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• 1 2020-05-05T19:35:39-07:00 The New York Times, August 21, 1975 1 gallery 2020-05-05T19:35:39-07:00

  
  "To Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone and Napa, add the name Yakima."

  If the subject of wine comes up around Eastern Washingtonians, there is a fair chance that you will be informed that Columbia Valley is roughly at the same latitude as the Bordeaux region in France.
  
  While born in an 11th century context, viticultural areas were not legalized until 1905, amid concerns of fraudulent wines (Institut National de l'Origin et de la Qualite). Terrior, then was formalized in the wake of an expanding industrial and global economy. The custom of naming and codifying viticultural areas was not taken up outside of Europe until later in the 20th century.  This practiced functions in two ways: it sets up an independent market to counter European luxury products. Creating AVAs can help "legitimize" these products.

  AVAs position the land within a network of terroirs, often maintaining a metropolis / colonial hierarchy. In other words, AVAs in colonized lands do not challenge the dominance of European understandings of the world -- they support their legitimacy. Though wine regions are not officially hierarchical, certainly wine from Spain, Italy, and France are traded at a higher price point than "new world" wines. Terroir, then, can be a way of centralizing economic power reifying areas of privilege.

  However, AVAs also function by to apply Western conceptions of the land to colonizing areas. Throughout the world, terroir and viticultural areas can be used as a means to centralize power and stake territory. In "The Wine Appelation as Territory in France and California," Warren Moran argues that "assumptions about natural environmental influences are used to assert and justify political and territorial control, and thereby influence the distribution of the industry." This applies in Australia just as easily as Italy. However, in a colonial context, it is essential to understand the territorial nature of terroir. Because terroir is both naturalized and positioned as a positive force in a global economy, it aids in the erasure of the means in which control over the colonized land was gained.

  In "Wine Appellation as Territory," Warren Moran shows that descriptions of the environmental qualities of the same wine regions can be wildly different, as these qualities are often based on casual perception. He writes, "In all wine regions, the physical environmental attributes of the defined territory of the appellation have been liberally and uncritically transferred to the wine made there. They are a convenient means of enhancing the regional identity" (701). While certainly there are factors of the physical environment that contribute to way agricultural products grow, it is worth noting that terroir is far from the only way to understand these commodities (how often do apple juice companies advertise precisely where their apples are grown, for example?). In fact, in the early days of the wine trade, wines were not identified by area, but rather by port. According to Lukacs, “During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, French wines surpassed German wines in popularity in most northern markets. But they too were identified in terms of where they were shipped” (58), as opposed to where grown.

  There is a similar story in Washington state. Prior to cultivating European varietals, Washington state did make wine -- out of Concord grapes, according to WSU's College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences ("A Brief History"). This wine predated American appellations and was simply the locally available wine. This system shifted with the influence of California wine companies:

  In the 1960s, California dominated the domestic fine-wine market, due in large part to marketing efforts by wine giant E. & J. Gallo, of Modesto, California. Gallo’s marketing campaign, centered on the message that Gallo would “Sell no wine before its time,” reeducated the American drinking public. Americans, unlike Europeans, had long been drinkers of sweet and fortified wines made from Concord grapes. Gallo’s efforts changed not only American wine-drinking habits, but attitudes toward wine. Consuming varietal wines became a sign of sophistication and prestige. ("A Brief History")

  Soon after European style wine became a signifier for high-class tastes in the U.S., the country adopted the American Viticultural Area system. This timeline is telling: it is clear that terroir and power are inexorably linked. If terroir were a universal way of understanding land and agriculture, it would be applied to more products. Further, terroir does not exist without trade; early both in Europe and US wine industries, the understanding of was significantly different. Terroir was not invoked until competing economic interests emerged. In short, terroir functions to describe economic and cultural capital just as much -- if not more -- than it describes relative mineral and sugar notes.