Portland, and the Willamette Valley more generally, have long been lauded as a center of the craft beer revolution. Yet, as Peter Kopp's superb book shows, the beer and hops industry of the valley has much deeper, winding roots. Hoptopia traces the history of hops in the agricultural landscape of the Willamette Valley of Oregon from the nineteenth century to the present day. It does so in writing that is accessible and clear, while it details a complicated array of influences on place. Certainly of interest to scholars such as historians and geographers, the book also will tickle the palate of beer enthusiasts.
Hoptopia offers a different twist on a publishing trend. While the thing-study has become a genre unto itself (with works such as Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World [2008], Stephen Yafa's Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber [2005], and Mark Kurlansky's Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World [1997], among many others), Hoptopia is something a bit different, a history of a place-thing—that is to say, the history of the interactions of a particular thing with a particular place, and the ways that these interactions have both shaped and been shaped by local, regional, and global economic, cultural, and political forces. It isn't about a thing “changing the world,” but rather about the intricate dance between the local and the global, focused on a particular thing, that comes to shape the nature of place.
From the earliest growers of hops in the valley in the early nineteenth century to the craft beer explosion that began in the late twentieth century, Oregon and Pacific Northwest hops have played an outsized role in the development of the American beer industry. The climate and soils of the valley gave rise to a highly productive hops landscape, and by the late nineteenth century, Oregon was exporting hops throughout the world, at one time becoming the country's leading producer. Prohibition, however, threatened to destroy the industry. Ironically, however, while most breweries went under or had to redirect production to near-beer and “medicinal” brews, the hops industry quickly rebounded as they exported hops throughout the world despite the American ban on alcohol. However, in the post–World War II era, the industrialization of hops cultivation, the growing dominance of the blandness (and relative lack of hoppiness) of Big Beer, and the shift of cultivation north to areas less plagued by downy mildew, led to a precipitous decline in hop acreage in the state.
Kopp also examines the role of government and academic researchers in the development of new varieties suited to the Pacific Northwest—most notably, the Cascade variety, noted for its floral and citrusy aromas and bitterness. While providing a crop better suited to the region's environment, the development of these hops in lieu of the previously prized European varieties also had unexpected ramifications for decades to come, as the next major development in the brewing industry—the craft beer explosion—transformed the American beer business. The craft brew revolution, spearheaded by West Coast brewers, foregrounded hoppiness in beer, in part as a direct reaction against the bland homogenization that overwhelmed the big American brewers in the mid-twentieth century. This trend toward growing hoppiness and bitterness has continued and intensified, and (unfortunately, in the view of this reviewer) brought its own form of homogeneity to the craft brewing world in recent years.
As a result of this history of regional hop innovation, the Pacific Northwest, and Portland more specifically, became one of the most important centers of this revolution in American beer. While the volume of Willamette Valley hops did not increase, their diversity and desirability did, as craft brewers often turned to hops from the valley to supply their new brews. Today, the tastes initially developed on the West Coast of the United States are now being exported to the rest of the world, and American brewers are leaders and not slavish followers of European tradition.
The most impressive thing about this book is the way that Kopp interweaves environmental factors, national politics, government research, global tastes, cultural biases, labor and racial history, and a host of other factors into a complex understanding of the presence of hops in Oregon, and the role the crop has played in the region's culture. But the story Kopp tells is not only one of global forces shaping a local economy—the hop economy of the Willamette Valley has also been dramatically shaped by individuals and local companies—the book also notes in particular the effect of individuals such as hop merchants like Ezra Meeker and Emil Clemens Horst or U.S. Department of Agriculture plant geneticist Alfred Haunold, whose research developed many of the strands of hops specifically for the region that have come to characterize many of the unique flavors of American craft beer of the last thirty years.
What does this place-thing approach found in Hoptopia reveal? It shows us how neither the global nor the local have primacy—that in economic and cultural geography no place is an island, but neither is it completely at the whim of forces outside its control. Together, argues Kopp, the hops industry of the Willamette Valley owes its current form to the ongoing interplay between global, national, regional, and local forces and actions, and ultimately has served to establish a unique sense of place in the Willamette Valley. Certainly for readers interested in hops or history, the book satisfies. But equally, for readers interested in a detailed understanding of place and its creation, Hoptopia does not disappoint.
