The wine industry is an extremely traditional and fragmented industry. The main wine-producing nations are France and Italy and despite newer wines being produced in the USA and Australia, the European wines continue to be considered the best wines by wine lovers. These wine lovers are extremely anti-branding. People who know their wines prefer the ones which are not very well known and once they become better known, they are no longer interested in those wines. This makes branding extremely difficult.
There are also other problems with branding in the wine industry. Branding essentially means developing product that can be guaranteed to have the same quality at all times. Since wine is made from grapes whose quality can be affected by a number of factors including weather disease etc., it is not possible to maintain a consistent quality year after year. The only way to maintain the quality of wine and hence to brand it is to prepare blended wines. While blended wines may work for first-time drinkers and those who do not know much about wines, wine lovers prefer pure vintage wines from select wineries. This makes branding of wine even more difficult.
Globalization of any industry is only possible when it is branded and the same brand is available all over the globe with essentially the same quality. As mentioned above, this had been nearly impossible until now. However, in the last few decades, there has been some major changes wine industry. There are better techniques and more scientific wine making practices developed in the last few years, which make it easier to grow a good crop every year and thus make it easier to make wine of a consistent quality. This helps maintain the consistency of the wine year in year and hence overcomes one of the obstacles to globalizing the wine industry.
Also, wine is no longer a drink of the elite and more and more first-timers from the non-traditional markets, who do not have much knowledge about wines, are drinking it. This means that the wine lovers and connoisseurs, who had an anti-branding mentality are now in the minority as more commoners are tasting the drink. This makes it easier to market and sell blended product, making it easier to brand wine. And once it has been branded, it can be easily globalized.