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Standing-up Vineyards: The Political Relevance of Tuscan Wine Production

2011; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 29; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1068/d2410

1472-3433

Chiara Certomà,

Wine Industry and Tourism

This paper investigates the philosophical and political assumptions supporting the commonly held view of ‘place identity’, exemplarily represented by the Tuscany region in Italy and its wine. It focuses on the production process of one of the most expensive and highly rated Italian wines, the Brunello di Montalcino, produced in the southeast of Tuscany. The Brunello di Montalcino wine area in Tuscany has a leading role in Italian wine production, and it represents an enormously successful example of place authenticity protection, promoting high-quality standards of economic solidarity and a fulfilling sense of well-being. This paper puts into question the romantic and fascinating image of Tuscany by offering an alternative portrait of the material-semiotic networks constituting the specificity of this place. The case for the analysis is provided by the diplomatic impasse between Italy and the United States in 2008. Anomalies in the wine production process were detected by a massive use of technological control devices; this put in ‘danger’ the reputation of the Italian wine makers and overturned the tradition, local authenticity, and identity of Tuscan wines—and eventually the identity of the Tuscany region itself. In reconstructing the way in which Brunello di Montalcino wine materially shapes politics, economic relations, social behaviours, landscape, cultural production and international narratives, the paper analyses the related material-semiotic networks. These analyses show that local identity does not naturally grow out of the soil but is generated and preserved by a long retinue of global-based practices and connections. Brunello, a symbol of authentic Tuscany, only exists as Brunello and can be enjoyed as such through the mediation of a large apparatus of very specific scientific knowledge, laboratory practices and protocols, administrative procedures at different geographical scales, and certificates and licences. Paradoxically, we need the global to protect the local.