Wine with Meg + Mel
Wine with Meg + Mel
Mel Gilcrist, Meg Brodtmann
Wine History: Wine & War
22 minutes Posted Aug 27, 2026 at 7:00 pm.
Welcome And Why War Matters
Intoxicants As Tools Of War
World War I Wine Rations
World War II Looting And Hiding
Australia, Fortified Wine, And Land Grants
Wine Fraud, Plonk Origins, And Wrap
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Send us Fan Mail We follow the trail of wine and war across the 20th century and it gets stranger, darker, and more human than most wine trivia ever admits. We talk through why the French state treated wine as a cultural and strategic necessity in World War I, including the famous daily ration that grows over time. From there, we look at what war does to vineyards in practical terms: destroyed vines, shortages of copper and sulphur for sprays, labour gaps filled by women and children, and th...