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Old World, New World, Third World? Reconceptualising the Worlds of Wine

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Old World, New World, Third World? Reconceptualising the Worlds of Wine Journal of Wine Research, 2010, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 57–75 Old World, New World, Third World? Reconceptualising the Worlds of Wine GLENN BANKS and JOHN OVERTON Original manuscript received, 08 April 2009 Revised manuscript received, 18 November 2009 ABSTRACT This paper argues that existing categories defining the geography of the world’s wine industry, principally the Old World/New World dichotomy, are flawed. Not only do they fail to represent adequately the complexity of production and marketing in those two broad regions but also, crucially, they do not acknowledge the significant and rapidly expanding production and consumption of wine in ‘Third World’ developing countries. Rather than argue for the addition of a ‘Third World’ category, we instead use the lens of recent work on globalisation to argue that such production requires us to re-examine the dichotomous Old/New distinction which structures much of the thinking around the global wine industry. It also requires us to more closely link changes in patterns of global wine consumption with developments in global production. Changing geographies of wine production have been driven, to a large extent, by the rapid expansion of both local wealthy elites and burgeoning middle classes in countries such as China and India. This has resulted in the development of local wineries, large and small, throughout the developing world. It has also seen new flows of investment both from established wine regions to these new sites of production and from companies and individuals in the developing world who have invested in established wine regions, whether in France or Australia. Increasingly, the various worlds of wine will become more complex, accommodating new regions and also different forms of production and marketing, from traditional and modern artisanal production, closely tied to place and vintage, to large-scale industrial production for a mass market. 1. Introduction: The Old World and the New World of Wine For many years, the world’s wine industry has been seen in terms of a simple dichotomy between the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New World’. This distinction has been emphasised by many wine writers, both popular and academic (for example, Aylward, 2003; Clarke, 2003; Remaud and Couderc, 2006; Robinson, 2006; Campbell and Guibert, 2007), and undoubtedly embedded in the minds of wine consumers worldwide. It is Glenn Banks (corresponding author), School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag 11–222, Palmerston North, New Zealand (E-mail: [email protected]). John Overton, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand (E-mail: [email protected]). ISSN 0957-1264 print/ISSN 1469-9672 online/10/010057-19 # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09571264.2010.495854 58 GLENN BANKS AND JOHN OVERTON a distinction that has appeal, for it simplifies and categorises many of the supposed differences to be found in wine production and it has suited both the marketing strategies and the political stances of wine producers on different sides of the globe. In this paper, however, we argue that this distinction—and other associated ones that are frequently used—are flawed and themselves offer little of analytical value. We adopt instead the critical lens of globalisation to examine recent developments in the global wine industry. In this approach it is necessary to go beyond the Old World – New World distinction. We also introduce the concept of a Third World of wine but argue that this additional category adds little beyond further highlighting the inadequacies of the Old/New dichotomy. In order to understand the wine industry as a complex global phenomenon, one characterised by integration and homogenis- ation in some aspects but also differentiation and localisation in others, we instead argue for an approach which foregrounds the multiple ‘worlds of wine’ as cross- cutting, contingent and contextual. The process of globalisation has attracted a considerable amount of critical analysis in the past decade and much of the literature is relevant to the wine industry (Anderson et al., 2003; Campbell and Guibert, 2007). One of the strongest themes to emerge from work on globalisation has been the view that the global economy is increasingly inter- connected by flows of capital investment, commodities, technologies and labour. These flows act to integrate the economies of the world through the ways in which enterprises are more vertically integrated, principally resulting from the way large corporations own different parts of the commodity chains, from production to retailing (Gwynne, 2008). Globalisation also involves the continuing search for lowest-cost sources of pro- duction so that goods are produced cheaply in different parts of the world and distrib- uted to markets worldwide. There is also the phenomenon of global brands so that certain products become homogenised, developed by careful marketing and supported by production strategies that ensure that a certain brand will be of reliable and consist- ent quality wherever it appears in the global market (Waters, 1995). Applying these concepts from theories of globalisation would see a wine industry that moves towards more low-cost production of high-volume brands of wine produced in parts of the world where favourable environmental conditions or low costs of labour allow large economies of scale and production of consistent quality wine from one vintage to another (Anderson et al., 2003). Another side of the globalisation literature, however, stresses that globalisation is a process that does not inevitably lead to these forms of agglomeration, homogenisation or even industrialisation (Murray, 2005). As individual wealth has grown in the wake of an expanding global economy, consumer preferences particularly amongst the wealthy or middle class seek not low-cost high volume products in all cases but instead more differentiated and higher-status products. Such products are also marked by brands but they are brands that often emphasise factors such as traditional or artisanal methods of production (or alternatively, extremely high-tech production), quality assurance and indications of a product’s provenance in terms of place of origin, type or purity of inputs and method of production (Charters, 2006; Goodman, 2003). Another aspect that coincides with this trend towards product differentiation is the phenomenon of resistance to globalisation. Here some producers are able to resist the trend to agglomeration or homogenisation by protecting or marketing their intellectual property in the form of product and place names or methods of production (Moran, 1993a). Putting these processes together, we see that globalisation may involve greater inter-connectedness of the economy but also leads to quite different manifes- tations at different spatial scales and in different places (for example, see Barton and RECONCEPTUALISING THE WORLDS OF WINE 59 Murray, 2009). Indeed, place itself emerges as a critical factor both as a site for the construction of new local identities within the global economy and also as a marker (and sometimes a brand) of difference, exclusivity and quality (Jackson, 2004; Johnson and Brewer, 2007; Colman, 2008). In this sense, the wine industry can be seen as being characterised by complex processes of change in which the undoubted forces that are moving towards integration, industrialisation and sameness (as seen in bulk wines: Davis, 2005) are counterbalanced by those which are leading to a continuation and even expansion of place-specific artisanal production of premium wines (Aylward and Zanko, 2008). Furthermore, these changes are not just being driven from the centre, by large corporations or old established markets, but also by new developments on the periphery, whether the rapidly growing number of new middle-class consumers in the developing world or newly developed wine producing regions in many different parts of the world. These two approaches to globalisation seem to offer contradictory interpretations of the wine industry. Yet both elements may operate simultaneously and in related ways. However, in attempting to understand how these global processes are operating, it is useful to return initially to the Old World – New World discourse to identify some of the dimensions of difference that may exist within these different worlds of wine. The dichotomy between the Old and New worlds of wine is based on a number of putative differences to be found in the nature of wine production. Such differences are portrayed in either a positive or negative light depending on the perspectives of the writers. The Old World (largely Western and Southern Europe), it is argued by its supporters, is characterised by long-established and relatively unchanging methods and locations of wine production. Centuries of trial and error have perfected viticultural and winemaking techniques that are suited to particular places. Certain varieties have been selected and refined over many years that seem to ‘belong’ to certain regions and not others. Likewise, the methods of growing grapes and making wine have developed slowly and been perfected by generations of small-scale, locally based artisanal producers. The qualities of different wines are explained—and mar- keted—with reference to their terroir: their place of origin (Charters, 2006). Terroir encapsulates a wide range of factors, from the particular climatic and micro-climatic conditions, to
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