I suppose this is a better question for /r/asksnobs, but I was just watching a video on 100-year-old aged cheese, and the first thing that popped into my mind was "wait, the first world war ended about a hundred years ago." Did the World Wars influence the production of long scale, time related goods like luxury cheeses and wines? Did farms particularly redirect a large amount of their resources to supporting the war efforts that we had a shock in the cheese market a hundred years later, or was this sort of production so negligible to the overall output of the farms, that there wasn't a change in the quantity produced.
Edit: please forgive the typo in the title
In short, yes, and there are two caveats that should be mentioned. The first, is that a more complete question would specify a certain winemaking region, and can almost entirely be answered by asking if any significant fighting took place in that region. To use a well-known example, both for its wines and its wartime occurrences, we will use Champagne and its 1914 vintage. The second caveat is that 100-year wines are already in short supply, whether or not they were bottled amidst conflict, and whether or not their scarcity is due to popular demand or to low production volume. For context, most 1914 Champagnes commonly sell for upwards of $4,000, and notable ones will at least double that. Champagne Bollinger auctioned a 1914 at $12,250 in 2016 (the bastard in question), Sotheby’s sold a 1914 Moët & Chandon (the makers of Dom Perignon) a few years ago for $8,000, and a 1915 Krug sold in 2015 for $116,000. So the existing scarcity of these wines is only added to by the impact of the war.
Regarding that impact, Champagne suffered immensely across the duration of the war, often under indiscriminate German shelling, as its location in the North-East of France landed it squarely in the Western Front. By war’s end, between 40-50% of the vineyards in the region had been destroyed, many of them prior to the 1914 harvest. Thus, for some centenarian-plus wineries in France there simply is no vintage for those wartime years. Many never reopened at all, their owners and winemakers having either evacuated without return, or been wiped out entirely.
For some perspective, over 94,000 French soldiers were killed in the Battle of Champagne, and there were many battles like it and near it, such as the First Battle of the Marne, where 80,000 Frenchmen were killed in a week’s time in 1914. Épernay, in Marne, was wrenched out of German hands barely a week before that year’s harvest. The town’s mayor at the time was Maurice Pol Roger, a famous chef de Cave (winemaker) of Champagne Pol Roger (more on this later), so we can be quite sure that his 1914 vintage was affected. Due to virtually all French banks in the region having closed as soon as German troops entered the country, many townships began printing their own emergency banknotes. Here is one printed in Épernay, bearing Monsieur Pol Roger’s signature.
https://i.imgur.com/Dyp2vXt.jpg
Add to all this the further economic shock of 345,000 dead French civilians by war’s end (Champagne’s WWI vintages are famously known to have been made mostly by women and children), and we can be pretty certain that virtually all were affected in some volumetric capacity by the war, though obviously to very different degrees. Of those spared destruction or interference in the first year, many would have had some or all their young 1914 vintage destroyed later, possibly along with their vineyards and cellars. So, whether in production or in surviving stock, certainly all wartime Champagnes were affected.
For example, take André Ruinart, of Champagne Ruinart, who, after the near-total destruction of his hometown Reims, continued his business from the extensive and relatively untouched caverns and cellars under the city (generally referred to as crayères) for the next few years. Monsieur Ruinart even worked from a make-shift wooden raft, after a shell breached a damn and flooded the cavern his office was situated in.
A notable 1914 Champagne is that of the earlier-mentioned Maurice Pol Roger, the remaining stores of which were acquired by none other than Sir Winston Churchill, for a 1944 liberation party at the newly reopened British Embassy in Paris. Churchill’s favorite Champagne was Pol Roger’s celebrated 1928 vintage, which to date is the only Champagne ever to be awarded 100 points by the award-winning Champagne connoisseur and writer Richard Juhlin. Churchill was sat beside Madame Odette Pol Roger at dinner during this party, and the two became lifelong friends, the Madame sending the Prime Minister a bottle of his treasured 1928 annually, for his birthday, up until the last stock was sold in 1952. This is a fitting example of what I mentioned earlier regarding the rarity of any vintage reaching the 100-year mark in substantial stock. A 1914 Pol Roger can be yours for around $13,000 these days, if you wish to follow in the Prime Minister’s steps, though you probably will not be able to afford enough to match his indulgence that night.
There was also, as is always the case, some amount of phylloxera in Champagne at the time, but to my knowledge it is not recorded as extraordinary prior to the war. After the loss in hands and supplies, though, it ravaged much of the remaining vines. Ironically, the relatively untouched-by-war German vineyards suffered severe phylloxera infestations during the early 20th century and through both world wars, and some 100+ year German vintages are even scarcer than those from Champagne for this cause. The primary chemical compound used to fight the pest includes sulfur, and sulfur was rationed in France during the war, as it is a vital chemical component of many wartime productions, but I have not seen it mentioned that this rationing significantly affected winemakers.
A good source of further reading on this is Don Kladstrup’s Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times.
Follow up question - how drinkable is 100 year old wine? Are these ever bought to be drunk?