Economists has noted a 72.5 percent drop in sales of U.S. wine in what has long been our country’s largest export market.

The information onslaught can be overwhelming, and it’s definitely not making it any easier to find a bottle of Chartreuse. But history provides some context for understanding current events. Charles Ludington, professor of history and food studies most recently at New York University, consultant, and author of “The Politics of Wine in Britain,” compares today’s situation to initially English (and subsequently British) taxes on French wine in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

“Starting in 1678, there was a series of tax wars, tit for tat, and then actual wars,” he says. The logic behind those trade wars involved protectionism and mercantilism, just like the thinking behind current U.S. tariffs on drinks and other products from the EU. “This is very much similar to what’s going on in Trump’s mind, that is, the whole ‘balance of trade’ idea.”

Other examples can be found throughout history. For centuries, governments around the globe have focused international relations, diplomacy, and even military action on wine, beer, and spirits — often with surprising results further down the line.

Champagne and Sovereignty

Alcohol’s biggest role in international politics might have been in the Treaty of Versailles, which brought a formal end to World War I when it was signed in 1919. In addition to standard peace-treaty issues like reparations, disarmament, and territorial concessions, sections 274 and 275 of that document contain what the Germans called the “Champagnerparagraph,” which effectively ended the use of the name Champagne for sparkling wines not produced in the Champagne region of France.

Kolleen Guy, professor of history at Duke Kunshan University in China and author of “When Champagne Became French,” says the treaty showed how France could use laws and diplomacy to reclaim cultural and economic sovereignty through wine. It also papered over a heated debate within France about who could make Champagne, and with what grapes, by turning the whole thing into an international issue.

“Right before the First World War, the peasants in the contested regions of Champagne rise up and have riots in which they attack the wine houses and break bottles,” she says. After the treaty, the scope of the domestic debate changed. “What it did is it took the conversation outside of France. They erased an internal conflict, essentially.”

“If you want to look at the tariffs and what’s going on right now, we’ve had a massive convulsion in the market during Covid. I don’t think any of us want to think about it in that way, but it disrupted markets.”

Though that issue happened close to home, mixing alcohol and international politics can sometimes have effects far away, in ways that aren’t seen for decades. A century or so ago, the Japanese and German empires set up breweries in occupied China, a few of which — like Tsingtao — are still functioning today. Brian Alberts, a freelance historian, writer, and consultant, notes that one small, regional brewery from the once-Dutch and then British colony of South Africa gave birth to a mega-corporation of the 21st century.

“It led to one of the largest breweries in the history of breweries — South African Breweries — becoming incredibly powerful,” he says.

Other effects are more immediate. Ludington notes that the tit-for-tat tariffs on French wine and British fabric in the late 16th and early 17th centuries had an unexpected effect of quickly increasing the number of wines that were being exported from Portugal, leading to new versions that were more stable and better suited for shipping to England, creating what we now know as port wine. A second change happened in Bordeaux: With high tariffs on their wines, French winemakers were forced to improve their products.

“So that shoots the quality of Bordeaux wine higher, so that they are making a wine that’s worth the while for English consumers to pay those taxes,” he says. “All of this time, wine is a political football.”

Even recent history is rife with examples of wine, spirits, and beer being used as a plaything in international politics. Dorota Dias-Lewandowska, an anthropologist and historian at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, cites the contested origin of vodka by both Russia and Poland, which led to international arbitration over that claim between the Polish People’s Republic and the U.S.S.R. in 1977. More recently, she says, fallout from the 2014 Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine spurred a popular political movement in support of Polish cider.

“There was also an economic war, as Putin banned Polish apples,” she says. “Russia was one of our biggest clients for Polish apples. So there was this whole campaign in Poland: Drink cider to get Putin.”

Why Alcohol Gets Politicized

It’s easy to see alcohol’s popularity as one reason why it might be targeted in international diplomacy. Another can be a connection to a region of origin. When the EU was responding to U.S. tariffs during the first Trump administration, it was reported that the bloc chose bourbon to get the attention of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Jeffrey Pilcher, professor of history at the University of Toronto and author of “Food in World History,” cites the role of German national identity during the Nazi takeover of the Czech brewery Pilsner Urquell after it was accused of being a “Jewish” business.

“Food and drink is central to our identities,” he says. “Especially in Germany, where beer is considered to be bread, the staff of life, the center of nutrition, but also of identity, of sociability. That plays into Nazi ideology, but more broadly into the notions of ‘We are what we eat and drink.’”

One aspect of modern “gastrodiplomacy,” he says, involves countries fighting over who originated, and thus who “owns” iconic food and drink products, like vodka in Eastern Europe or pisco in South America.

For Dias-Lewandowska, alcohol is often about control, both for consumers and for states. Drinkers exert control when they choose to drink, and subsequently give up control in the form of intoxication, she says, while governments often use alcohol policies in an attempt to control the masses.

“I think it contributes to lasting tensions between Old World and New World producers, because the Old World producers for so long controlled the language of the debate.”

That seems to happen more often in certain eras. Guy says many examples of the politicization of alcohol have happened after big upheavals like the First World War and World War II. That’s arguably the case now.

“What you’re looking at is moments of convulsions in the market,” she says. “If you want to look at the tariffs and what’s going on right now, we’ve had a massive convulsion in the market during Covid. I don’t think any of us want to think about it in that way, but it disrupted markets. It created huge turmoil and had a psychological effect.”

A Lasting Influence

Some of the effects of alcohol and politics can last for years, and a few are apparently shaping the way we think — and drink — today.

“In some ways, the French don’t have to do the work of promoting their own ideas about wine anymore, because every time the rest of the world tries to echo it, even if they echo it badly, they are elevating the French to the center of the conversation,” Guy says.

A case in point? The word terroir, which originally and primarily just means “region” in French, but which is imbued with vague and even quasi-mystical notions when used as a wine term in English and other languages today. That cedes control over the discourse.

“Every time you try to talk about a South African terroir, the French will say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t think you really understand what that means,’” Guy says.

In addition to promoting France’s interests immediately after World War I, the Champagne sections in the Treaty of Versailles had a broader effect, effectively launching the movement toward protected geographic terms like Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in Europe. Today, those terms are used around the world in ways that often benefit the regions that first came up with them, potentially adding more fuel to the fires behind our current trade wars.

“I think it contributes to lasting tensions between Old World and New World producers, because the Old World producers for so long controlled the language of the debate,” Guy says. “They set the terms of what’s going to be protected, what things are going to be called, and what language is going to be used. I know Americans pooh-pooh this a lot, but it’s got all kinds of very real economic implications.”

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