(Manfred Klimek / photo: Federal Archives, animation: runwayml)
1 May is a day when we talk about the working class. And about work – the manual kind, the sort that requires the use of one’s hands. About production, about classes, about the circumstances that force people into certain roles – or enable them to break free from them. And it is a good day to remember that, for a very long time, wine was not a cultural artefact of subtle distinctions, but an integral part of that material everyday culture which, viewed from a distance today, one would describe as pre-modern.
As recently as fifty years ago, wine was the drink of the working and peasant classes across much of southern Europe. Not a luxury, not imbued with symbolic significance, but a functional matter of course. More than eighty per cent of the wines produced were simple, easy-drinking local plonk – often rustic, rarely flawless, but drinkable, nourishing and a natural accompaniment to meals. They were served at both lunch and dinner, diluted with water, and formed part of a diet shaped less by hedonism than by necessity. Here, wine was not a marker of status, but a source of calories, a liquid, a ritual.
This practice was driven not by aesthetics but by economics. It was an expression of an agrarian way of life in which production and consumption were scarcely distinguishable. The winegrower and his workers drank their own wine; the labourers drank that from the region. There was no elaborate semantics of taste, no elaborate hierarchy of vineyards, vintages or ageing methods. What mattered was availability.
With the transition to a late-modern society, this structure changed fundamentally. The emerging new middle class – economically empowered, culturally searching – began to adapt this way of life. Not out of necessity, but by choice. Wine, previously mostly a mere commodity, became an object of reflection. Quality was discovered, differentiated and systematised. And with it came distinction.
What Pierre Bourdieu described as symbolic capital could be observed in wine in a particularly striking way. The choice of wine became a marker of social affiliation. Origin, grape variety, ageing – everything took on significance. Simple table wine disappeared from the better-off households, replaced by more complex, ‘higher-quality’ wines that were not merely drunk but discussed. Wine became a subject of discourse.
This phase has shaped modern viticulture. It has enabled innovation, established a focus on quality, and put regions on the map. But it has always been exclusive, too. And, in this form, it is over.
The working class, insofar as it still exists in its traditional form, now hardly drinks any alcohol as part of its daily working life. Labour law regulations, health and safety rules, and a heightened awareness of risks – all of this has banished wine from production processes. What used to be part of the daily routine is now excluded from it.
Added to this is a demographic shift that is rarely discussed openly. A significant proportion of today’s working class in many European countries consists of people from Muslim backgrounds. For them, alcohol is not a culturally ingrained part of everyday life, but rather a substance that is often deliberately avoided. Here, wine is losing not only its function but also its appeal.
At the same time, the bourgeois model of distinction is eroding. The grand narratives of superior wine, of exclusive enjoyment, and of the connoisseur’s cultural capital have lost their persuasive power. Not because there are no longer any great wines, but because the social function they once fulfilled has become fragile. Consumption has become more diverse, fragmented and de-ideologised.
And yet it would be premature to declare this the swan song. For wine has already survived a transformation that was just as radical as the current one. From an everyday drink for workers and farmers to a cultural asset of the middle classes – this was no linear process, but a rupture. Its success was due not least to wine’s ability to recode itself, to take on new meanings without losing its material basis.
Today, it stands once again at such a juncture. The market is shrinking in certain segments, habits are changing, and social conditions are shifting. But the fundamental quality of wine – its ability to condense place, time and labour into a form that can be experienced directly – remains intact.
It may well be that wine will be consumed less in future. Perhaps – indeed, probably – its role will change once again. But history suggests that it will not disappear. It is too deeply rooted in Europe’s cultural, economic and symbolic structures.
1 May serves as a reminder that all these structures are based on labour. Wine, too. And perhaps that is precisely where its most enduring form of significance lies.