On the Guardian (UK) Best Books on Drink list of 2017 Humans have had a complicated history with wine for thousands of years. It has been a banal item in the daily diet and treated as a liquid treasure. It has been venerated as a gift from the gods and cursed as threat to social order. It has been considered healthy to drink as well as hazardous to health. In 9000 Years of Wine , Rod Phillips surveys this long story and places wine in the broad sweep of history. He shows how it has been linked to big social, cultural, and economic swings, how it has been caught up in wars and revolutions, and how it has had an impact on the lives of men and women for millennia.