Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Materiality (e.g., flavor, color, and alcohol content), as an “objective” quality, is used as a shifting economic tool that wine professionals use to sell wine. However, the training that wine professionals receive is ingrained with white-European wine ideologies, creating a value hierarchy that puts well-known regions and grapes (e.g., French) at the top (Ballantyne et al. 2019; de Leon 2020). This value-association becomes inherent to professionals, but excludes potential customers (Caputo 2023). One way that wine representatives are combating these exclusionary practices is by broadening out selling narratives; for instance, describing a wine as “refreshing” instead of having the flavor of “gooseberries.” Even still, customers might not value the wine in the same way, creating the potential for a face-threatening situation (Goffman 1955). To determine how wine representatives and their potential customers use the language of materiality to construct a value hierarchy, I analyze moments across twenty-six wine selling events in wine shops and restaurants recorded in Summer 2023. I examine how there may be seemingly given facts about wine materiality that get understood differently as they emerge. I argue that in order to avoid committing direct face-threatening acts, wine buyers rely on their own material experience of the wine rather than critiquing the wine itself; for example, by mentioning that the taste of a specific wine is not in line with their training and experience. Despite the current inclusionary discourse in the industry, these instances often reproduce white-European wine ideologies, with no real change in the industry.