Tasting and Judging the Unknown Terroir of the Bulgarian Wine: The Political Economy of Sensory Experience (original) (raw)
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Wine Magic: Consumer Culture, Tourism, and Terroir
Journal of Anthropological Research, 2018
This article explores strangeness-familiarity relations in the context of global wine consumer culture. While observing wine as a deeply familiar foodstuff and consumer commodity that is part of their quotidian life-worlds, wine consumers equally emphasize the particularity, hence implicit separation and distance with symbolically elevated wine production areas and terroirs. Our argument is that wine therefore belongs to a wider class of magical stuff believed to transform the qualities and powers of a specific place of origin into ordinary consumer life contexts. We suggest that the tension between strangeness and familiarity points to the persistence of magic as a wider relational idiom fundamental to modern consumer culture.
Translating Terroir: Geographical Indications and Embodied Narratives of Taste
Terroir, broadly understood as the taste of place, is the unique assemblage of soils, climate, and culture of a particular region, essentialized in food products of that region and resulting in irreproducible tastes (eg. Champagne, Roquefort cheese, Vidalia onions). Explanatory narratives of terroir vary from a direct, biophysical link between the land and the taste of its products to an immaterial, mythical account granting qualities to people and plants from particular places (Gangjee 2014). Nonetheless, through origin labels such as Geographical Indications (GI), terroir may be made legally manifest and protected as intellectual property by a series of international treaties. With little empirical data to suggest that the physical ‘fingerprint’ of terroir is mirrored in the taste of native crops, this collective taste of place is primarily a social phenomenon—terroir products depend on familiarity: a preconceived, international reputation of quality rooted in a place of origin (Joslin 2006). However, familiarity is largely a matter of history, and perhaps paradoxically, many ‘new’ terroir products predate their more celebrated counterparts. Intersecting sensuous ethnographic examples from historic Hungarian wine country with GI policy discourse, this paper explores the ways in which discordant narratives of terroir legitimize the taste of familiar origins. For postsocialist Europe, how might legal and local narratives evoke, inform, and reproduce new worlds of sensory experiences in a market historically created by a western “hegemony of taste” (Jung 2014)? Interfacing Old World expectations with the ‘New Europe’ highlights the dynamic nature of taste through narratives of authenticity and terroir. Josling, T. (2006). The War on Terroir: Geographical Indications as a Transatlantic Trade Conflict. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 57(3),337-363. Ganghjee, D. (2014). Relocating the law of geographical indications. OAIster, Ipswich, MA. Accessed April 1, 2015. Jung, Y. (2014). Tasting and Judging the Unknown Terroir of the Bulgarian Wine: The Political Economy of Sensory Experience, Food and Foodways: History and Culture of Human Nourishment, 22(1/2), 24-47.
The transformation of the Bulgarian wine industry from a state-owned and heavily industrialized enterprise into many privatized wineries and vineyards following the collapse of state socialism involved the question of how to transform an economy of quantity to one of quality. At the heart of this question are contestations around the meanings and values of technology in wine production. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bulgaria among wine producers and stakeholders of the wine industry since 2008, this article discusses the debates and practices in Bulgarian wine production to understand how different attitudes regarding technology and its uses affect the social construction of " quality. " As a marginal wine-producing country with a compelling Cold War history, the Bulgarian case offers an interesting vantage point from which to think about the cultural economy of the globalized food system. I show how Bulgarian wine producers in the postsocialist era grapple with different systems of value and how technology plays a role in their construction. The resulting contestations and tension over technology in constructing meanings of quality show how technologies and systems of value intersect in interesting ways.
Journal of Anthropological Research, 74 (4)., 2018
This article explores strangeness-familiarity relations in the context of global wine consumer culture. While observing wine as a deeply familiar foodstuff and consumer commodity that is part of their quotidian life-worlds, wine consumers equally emphasize the particularity, hence implicit separation and distance with symbolically elevated wine production areas and terroirs. Our argument is that wine therefore belongs to a wider class of magical stuff believed to transform the qualities and powers of a specific place of origin into ordinary consumer life contexts. We suggest that the tension between strangeness and familiarity points to the persistence of magic as a wider rela-tional idiom fundamental to modern consumer culture.
Old categories and new wine geographies. Discussing the creation of value, tradition and identity
Culturales, 2005
Wine production is a cultural, creative, versatile activity, and at the same time, it carries conservative and traditional ideas and classifications that, in some cases, do not fit the dynamism and diversity of the global wine scenery. To achieve a better understanding and with the hope to eventually overcome this complex decalage, this article presents a theoretical discussion of value creation in the context of emerging wine-growing areas. The need to incorporate a socio-anthropological perspective to the study of value is explained, and the limits posed by the reproduction of representation and valorization models based on the classic discourse versions of terroir, tradition, and identity are argued. Given the fact that the worlds of wine (Old/New/Third), are being expanded and transformed, this paper shows that the new wine geographies offer a valuable testing ground for a well-aimed interpretation of the winemaking scenarios of the 21st century.
In an increasingly competitive global market, winemakers are seeking to increase their sales and wine regions to attract tourists. To achieve these aims, there is a trend towards linking wine marketing with identity. Such an approach seeks to distinguish wine products – whether wine or wine tourism – from their competitors, by focusing on cultural and geographical attributes that contribute to the image and experience. In essence, marketing wine and wine regions has become increasingly about telling stories – engaging and provocative stories which engage consumers and tourists and translate into sales. This timely book examines this phenomena and how it is leading to changes in the wine and tourism industries for the first time. It takes a global approach, drawing on research studies from around the world including old and new world wine regions. The volume is divided into three parts. The first – branding – investigates cases where established regions have sought to strengthen their brands or newer regions are striving to create effective emerging brands. The second – heritage – considers cases where there are strong linkages between cultural heritage and wine marketing. The third section – terroir – explores how a ‘sense of place’ is inherent in winescapes and regional identities and is increasingly being used as a distinctive selling proposition. This significant volume showcasing the connections between place, identity, variety and wine will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in tourism, marketing and wine studies.
What Is Local or Global about Wine? An Attempt to Objectivize a Social Construction
Sustainability, 2016
What is a "local" food chain as opposed to a "global" chain? Are local food chains more sustainable than global chains? In the context of market globalization and the proliferation of local alternatives, these questions have taken on a new aspect, which has been addressed by the GLAMUR (Global and Local food chain Assessment: a Multidimensional performance-based approach) project. Using an analysis of three archetypal wine chains in the south of France, and considering food chains as embedded social constructions, we will first attempt to objectivize which aspects of wine are local, and which are global, using a multidimensional analytical approach. As local vs. global characteristics seem to be strategic assets or constraints, and not structural components, we will then outline an evaluative approach to wine chain sustainability by valuing qualitative indicators to be scored and benchmarked by experts. We will discuss our findings from a scientific and operational perspective by highlighting how a local vs. global approach produces new sustainability issues and practical solutions. Nevertheless, as concrete chains often mix global and local characteristics, further research must be done in order to assess how this combination may be sustainable for different types of actors, depending on their values, capacities, networks and constraints.
Wine is not Coca-Cola: marketization and taste in alternative food networks
Agriculture and Human Values, online first
This paper engages with the question: how can the marketisation of ecologically embedded edibles be enabled in alternative food networks? The challenge lies in the fact that ecologically embedded edibles, grown and made through primarily ecological rather than industrial processes, and using artisan, traditional, and quality practices, show variable and uncertain characteristics. The characteristics, or qualities, of ecologically embedded edibles vary both geographically and in time, challenging the creation of stable market networks. How can ecologically embedded wines be sold when there is no certainty about their qualities? In this article I propose that certainty around qualities is not as crucial an element of transactions as some authors suggest, and I draw on the case study of ecologically embedded wines to extract wider lessons of relevance to marketisation of foods and drinks in alternative food networks. I suggest that an understanding of taste not as a fixed and unchangeable quality of people and things, but as a relational and reflexive activity between eaters and edibles, can offer a way of valuing uncertainty around product characteristics. Through a cultivation of a ‘taste for uncertainty’ consumers bodies can become enrolled in supporting artisan, quality, and traditional production through their taste buds. Some pitfalls and limitations of this approach are considered in the conclusion.
Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2019
Wine production from grapes is several millennia old and, no doubt, the language employed to discuss the qualities of wine throughout its manufacture, trade, and consumption has been actively evolving since its inception. The modern wine industry has broken free of its “Old World” confines in a diaspora that hardly leaves any “corner” of the Earth vine- or wine-free. As grape varieties have been developed and translocated, the exponential economic and industrial growth and burgeoning consuming public have not only translated the traditional language of wine but have also invented ways of talking about the sensual and empirical characteristics of wine. This chapter explores the facets of the “semiofoodscape,” the changing landscape of wine culture. We discuss the place of wine production; the role of environmental change in the dialog of wine production and brand distinction; the role of culture in adaptation and mediation of the language of wine; and the use (and perhaps misuse) of terminology and symbolism intended to distinguish products, influence values, entice consumers, and foster the growth, extension, and evolution of wine.