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Paper short abstract:

Late settler nationalism is underpinned by shifting, explicit/implicit notions of divine provenance and legitimacy which are, in part, reflected and generated within discourses of wine production and consumption.

Paper long abstract:

The 17th century emergence of nation-states - and more latterly, the rise of colonising and imperialistic late-settler states such as New Zealand, Australia and the United States of America - are underpinned by shifting assertions of divine legitimacy. Early nation-states pressed into service the explicit avowals of divine provenance that monarchical and theocratic political hierarchies had previously petitioned. Whereas modern nation-states are typified by discourses of romantic nationalism, which are entwined with the rise of secularism, and that are also marked by a shift toward implicit forms of religiosity in which 'folk' assertions of place and people are celebrated as natural, unique and banally sacred (Billig 2014 [1995]; Brubaker 2012; Gellner 1983; Smith 1990).

Using New Zealand as a case study I examine how the development of the wine industry over time reflects these historical shifts from explicit to implicit, overt to banal, forms of divine provenance and ordination. To this end I discuss James Busby's and Samuel Marsden's unequivocal goal of introducing wine cultivation to New Zealand in the 1830s as a proselytising and civilising practice for both indigenous and new settler populations; how the folk nationalism of place and people is particularly evident from the 1970s onwards and variably so in wine discourses expressed in national, regional and terroir-specific registers; and finally how the contemporary adulation of boutique winemakers and reflexive wine consumers manifests as an implicit, collective religiosity foreshadowed in Durkheim's (1969 [1898]) theory of the 'cult of the individual'.