Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

There is no history of commercial wine production in Ireland yet the island has a rich wine legacy that extends beyond its shores. While there is notable evidence of wine importation and consumption in Ireland since Celtic times, Ireland’s most significant contribution to the world of wine is through its people. From the 18th century onwards, many emigrant Irish families and their descendants engaged in the wine trade in various wine regions, most notably in Bordeaux, France. Where to this day, numerous celebrated wines still bear Irish names; Château Lynch-Bages, Château Léoville Barton, Château Kirwan, Château Clarke, Château MacCarthy. These emigrants are collectively called the Winegeese a term coin by historian Ted Murphy. “A Wine Goose Chase” is a performance devised to tell the history of Ireland and wine while integrating a tasting of wines with Irish connections into the performance. This paper explores the multi-functional nature of wine in this performance context. It examines how wine becomes a sensory tool that facilitates the consumption of the narrative content of the performance through the physical act of communal imbibing. The study draws on the playwright’s auto-ethnographic experience of devising, writing and performing “A Wine Goose Chase” while observing how the context and community forged during the performance facilitates sense-making through wine tasting.