Viniculture and Regional Identity

The implementation of the EU certificates of origin (PDO protection labels) has brought food and drink to the forefront as cultural signifiers in an increasingly globalized and standardized world. Food has become rife with meaning, a symbol of national and cultural identity, something in need of protection and promotion in order to preserve a larger national consciousness. Choosing to eat a slice of Parma ham means something different than simply eating a slice of ham; there are regional associations implicit in those denominations and, in that sense, "the consumption of denominated food and drink may be a statement of taste, fashion, sophistication and other related issues reflecting a specific lifestyle."[1]

Wine, I argue, is even more indicative of lifestyle than food is. Wine connects to tradition and cultural history; it can bring to mind the small artisan wineries nestled in the hills of France or Italy, and is a strong indicator of "the good life." The centuries-old European wine industry--Old World wines--is also being directly impacted by globalization and New World wines, those from the U.S., Australia, and South America. Wine tastes are changing, the industry is becoming increasingly cooperative, and Old World winery sales are falling in a market in which they used to dominate. This makes the fruit of the vine an interesting vehicle with which to examine the debate between globalization and localization/regionalism.

Wine has an established personal connection, particularly in France, to the region in which it's created and the people who produce and consume it. "Wine is more than an object of sensory refinement and vehicle of socialization. It also contains a part of its essence in place identity, landscape, and history."[2] It connects to tradition, through tradition it can connect to a sense of place, and, in the case of the French terroir, wine moves beyond its cultural and historical roots to a much stronger significance.

One needs only to watch a few minutes of Jonathan Nossiter's Mondovino [5] to grasp the importance of terroir to the French vintners. It's easy to see their unwillingness to stray from the upheld notion even though, as Nossiter points out in his film, studies have shown that the soil composition and regional climate is no better in the French wine regions than it is in other winemaking parts of the world; as though to do so would sacrifice what makes the wine special. As Nossiter points out, "when the terroirists speak about wine, one often hears candid reflections about their immediate family, their region, and even their national culture. They are able to embrace a diversity of tastes precisely because they are comfortably rooted in their own particular identity, time, and place."[6]

It's no surprise then that terroirists would be resistant to alter their methods in an effort to keep up with more industrialized New World wines, though it means lowered sales in the face of competition; a point I will return to later. The word terroir, itself, is indicative of the national and cultural significance of the wine because it doesn't translate. Cohen says, "certain words are untranslatable. They lie so close to the soul of a particular country that to render them in another language already seems a kind of treachery."[7] Such is the case with terroir. It immediately creates a sort of community: those who understand it and live by it and those who do not. It stands up to an increasing number of anglicisms, like "flying winemaker," that are popping up in the global wine industry and can, in a way, be viewed as a metaphor for the smaller, traditional, localized wine market of the Old World and the large, transnational cooperative wine market that is part of the New World. Terroir, the word and the concept, serves as an identity, imparting a sense of community and of ownership to those who live by it [8], and evoking its traditions and its past; it goes "hand in hand with a strong localism in French viniculture that comes from winegrowers in a jurisdiction seeing themselves as different from those a bit farther away. [9]

Those things that are evoked by terroir: identity, a connection to tradition and to the environment are extremely valuable to the marketing of food and wine as an expression of culture, which is an essential factor of the "promotion" aspect of the EU certificates of origin. For those looking to affirm their cultural ties to a specific region, or for a region looking to retain its unique qualities in the face of globalization, food and wine become very important commodities. Skuras argues that the commodification of food or wine as an expression or symbol of national culture revalorizes a country or region through its cultural identity [10]. It assigns value to the regional qualities over more efficient, globally standardized products. And if we also look at food and wine as signifiers of individual lifestyle, it could also make the statement that the consumer has personal ties to a particular region, differentiating them from another wine-drinker.

And that warm, fuzzy feeling is something winemakers want to promote and profit from, using property names and label designs with family crests or by invoking classical connections to convey the image of nobility and tradition [11]. "Together with the specific product qualities, regional image factors create a unique identity for the product and in this way bring about added value." It also explains the fervor with which French winemakers are fighting to protect their wines' regional names (i.e. Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux) from global use.