We have tours of the factory every working day. The world today has some 20 million acres of vineyards. Europe still accounts for over three-quarters of the worlds wine production. Many Eastern countries have considerable vineyards but produce very little. Italian wine-drinking is dwindling almost as fast.
Modern life has no place for the heroic quantities working people used to put away.
Expenditure on wine has risen as consumption has fallen. There was even a fashionable after-dinner game in Athens which consisted of throwing the last few mouthfuls of wine in your cup into the air, to hit a delicately balanced dish on a pole. Smart young things took coaching in the finer points of 'kottabos'. That the wines of different islands of the Aegean were highly prized for their distinct characters is indisputable. Greeks industrialised winegrowing in southern Italy, Etruscans in Tuscany and further north, and Romans followed.