A history of Italian wine : culture economics and environment in the nineteenth through twenty first centuries This book analyzes the evolution of Italian viticulture and winemaking from the 1860s to the new Millennium. During this period the Italian wine sector experienced a profound modernization renovating itself and adapting its products to international trends progressively building the current excellent reputation of Italian wine in the world market. Using unpublished sources and a vast bibliography authors highlight the main factors favoring this evolution: public institutional support to viticulture; the birth and the growth of Italian wine entrepreneurship; the improvement in quality of the winemaking processes; the increasing relevance of viticulture and winemaking in Italian agricultural production and export; and the emergence of wine as a cultural product.