Wine and Culture

Vineyard to Glass

Rachel E. Black, Robert C. Ulin, Rachel E. Black, Robert C. Ulin

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Jahr: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857854209
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Sociology

Wine is one of the most celebrated and appreciated commodities around the world. Wine writers and scientists tell us much about varieties of wines, winegrowing estates, the commercial value and the biochemistry of wine, but seldom address the cultural, social, and historical conditions through which wine is produced and represented. This path-breaking collection of essays by leading anthropologists looks not only at the product but also beyond this to disclose important social and cultural issues that inform the production and consumption of wine. The authors show that wine offers a window onto a variety of cultural, social, political and economic issues throughout the world. The global scope of these essays demonstrates the ways in which wine changes as an object of study, commodity and symbol in different geographical and cultural contexts. This book is unique in covering the latest ethnography, theoretical and ethnohistorical research on wine throughout the globe. Four central themes emerge in this collection: terroir; power and place; commodification and politics; and technology and nature. The essays in each section offer broad frameworks for looking at current research with wine at the core.

SECTION TWO

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Relationships of Power and the Construction of Place

RACHEL E. BLACK AND ROBERT C. ULIN

The introduction of local products to global marketplaces has in many cases displaced and reshaped the local meanings and values of these products—this is particularly true for wine. In some cases, wine starts off as a local product produced by individuals for personal consumption and small-scale trade. Historically for agricultural workers, wine represented an important source of calories and was part of their daily sustenance. The introduction of small-scale wine production to larger markets changes the social dynamics of wine as it moves from being a part of daily alimentation to becoming a commodity for trade. Once just another agricultural crop, wine can become a lucrative cash crop. In these cases, growers become specialized and they often gain prestige within their communities because of their new economic standing. In many cases, wine then becomes dislocated from daily life and local cultural practice. Local people no longer drink local wine with their meals, as it is too expensive for everyday consumption. Vineyard lands are valuable, and locals often sell out to larger interests and outside investors. This leads to the dislocation of local cultural practices. In other cases, wine may have long been a lucrative agricultural product. This is the case of Bordeaux, an area with a long history of growing wine for rich export markets. In this case, the presence of foreign capital has had a long-standing influence in the construction and reproduction of local social hierarchies (Ulin 1996). Producers of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines have been careful to protect their economic interests by creating complex systems that carefully delineate the place of production and production methods (Demossier 2011). As the importance of premier cru wines continues to grow thanks to new markets in China, producers and importers continue to promote not only the prestige but also the authenticity of these wines. Both prestige and authenticity have become deeply embedded in the concept of place. In each of these cases, the value produced through exchange transforms wine into a commodity with a social life shaped by politics (Appadurai 1986, 3). More specifically, the politics of place play an important role in shaping the value of wine.

Building on the focus on place in the previous section on terroir, this section looks more specifically at the relationships of power embedded in wine production, consumption, and regulation. Debates about terroir underline the importance of place and the power it holds. As Marion Demossier has pointed out, labor can be reproduced, but the unique qualities of place hold a potentially exclusive value (2011). In this sense, how space is delimited becomes very important for drawing lines of power; this also tells us a great deal about who is included and who is excluded from production areas and where certain groups sit in the hierarchy of power created through this process of exclusivity. Erica Farmer’s exploration of the history and laws that make up the AOC in France looks at how these regulations create exclusivity through the process of defining place. At the same time, Farmer argues that the cahiers des charges (production regulations) leave space for the negotiation of cultural processes that are part of winegrowing and winemaking. Farmer calls this process “the social construction of Bordeaux wines”—legal power and regulations connect geography, notoriety, and tradition. At the same time, these systems of codification reproduce hierarchies of power within a specific community of producers, and this is not without its problems.

This place-based construction of regulations and heritage preservation poses unique problems for wine-producing regions that have a history and traditions not centered on geographic origin. Yuson Jung raises this point in her chapter on wine production and consumption in Bulgaria. Jung focuses on the current attempts to bring Bulgarian wine production into the European Union systems of protected designations of origin. What happens to local and national traditions when they are forced into supranational frameworks that potentially dislodge local practices? Jung notes that the EU system is designed to protect member state economic and political interests; however, Jung highlights the disconnect between EU policies and local customs. Attempts to preserve local wine culture, which do not necessarily mesh with the realities of the global market, are challenged by increased bureaucratization of the wine industry.

Heritage preservation is also a concern in other wine-producing regions of Europe. This is not a straightforward process, and the very concept of heritage is often deeply contested and nearly always negotiated. Christina Ceisel looks at the performance of place carried out around wine in Galicia. Ceisel investigates the impact of globalization on the wine industry in Spain. On one hand, global markets reify local, regional, and national symbols. Wine, an everyday staple in Galicia, becomes a valuable commodity on the global market. Assurance of authenticity plays a major role in creating value in this unanchored market: this is where savvy producers reappropriate local traditions and perform them for a new global audience of wine consumers. On the other hand, Ceisel argues that the global marketplace also allows for Galician wine producers to bypass the stronghold of bureaucracy in Madrid, giving Galicians direct access to the EU fund and global markets.

In many Eastern European countries, wine regions are in the process of creating or reconstructing traditions and a taste of place that underwent major upheaval during the socialist period. In her chapter, Juraj Buzalka focuses on the ushering in of the free market system in Slovakia and how this economic change has created nostalgia for the rural past. This is particularly true for the group most engaged with these new markets and processes of globalization—the middle class. Ironically, these same people also see the importance of developing a fine wine trade in Slovakia. Buzalka looks at the ways in which wine tastings and wine tourism articulate relationships of power between the rural and economic elites. There are two competing desires: one is to develop a lucrative wine tourism industry associated with social distinction; the other is to maintain the practices of amateur winemaking and the conviviality of sharing wine that occurs outside of market exchanges.

The social and cultural value of sharing wine has also come under attack from commercial interests in Poland. Ewa Kopczyńska looks at the ways the history of wine in the Lubuski region is being reconstructed as a way to deal with a history of displacement. German winemaking traditions are naturalized and become part of a Polish narrative and tradition. The local wine festival has become a symbol of regional identity; yet at the same time, it is co-opted by commercial interests that have moved the focus away from wine. Like in the case of Slovakia, larger market forces have marginalized amateur and small-scale wine producers who are unable to sell their wine at the festival for bureaucratic reasons. Kopczyńska shows the importance of wine in the postsocialist era. Wine has become an important part of selectively excavating the past and constructing a sense of place in the wake of socialism. At the same time, this is not an easy process—larger market forces risk undermining local winemaking practices and, in turn, changing the cultural significance of wine drinking.

The chapters in this section explore the relationships of power manifested in the growing of grapes, the making of wine, and its consumption. In all of these cases, power is associated with place—being able to control the construction of place and the economic value of this exclusivity that manifests itself through the limited production of wine. Moving beyond the taste of place, these chapters explore how wine defines place and the connections this beverage creates not just between people and the land, but also between rural people and global markets.

CHAPTER FIVE

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Tasting Wine in Slovakia: Postsocialist Elite Consumption of Cultural Particularities1

JURAJ BUZALKA

“Being a rightist I can tell you wine does not need any special protection by law or via taxation; as a consumer I have to admit it does, as it represents our culture since ages…”

Jan, wine-tasting tourist, age 33

“[T]he higher the position one holds, the better chance one has of getting good wines… people doing manual jobs have fewer chances to drink high-quality wines, and to learn how to differentiate it…”

Pavel, wine-tasting tourist, age 41

In this chapter, I discuss the development of elite distinctions in wine consumption through observing wine-tasting tourism of the younger generation of Slovak managers in the late 2000s. I argue that wine-tasting tourism becomes one of the distinctive indicators of how market forces unify production as well as consumption. The introduction of terroir as a value system, marketing strategies, and new technologies of winemaking indicate that the globalization of wine has successfully entered Slovakia and differentiated consumers on the basis of class. Wine tourism takes place locally, and models of “culture” based on heritage preservation, multiculturalism, and the promotion of regional specificities shape wine consumption, depending on power relations on a much smaller scale than the global level. While global forces have changed the way wine is produced and consumed, the same elite that is otherwise celebrating the achievements of the global market has learned to fiercely defend and enjoy the cultural particularities of winemaking and wine tasting. This celebration of terroir cannot be seen without considering the market’s ambivalent influence on the reemergence of practices and representations of rurality after socialism. These romantic attitudes do not only result from the market’s call for tradition, but they also depend on what I call the post-peasant social base in postsocialist Eastern Europe.

In the following section, I first offer a brief overview of the history and the current state of winemaking and consumption in Slovakia. I attempt to show first how a group of successful managers with strong promarket opinions with regard to economy and society argues for the nonmarket value of wine. I also present the activity of managers who, together with amateur winemakers, decided to organize a noncommercial wine competition, questioning the commercial status of wine consumption. In the concluding section, I discuss the relationship between market and value in what I call post-peasant Eastern Europe after socialism. This chapter relies on fieldwork carried out in the most developed and largest Small Carpathian winegrowing region, located in the vicinity of Slovak’s capital, Bratislava, in the country’s southwest. Additional data were gathered in a region with continual small-scale winemaking, namely in the historical region of Hont, south of central Slovakia.

WINE IN SLOVAKIA

While beer brewers in the early 2000s still expected the consumption of their most popular beverage to exceed 100 liters per person annually (in 2002, it was 92 liters per person), ten years later, the consumption of beer decreased to 70 liters.¹ The economic crisis, an aging population, and high taxation of beer were considered the major reasons behind this declining consumption. Wine consumption, on the other hand, has grown.² In addition to the import of cheap wines under the European Union (EU) market, fine wines consumed by more affluent consumers have also contributed to the growth.

Although Slovakia had about sixteen thousand hectares of vineyards, fewer than two-thirds of those vineyards were actually under production in the 2000s. Nonetheless, wine consumption has been gradually growing since Slovakia entered the European Union in 2004. In 2009, eighty-seven percent of wine produced in Slovakia was of high-grade quality (inspired by German terminology, these are so-called wines with an adjective—selection of grapes, late harvesting, ice wine, and so on), indicating an increasing success of new technology and marketing techniques.³ Approximately one-half of all wine consumed in Slovakia is of domestic origin. As a result of law 313 of 2009 on viniculture and winemaking, the German terminology based on sugar content in grapes has been replaced by French terroir practices (wines are denominated according to appellations and terroir, that is, geographical origin), even though the German-style nomenclature was still used to orient consumers. Among the wine varieties produced in Slovakia, the dominant ones consist of Grüner Veltliner, Müller Thurgau, Olaszriesling, Blaufränkisch, Saint Laurent, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Since the early 2000s, the trendy varieties also include Merlot and Chardonnay. As the representative of the winemakers’ association claims, “Consumers demand higher quality every year… we are happy to see the culture of quality wines consumption is increasing.”⁴

The new generation of consumers does not drink as much beer as its parents and grandparents used to drink twenty or so years ago. Some of the younger people have embraced new habits of fine wine tasting promoted by winemakers, especially in the Small Carpathian and south Slovak winegrowing areas. Being the most traditional and largest of the Slovak winegrowing areas and making profit from the vicinity of the affluent capital, Bratislava (unemployment under five percent in 2011 and GDP per capita above the EU average), the new trend of wine consumption was promoted in historical Small Carpathian wine towns like Pezinok, Modra, Svätý Jur (considered valuable for growing white wines), and Skalica (famous for its red wine).⁵

After the autocratic and protective policies of Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar (1994–1998) were defeated, the new Slovak generation of “yuppies” has grown under the liberalization regime of the two-term governments of Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda (1998–2006). Under Dzurinda, major changes with regard to foreign investment, privatization, and liberalization of the economy took place. Slovakia entered the EU, NATO, and OECD, respectively, and became fully open to the EU common market and to EU regulations. As an effect of these changes, wealth in Slovak society grew more unequally distributed, both regionally as well as among social groups. At the same time, new models of regional development, not least with regard to tourism, have been introduced in new EU member states together with subsidies schemes for agriculture and regional development (see also Buzalka 2009). New cohorts of managers, often with foreign experience and language competences, entered recently privatized enterprises. New trends in wine production technology and consumption habits followed these economic changes. Younger winemakers began developing their businesses after returning from abroad and/or establishing their private enterprises using the infrastructure left over from socialist cooperatives. Wine symbolically replaced beer and distillates as a fashionable beverage, being served more frequently as a marker of distinction of those who could and were allowed to afford it (Bourdieu 1984). It has also been served more often to the official state guests who began to visit formerly isolated Slovakia.

Slovakian wine has enjoyed a lower taxation rate compared to distillates and beer. Wine has benefited from the lobbying of wine-producing associations and the consumers of their wines. The special treatment of wine has been explained as an “economic paradox” among the economic analysts who dominate the public discussions in Slovakia and who follow a neoclassical economic model. These analysts maintain that there is no economic reason for wine’s tax exemption. Rather it is well known among wine tasters of all political affiliations that the wine industry benefits from friends in power who love wine and wish to support its consumption as a distinct “product of Slovak wine culture” that is too weak to resist the globalization of wine. Some successful campaigns by winemakers’ associations against planned taxation of wine were directed at wine consumers who agree that Slovakian wine deserves to be treated as an exception. For example, stickers and leaflets against the introduction of taxes were distributed along with tickets at the major annual wine event in November 2011, attended by several thousand wine enthusiasts. These people—most of them consistent followers of market ideologies and strong critics of EU agricultural and regional policies who live in the Slovak capital—showed that, when it comes to “wine as a product of (‘their’) culture,” free market rules count less. Because of an attachment to specific regional origins of fine wine and the consequent need to preserve Slovakian wine as a heritage product, most wine lovers think it should be allowed to correct the market’s “invisible hand.” To proceed with analysis of this nonmarket value of “rural idyll” based on wine, the topic of socialist and postsocialist wine needs to be addressed.

WINE TRANSFORMATIONS

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• SECTION ONE Rethinking Terroir
• SECTION TWO Relationships of Power and the Construction of Place
• SECTION THREE Labor, Commodification, and the Politics of Wine
• SECTION FOUR Technology and Nature
• Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index