The Fourth of July holiday is in the books for 2008 and hopefully as a country we have many more days of independence ahead. It is a national holiday singular to the US but the concept is one shared among the nations of the earth. All it takes is a quick perusal of a list of Independence Day holidays to see the diversity of nations represented and the vast array of countries independence is claimed from. Although, truth be told, England and France show up a lot on the "declared freedom from" list with Spain pulling a nice third. Spain, inadvertently I imagine, gave us an additional day of independence to celebrate in the US as Cinco de Mayo has become a day of celebration north of the border - which probably confuses Mexicans who know their independence day is actually September 16th.

But I digress, our national day of independence started me thinking about the nationality of wines in the world and how many of them have had to declare independence from a myriad of overlords – some of their own making. The journey of American wine is one of the more interesting vinous stories starting hundreds of years ago, stymied by prohibition, settling into mediocrity only to rise up to challenge the great wines of the world. A book of great depth on the subject – among many great books - is Thomas Pinney's A History of Wine in America, Volume 2: From Prohibition to the Present and its online partner A History of Wine in America, Volume 1, From the Beginnings to Prohibition. In these pages you can see American wine throw off the self damaging laws and regulations of the land as well as the shadow of French wine.

Other wine making countries have gone through similar transformations – Spain and Portugal declaring freedom from years of neglect, the Italians shedding their reputation as bulk producers and the French overcoming, well, the French – and the result is the world now has the widest diversity of great wines at all price points than has ever been available.

There are battles still to be fought. We need to protect this diversity by patronizing the different, the artisanal and the expressive to ward off a wholesale movement to commoditization of wine. We need to be evangelical in our belief that wine is food and there is a time and a place for all, and of course we need to slay the aura of pretentiousness that hangs around the enjoyment and sharing of wine.

But the tide is in our favor so I don’t feel it is premature to yell vinum libertas from the barricades.

Robert Scibelli is a lecturer and administrator at New York’s premier wine school, International Wine Center.