The Taste of Wine | Melaine-Noé Laesslé

After granting me a long interview, a Valaisan winemaker accompanies me and then bids farewell with these words: "Some are here to make wine, others to make money." Although succinct, this statement sums up the conflicts of values inherent in the world of wine, rivalries that inevitably result in power struggles. Beyond terroirs and grape varieties, the taste of wine owes much to local political choices, much more than our palate alone might lead us to believe. Wine appellations are common resources capable of generating various forms of value, economic of course, but also cultural, symbolic, and sensory. In this work, the author traces the thread of actors' games, power relations, and institutional mechanisms at work in the two main wine-producing cantons of Switzerland (Vaud and Valais) as well as in two regions of New Zealand. He proposes innovative conceptual tools that give as much importance to the taste and symbolic aspects of wine as to its economic stakes. The study of cases in Féchy, Lavaux, Fully, and Chamoson in Switzerland, as well as the New Zealand cases (Marlborough and Central Otago), highlights the strategies that local actors adopt to differentiate their appellation and obtain the forms of value they covet. The comparative analysis ultimately identifies the general elements conducive to the success of collective action shaping wine appellations, leading the author to propose recommendations for Swiss actors.