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Accepted Paper:
Pinot pilgrims: metro-rurality, reflexive distinction and enchanted wine in Martinborough, New Zealand
Peter Howland
(Massey University)
Paper short abstract:
Key words: wine, tourism, consumption, reflexive distinction, metro-rurality
Paper long abstract:
Mary Douglas' insight that "sampling a drink is sampling what is happening to a whole category of social life" (1989: 9, 11) is pertinent to the analysis of wine tourism in Martinborough, New Zealand, where producers, operators and tourists routinely articulated collective and discrete notions of time, place, gender etc.
Martinborough, a small boutique 'wine village' - approximately one hour's drive from Wellington - is an especially popular holiday destination for the capital's affluent, tertiary-educated and urbane 'middle-classes', who aside from desiring a 'vineyard experience', were also drawn by romanticised notions of clean-green, picturesque (yet productive) landscapes; harmonious and intimate communities/ rural families; and artisan, hand-made 'crafts'.
In this paper I explore how the appreciative, in-situ consumption of Martinborough's 'fine Pinot Noir wines', together with other urbane consumption opportunities (e.g. gourmet dining etc), were not only ethnographically cast as markers of superior status (Bourdieu 1984) but also engaged many of the core ideals of reflexive individualism (e.g. choice, progressive change, intentional social connectedness etc - Beck 2002; Giddens 1991. I argue that the meta-narratives of the metro-rural idyll in conjunction with the idealised 'French tradition' of fine wine production/consumption essentially framed hierarchies of social distinction - while a collusive nexus of 'New World' innovation/pioneership in wine; the structural 'democraticisation' of wine/food (via tasting notes, quality rating systems, tiered production and singular/ episodic consumption); and the personalisation of the purchase/consumption of wine/homestay accommodation encouraged the parallel creation of reflexive distinctions that articulated and emphasised praiseworthy notions of the exalted self (Howland 2004).
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed
Culinary tourism and the anthropology of food
EPapers