Terroir exists these days somewhere between novel and passé. Its precept that place ascribes taste is ubiquitously echoed, yet nearly impossible to scientifically verify. For consumers, terroir prioritizes authenticity and quality, dictating in no uncertain terms that nature (or God) is paramount in the vineyard and cellar (e.g., zero-zero winemaking, native yeasts, etc.). Yet, this narrative presupposes terroir's illiberal qualities; the winegrower's labor is subordinated to the soil while the consumer's palate is nullified by the allegedly objective taste provided by climate and the environment. So how then has terroir—illiberal and unprovable—become the defining enological maxim of our time?
Scholarly studies of terroir have scrutinized its various manifestations in geology and culture, but have in most cases, failed to recognize its rootedness in a region's politico–economic landscape. Also overlooked is terroir's fluidity. Even in Burgundy, the unofficial home of terroir-ism, its meaning is continuously reinvented due to various micro and macro factors, including the parcelization of vine holdings through partible inheritance and globalization. Terroir has winners and losers. Ensuring one's place as the former rather than the latter requires work, even the reworking of the very definition of terroir.
As a native Burgundian, Marion Demossier (University of Southampton) had to tread with more care than usual, even for an anthropologist, in her unpacking of the region's terroir. The puzzling hierarchization and differentiation associated with this relatively small area seem at first glance to constitute a rather high time and effort barrier for consumers. But, in fact, this complex arrangement is the semi-intentional result of intellectual work, mostly by landowning and winemaking elites, as they encountered challenges at the vineyard, local, regional, state, and global levels.
Chapter 1 (Wine Landscapes and Place-Making) examines the relationship between landscape and social organization. The hierarchy of Burgundy wine (villages to grand cru) is a result of the region's continuous need to position itself within ever-evolving global hierarchies. Whether the growth of French tourism in the 20th century or the emergence of a global wine culture more recently, the construction of place in Burgundy has been moored to trends outside of its villages’ walls. In Chapter 2 (Wine Growers and Worlds of Wine), Demossier's analysis parallels (probably unintentionally) a recent trend in wine journalism that repositions the winegrower at the center of wine quality. Here, Demossier is at her best, as she turns away from the “black legend” of anthropological doom and gloom, which tends to focus only on eroded communities, and instead hones in on the Burgundian elite who have managed to creatively adapt to—and perhaps even help to shape—the forces of globalization. The vigneron, located somewhere between a peasant who seeks only to let nature speak and an artisan who skillfully shapes raw materials into a finished product, has been instrumental in ensuring “that the Burgundy story remains constructed around terroir, history, authenticity and quality” (p. 77).
Chapter 3 (The Taste of Place) engages with the anthropological and historical literature of taste, as well as the voices of prominent critics, including Jasper Morris and Jancis Robinson. The result is a fascinating admixture that admits to the nuanced ways in which intermediaries (négociants, chefs, critics, consumers, etc.) defined quality norms related to gustatory taste and subsequently shaped local reputations in Burgundy. This is an important corrective to the all-too-often imposition, especially in Burgundy but also elsewhere, including Germany, of allegedly static tastes codified in centuries-old maps and tax tables.
Demossier evocatively captures terroir's paradoxes in Chapter 5 (Beyond Terroir). Here, by returning to the role of the winegrower, she illuminates the need for the perpetuation of micro-differences in a world made ever more uniform by capital and global environmental movements. Whereas “beautiful vines” in the 1990s meant intensive intervention, including the use of tractors and herbicides, the more-recent biodynamie movement meant a return to “letting the terroir speak,” as Demossier has heard from various growers (p. 156).
Chapters 6 (Translating Terroir, Burgundy in Asia) and 7 (Creating Terroir, Burgundy in New Zealand) shift the geographic focus beyond Europe while allowing Demossier to simultaneously broaden and sharpen her analysis. For all of New Zealand's differences from Burgundy as a site of winegrowing, there exist important commonalities between the two regions, including capitalist economic structures and the need for each region's consumers to cultivate “differential distinction” through the purchase and consumption of its wines. Nevertheless, an unequal relationship exists between the Pinot Noir vineyards of Central Otago and Burgundy, or what we might consider the varietal's colony and metropole, respectively, with knowledge seeming to flow in one direction only.
Burgundy culminates in a fascinating story about the region's attempt to achieve UNESCO recognition, told firsthand by Demossier, who offered input into drafting the proposal. As a response to the increasingly global, identical, and quality-oriented wine trade, elites within Burgundy worked to evoke and construct the notion of place (vineyards, or climats, in particular) as something natural and resistant to the changes foisted upon the rest of the world by the internationalization of the trade. Demossier cleverly notes that while heritage is ostensibly about the past, in the case of Burgundy, it is more so about the future.
Demossier's book offers a candid glimpse into a fascinating world in which one should not always believe what one hears or sees. She is as critical of her own enmeshing into the narrative (as a native Burgundian) as her fellow anthropologists are wary of her deep-dive into the “soft” anthropological subject of elite Burgundian winegrowers. However, a careful reading of Demossier's work sheds light on more than just the narrow world that it purports to study.
The construction of terroir narratives is not unique to Burgundy, nor is the ascribing of taste to place unique to wine. Tracing the application of terroir-ist strategies, whether in the slatey vineyards of the Mosel River Valley or in the volcanic soils of Boquete's coffee fields, helps us to understand how local interests intersect with global forces. Producing, marketing, and consuming what we believe is unique belies the encroaching uniformity, which might help us understand how culture operates in realms far removed from Côte d'or.
