Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Place is central to the marketing of wine. In the twentieth century, the French developed the appellation system to classify wine of the basis of its terroir–the combination of soils, climate and topography that produce a unique wine taste, its ‘typicity.’ The United States, recognizing the value added by such a system, established American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in 1978. These are wine producing areas delimited on the basis of their environmental characteristics. It is argued that the AVA system is an example of fictive place making: an economic strategy that involves the recreation of places on the basis of their physical and cultural characteristics that is then used to generate economic value. This paper tests that hypothesis in the context of the Willamette Valley, analyzing the content of 162 winery websites to search for place-specific typicity and terroir narratives that would justify the creation of AVAs and the price premiums they generate. The study found that individual winery websites did not present a unified understanding of their AVA’s terroir. Defining characteristics, present in formational petitions, such as soil type and the influence of a cooling Pacific breeze, were shared between multiple AVA member websites, precluding their ability to denote geographical uniqueness. Finally, the language used to describe wine did not generate a coherent wine style within any AVA. Yet a price premium exists for wine produced from grapes grown within a small AVA, making them fictive places.