An excellent way to comprehend a region's geography is to study its wine. Wine production is inextricably intertwined with the physical, cultural, and economic geography of a region; in essence, to drink a wine is to taste its geography. So widespread is the influence of wine in geography that a review of the geographical literature and an inspection of papers at professional meetings show that most subfields of geography are represented. Up-to-date references are available at the Association of American Geographers’ Wine Specialty Group Web site http://www.geographyofwine.org.

Wine has been a research topic in geography since the ancient Greek and Roman geographers. Historical geographers pinpoint the home of the wine grape, Vitis vinifera, as southwest Asia, and its diffusion and history have been documented in works ...