Value Struggles is a brilliant account of the ways in which tensions over the valorization of places, nature, and people intersect with power in the wine industry. Illustrated with examples from South Africa and Italy, Stefano Ponte's careful research uncovers the myriad ways in which capitalism's contradictions are reflected in a glass of wine.

Jennifer Clapp, University Professor & Canada Research Chair, University of Waterloo

Stefano Ponte succeeds in the tour de force of making an elusive and almost ineffable question, the value of wine, the luminous revealer of contemporary capitalism. A lesson in state-of-the-art political economy, Value Struggles is informed by extensive field research. It opens up critical understandings of the exploitation of nature and people (by class, race and gender), and unpacks the complex relationship between humanity and its spatial anchoring. A grand cru.

Laurent Thévenot, Directeur d'études honoraire, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris

This outstanding monograph offers a well-developed conceptual tool to decipher capitalism's many contradictions and exploitative tendencies. With three decades of proper wine experience, Stefano Ponte takes us through the intricate contours of wine growing, marketing, and consumption across places, environments, and people. After reading this incredible book, your wine will never taste the same – much better and more reflexive of his 'worlds of valuation'!

Henry Yeung, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

With deep empirical insight and theoretical rigor, Value Struggles reveals how wine value chains expose the power asymmetries of contemporary capitalism. This book is a powerful examination of the moral and economic tensions at the heart of global capitalism. A must-read for anyone interested in inequality, sustainability, and the politics of taste.

Filippo Barbera, Professor of Economic Sociology, University of Torino and Fellow, Collegio Carlo Alberto

This fascinating book examines wine from a holistic perspective. It combines analysis of the commercial dynamics of wine global value chains (focusing on South Africa and Italy) and the art of wine making. It investigates power imbalances across a range of stakeholders and explores how value struggles are shaped by place, nature and people. Value Struggles highlights class, race and gender – so often neglected or ignored in the literature – as central dimensions in how contradictory pressures and embedded inequalities play out across fragmented wine value chains. A highly recommended and insightful read.

Stephanie Barrientos, Emeritus Professor, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

If you're interested in the global economy of wine – how it is produced by people and nature, how value is unevenly captured among firms, how valuations of 'fine wines' are constructed, and the conflicts over each of these – then Value Struggles is for you. Stefano Ponte brings together years of careful research in Italy and South Africa to trace relations of race, class and gender in the reproduction of enduring inequalities in and through wine value chains, ultimately providing novel insights into how we think about capitalism.

Liam Campling, Professor of International Business and Development, Queen Mary University of London