Pourquoi terroir? Reflections on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place

Abstract

French

Terroir is an untranslatable, unstable, and often undefinable French term frequently used in the global wine industry. This article focuses on the transnational potentialities and cultural transferability of terroir in reflecting on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place. After outlining the evolution of terroir in France to demonstrate how and why it appears to have become a floating signifier, I examine the use of terroir in the Australian winemaking context. I thereby provide an example of how this French concept has travelled and been translated by Australian proponents of the term at the other end of the New World of wine. Finally, I present conclusions drawn from the particular case of French-Australian cultural transfers to demonstrate key features of the current state of terroir's globalisation.

Keywords

Australia France terroir wine

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Citation for the conferral of a Doctor of Science (honoris causa) (1998). Available at: https://cdn.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/628874/Croser-Dr-Brian-John.pdf

Dictionnaire François-Latin 1549. Paris: Imprimerie Robert Estienne.

Adelsheim

, et al. (2016) Climate change: field reports from leading winemakers. Journal of Wine Economics 11(1): 5–47.

Allen

(2020) Intoxicating: Ten Drinks that Shaped Australia. Melbourne: Thames & Hudson.

Campbell

Dutton

(2020) Introduction: ‘La honte de la France'; Michel Houellebecq’s cultural transgressions. French Cultural Studies 31(1): 3-9.

Célestin

DalMolin

Dubois Ph

, et al. (2010) Terroirs. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 14(2): 129–133.

Croser

(2004) Between a rock and a hard place, Second Annual Lecture, Wine Press Club of NSW, Sydney, 24 November.

Croser

(2021) Croser reflects on 40 years of industry politics – and nothing much has changed! Wine Business Magazine, 16 September. Available at: https://wbmonline.com.au/brian-croser-reflects-on-40-years-of-industry-politics-and-nothing-much-has-changed/

Demossier

(2018) Burgundy: A Global Anthropology of Place and Taste. New York: Berghahn Books.

10.

Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694) (online) https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A1T0087-23

11.

Dion

(2010) L’Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France. Paris: Editions CNRS.

12.

DPC (2002) National Wine Centre. Available at: https://www.dpc.sa.gov.au/documents/rendition/B19165

13.

Dutton

(2002) Feeding utopian desires: examples of the cockaigne legacy in French literary utopias. Nottingham French Studies 41(2): 20–36.

14.

Dutton

(2019) Geographical turns and historical returns in narrating French wine culture. Global Food History 5(1–2): 113–131.

15.

Dutton

Nettelbeck

(2004) Jazz Adventures in French Culture . Nottingham French Studies 43(1).

16.

Easingwood

, et al. (2011) The drivers of wine regionality. Journal of Wine Research 22(1): 19–33.

17.

Edmond

(2006) Disorder with law: determining the geographical indication for the coonawarra wine region. Adelaide Law Review 27: 59–182.

18.

Etcheverria

(2009) Changement de qualité, changement de valeur dans le sens de goût de terroir: acteurs et enjeux. In: Tabeaud

(ed.) Le changement en environnement: les faits, les representations, les enjeux. Paris: Editions de la Sorbonne, pp. 135–145. http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/37554

19.

Gautier

Parizot

(2022) Terroir peut-il être un terme en œnologie? Exploitation sémantique de données situées en contexte viti-vinicole. In: Lavric

Feyrer

Konzett- Firth

(eds) Le Vin et ses émules: Discours oenologiques et gastronomiques. Berlin: Frank & Timme GmbH, pp. 515–534.

20.

Goutouly

J-P

Hinnewinkel

J-C

(2015) Terroirs et qualités des vins, un lien à l’origine. Mais quelle origine? In: Bordenave

Chevet

J-M

Goutouly

J-P

Hinnewinkel

J-C

(eds) Les vins de Bordeaux: Les itinéraires de la qualité. book 2, Bordeaux: Vigne et Vin, pp. 9–41.

21.

Guy

(2019) Selling the French past, selling wine, and erasing labor from terroir. Global Food History 5(1–2): 98–112.

22.

Harvey Smith

(1978) Agricultural workers and the French wine-Growers’ revolt of 1907. Past & Present 79: 101–125.

23.

Heffernan

(2005) Geography, empire and national revolution in Vichy France. Political Geography 24(6): 731–758.

24.

Hewitt

(1993) Images of Montmartre in French writing 1920–1960: ‘la Bohême réactionnaire’. French Cultural Studies 4: 129–143.

25.

Hewitt

(2018) Giono and Melville: a ‘voyage imaginaire’ through nineteenth century England. French Cultural Studies 29(4): 308–320.

26.

Hobsbawm

Ranger

(eds) (2012) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

27.

Hooke

(2018) Brian Croser, Tapanappa. Gourmet Traveller Wine. Available at: http://gourmettravellerwine.com/winemaker-of-the-year-2016/brian-croser.html

28.

Howland

Dutton

(2020) Making new worlds: the utopian potentials of wine and terroir. In: Dutton

Howland

(eds) Wine, Terroir, Utopia: Making New Worlds. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–23.

29.

Howlett

(2019) Tiers chardonnay – a pure expression. Grapegrower and Winemaker 660: 59–60.

30.

Jefford

(2012) Wine and Astonishment. Wine Economics Research Centre Working Paper 0212. Available at: https://media.adelaide.edu.au/economics/papers/winedoc/winewp2012-02.pdf

31.

Keys

(2017) The terror of terroir. Wine and Viticulture Journal January/February: 11–15.

32.

Lachiver

(1997) Dictionnaire du monde rural: les mots du passé. Paris: Fayard.

33.

Laferté

(2006) La Bourgogne et ses vins: image d’origine contrôlée. Paris: Belin.

34.

Lévi-Strauss

(2001) Introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss. Abingdon: Routledge.

35.

Littré

(1863) Dictionnaire Littré. Available at: https://www.littre.org/definition/terroir

36.

Lucand

(2015) Le commerce des vins de Bourgogne à la conquête des concessions françaises en Chine au début du XXe siècle. French Cultural Studies 26(2): 152–162.

37.

Matthews

(2016) Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

38.

Meloni

Swinnen

(2014). The rise and fall of the world’s largest wine exporter – and its institutional legacy. Journal of Wine Economics 9(1): 3–33.

39.

Morris

(1990) Second international master of wine symposium 1990. Journal of Wine Research 1(3): 259–264.

40.

Parker

(2015) Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: University of California Press.

41.

Phillips

(2016) French Wine: A History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

42.

Robert

(2018) Escaping the everyday: the Loi Évin’s paradoxical sanctioning of appeals to travel and intoxication. French Cultural Studies 29(1): 79–92.

43.

Schmidt

(1998) What’s in a name? Plenty if you’re in the winegame. Australian Financial Review. Available at: https://www.afr.com/companies/whats-in-a-name-plenty-if-youre-in-the-wine-game-19981116-kb2rs

44.

Schmidtke

(2021) Benchmarking regional and subregional influences on Shiraz fine wines. Final Report to Wine Australia. Available at: https://www.wineaustralia.com/getmedia/1866adfe-b7c1-4563-ba10-67046d8a1872/CSU-1602-Final-Report.pdf

45.

Trubek

(2008) The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir. Berkeley: University of California Press.

46.

Unwin

(1991) Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade. London: Routledge.

47.

Vigreux

(2018) 'La terre ne ment pas': le terroir viticole à l’épreuve de la Révolution nationale de Vichy. Crescentis: Revue internationale d’histoire de la vigne et du vin [Online] 1. https://preo.u-bourgogne.fr/crescentis/index.php?id=282

48.

Voyce

(2007) Geographical indications, the EU and Australia: A case study on ‘government at a distance’ through intellectual property. Macquarie Law Journal 7: 155–165.

49.

Weber

(1976) Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

50.

White

(2020) The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

51.

Wieworka

(2009) Orphans of the Republic: The Nation’s Legislators in Vichy France. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

52.

Wolikow

(2021) Le recours aux usages locaux, loyaux et constants: de l’acquis au mythe (1908–1935). Territoires du vin [Online] 12. Available at: https://preo.u-bourgogne.fr/territoiresduvin/index.php?id=1938