Wine on the Web - Rapid Appraisal of Web Sites by Wineries and Wine Merchants from Australia, California, and Germany

摘要

Wine is a marker crop of globalization. When the Romans "globalized" the ancient World they spread their language, laws, their virtues and their vices all across the Mediterranean and west-em Europe. Drinking wine was one of the Roman vices and, fortunately for Germany, the Romans brought viticulture to where they settled and built bases. When the British colonized some parts of Asia and all of Australia they "globalized" many crops when they brought tea to India, coffee to Africa and wine to Australia. In California wine marked the arrival of a new era after the inclusion of the state into the United States in 1850. Here Agoston Haraszthy planted the first large vineyard with grape vines imported from Europe in Sonoma Valley in 1856. We are now experiencing another wave of globalization whose core technology is the Internet. Again, wine is riding the tide and the wine industries of the wired countries are among the first of the agricultural industries that are beginning to be transformed by the Internet. Early signs of the transformation abound. For example, wine makers in Germany who may not have changed the style of their labels for decades, suddenly add email addresses to their catalogs and promotional brochures. Also, some have built web sites where they tell the story of their vineyards, cellars, and wines, and where they proudly show pictures of their property and family.