Introduction

1Notions of terroir and tradition are central to the contemporary beliefs that people—producers and consumers alike—have about wine. As a commodity, the identity of wine is typically linked to its place of production. Even industrial wine brands generally bear names and packaging reminiscent of famous wine regions and countries. The French notion of terroir expresses the idea that both objectively and symbolically, place is an integral part of the product. Most legal systems regulating wine production have been developed around the idea that different places produce different wines and that it is therefore important to protect and guarantee the provenance of wines. Central to this notion and of importance to the economics of wine is the basic question raised by Trubek (2008) in The Taste of Place: “If taste is produced by place, how does it work? Can the earth, air, sun and water really make such a powerful imprint on my mouth?” (p. 8). The goal of this paper is to answer part of this question by examining one elusive dimension of the concept of terroir: tradition.

2Terroir is officially defined in two major components, both of which raise specific problems. First is the notion of the natural, which references the natural characteristics of a place: its geography, soil composition, climate, and sun exposure. The definition of a place based on its natural constituents and their relevance for wine production has been thoroughly scientifically studied and is not usually problematic in the eyes of producers. Second is the more problematic notion of tradition. Tradition can be described as the social and cultural aspects of a place on which basis the identity of a terroir product is constructed. Tradition is also said to contribute to the gustatory characteristics of a product, and therefore to its quality. However, the understanding and identification of tradition is more problematic. Wine production, for instance, has become a very sophisticated activity, incorporating scientific knowledge and modern technologies. Producers know that the modern way of making wine has little to do with tradition: “So even if the cards of tradition have been played in terms of image, the reality is more complex in terms of economic prosperity and modernization. The so-called traditional character of the methods used by contemporary growers has as much to do with construction and perceptions of differences as with a real know-how associated with the product” (Demossier 2010 : 79).

3Even in regions with extensive wine production histories, it is difficult to define tradition, since winemaking techniques of the past do not reflect the realities of contemporary wine production. In regions new to wine production, producers simply believe that there are no local traditions influencing the quality or peculiarities of their wines. According to EU regulations, 25 years is sufficient for a product to be legally recognised as traditional (Mipaf 1999, cited by Cafiero et al. 2020). This raises the question: how long does a tradition have to be? In terms of tradition per se, the longest seems to be the best, as we shall see in the second part of this article. But to understand the specific taste of a product and a place, perhaps twenty-five years is enough.

5To illustrate this approach, I will present data I gathered in two anthropological field studies in two different wine producing regions. The first study, in Cirò Marina, Calabria, in the South of Italy, was conducted as part of my doctoral thesis on wine production during the 2000-2001 academic year and on return visits in 2004, 2016 and 2019. During my first stay, I conducted 50 open-ended interviews with winery owners, dignitaries, winegrowers, civil servants, teachers, and ordinary citizens. My objective in that study was to understand the development of the industry and how globalization was impacting the local meanings of wine. The second field study was conducted during the 2017-2018 academic year in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada, while I was an invited professor at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna. There I conducted 30 open-ended interviews, mainly with winery owners, directors and oenologists. In that research, my objective was to understand whether “wine culture” existed in a place where the industry was less than 30 years old, and what such a young wine culture might entail. In both studies, producers where ask to tell the history of their winery. Both studies also had a historical emphasis based on available literature, secondary data and archival research. The materialist definition of tradition presented here emerged from the second field study. The reason for comparing these two regions is how different they are in terms of tradition. While the ancient Greeks brought wine to Europe through southern Italy, Canada began producing fine wine after 1989. In Cirò Marina, producers say they have a three thousand year old tradition of winemaking, while in British Columbia producers believe they don’t have a wine tradition. I will show that both regions have a winemaking tradition, although there are important discrepancies between the discourses and the historical evidence. I will briefly summarize certain theoretical perspectives on the concept of terroir and tradition, highlighting how in most academic works, the impact of tradition on the taste of specific product is obliterated. Based on my two field research experiences, I will demonstrate how tradition can be described in different ways, either by relying on local discourse, or by attempting to identify how local production has developed and been structured historically.

Terroir: Between economics, politics, technology and culture

6Originating in France, the polysemic term terroir is difficult to translate. In the 13^th century, as explained by Bérard and Marchenay (1995), the word was synonymous with territoire (territory), a meaning it retained until the 18^th century. The word had also been used to identify the agricultural quality of a territory, and more specifically a soil suitable for the cultivation of grapes (Ibid). In the mid-16^th century, it would appear in the expression goût du terroir (the local flavour) to describe wine, and then come to be metaphorically extended to the qualities and defaults associated with the people of a given region (Ibid). First, we see how the etymology of the word terroir is closely linked to the symbolic universe of wine. Second, this word establishes a close link, even a correlation, between a product, a territory and its inhabitants. During the first half of the 20^th century, the terroir discourse would extend to other agricultural products such as cheese and would serve the national propaganda in France (Delfosse 1997; Demossier 2010; Guy 2001). At the same time, the notion of terroir would be regulated through creation of the legal certification Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC), literally “controlled designation of origin” (Barham 2003; Lachiver 1988). From the 1960s onward, emergence of a techno-scientific discourse highlighting soil composition would provide a scientific basis to the notion, but without being able to reduce variations in wine quality to soil composition differences nor to entirely explain them (cf. Moran 1993).

7Today, terroir refers not only to a specific geographical location, including its soil and climate, but also to the historical, cultural and human dimensions of a place (Barham 2003; Bérard and Marchenay 1995; Delfosse 1997; Demossier 2011). These human dimensions encompass production techniques and traditional know-how related to terroir products, but can also embrace broader cultural and historical dimensions related to the specificity of a place and its inhabitants, usually referred to as tradition. Social scientists have sometimes been invited to study and identify social aspects to be used in defining traditions and food heritage, in collaboration with producers (Bérard and Marchenay 1995). Ancient knowledge can be recovered in specific places, and even relocated to different settings (Fonte 2008). Ideas about terroir are also influenced by the evolution of scientific and technical knowledge. The introduction of new technologies to the production process transforms the final product, but also discourses around that product, while innovation can, paradoxically, reinforce the typicality of a product, shedding light on its culturally constructed nature (Casabianca and De Sainte-Marie 1997). Following Amy Trubek (2008), terroir is also now conceived by some as the “taste of place”. In this view, contrary to other heritage or museum objects or artifacts, food products are continuously produced and for that reason their authenticity must be continually reified (Barrey and Teil 2011). It has even been suggested that terroir can be conceived of and studied as a form of worldview (Sternsdorff-Cisterna 2013).

8Other authors have shed light on the political economy of terroir products. The historical development of regions recognized for production of specific products, and wine in particular, depends on the establishment of markets, often distant, where these products and their places of origin can become known, recognized for that production, and, eventually, famous (Chauvin 2010; Dion 1959; Fournier 2014; Pitte 2009; Ulin 1996; Unwin 1991). The ways that some alimentary products become perceived as authentic are interwoven with their commodification (Kopytoff 1986; Pratt 2007). The growing consumer interest in terroir products has been analysed as a reaction to the industrialization and globalization of food production (Barham 2003; Mutersbaugh et al. 2005; Murdoch, Marsden and Banks 2009; Allaire et al. 2005; Winter 2003). Globalization has had significant influence on the evolution of wine in regions all over the world (Anderson 2004; Garcia-Parpet 2014; Pitte 2009; Sternsdorff-Cisterna 2013).

9The social construction of terroirs must also be interpreted as a specific form of economic and political power and control over territories. Terroirs are social constructions of place, inseparable from politics and economics, with a network of agents involved in various stages of production and commercialisation, spanning from producers to consumers (Gade 2004; Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003; Moran 1993). At the political level, legal recognition and regulation of terroirs can have different impacts and influences. The legal establishment of a Geographical Indication (GI) to protect and regulate a specific production can lead to the homogenisation of production and even exclusion of certain producers, illustrating the influence that political or economic constraints can have on a product’s taste (Fournier 2013, 2014, 2020; Vitrolles 2011). For instance, the introduction of a GI for Basmati rice in India and Pakistan led to the prescription of European certification and standardization (Marie-Vivien 2008). These standards can lead to the marginalization of some small producers and to environmental degradation, as occurred, for example, in the case of tequila production (Bowen and Zapata 2009). In this respect, the meanings imbued in terroir products are multifaceted and influenced by economic, political, and technological constraints and opportunities that characterize their production context. This is a perspective shared by Overton and Heitger (2008), who stress that to explain how these rural spaces come to acquire value, we must adopt a multifactorial approach that includes economic, environmental and political factors as well as the social construction of wine regions.

11The concept of tradition is polysemic and encompasses several phenomena (Lenclud 1996; Testa and Isnard 2020). In different contexts, tradition can serve different purposes, often identity-related, and be analysed as such. In the case of wine and terroir products, tradition serves commercial purposes and therefore raises issues inherent to capitalism, namely competition, inequality and domination. The attention to place and tradition comes from the Appelations d’origine contrôlée (AOC) system (Trubek 2004), which have been developed to monitor the production and the marketing of wine (Lachiver 1988). The AOC system forces producers to think about their wine in terms of tradition, while tradition serves to reinforce the link established between wine and place (Gade 2004). In some research, the term tradition refers to techniques, ways of doing things and knowledge that existed in the past. In other research, tradition is analysed as a construction of the past in the present. Some traditions are considered genuine and others are invented for various reasons mainly identity and nationalism (Hobsbawm and Rangers 1983). For some, history inevitably leads to forms of essentialism and all traditions are invented (Handler and Linnekin 1984). These approaches to tradition are rooted in different paradigms: anthropologists and folklorists who see them as inventions in the present and historians who seek to reconstruct the past objectively (Hutton 2020).

12Most research on terroir products and tradition follows a constructivist approach. Ulin (1996, 2013) analyses the birth of the great châteaux of Bordeaux in the 18th and 19th centuries as an invention of tradition, as does Saleh (2013) on the possible establishment of an appellation in Lebanon, or Ceisel (2013), who describes Galician wine as a performance and an invention of tradition. Understood in this way, tradition is treated mainly as a discourse. Amilien and Hegnes also explicitly study food tradition as a rhetorical discourse (2013), while Paladino (2020) studies and defines tradition as a ‘story of stories’. Others associate tradition with a commercial discourse, whether for wine (Chaudat 2001), cheese (Delfosse 1997) or vineyard visits (Demossier 2011). Some studies take an objectivist stance and use the term tradition to refer to ways of doing things that existed in the past. For Marie-Vivien (2008), tradition appears as an objective reality in the form of knowledge, varieties and production sites in the past. For Fonte (2008), tradition exists also in the form of technical knowledge in the past. Finally, some research adopts both positions simultaneously, without necessarily distinguishing them explicitly, such as Viecelli (2021), for whom tradition is constructed by invoking techniques and ways of doing things in the past that still exist in the present. For Bowen and Zapatta (2009), tradition is also used to name practices that existed in the past, although they point out that tradition can be invoked for commercial purposes.

13In the world of wine, the notion of invented tradition reflects the way in which consumers; officials and producers alike actually perceive the role of the past in the symbolic construction of places as wine regions (Demossier 2010). However, this way of thinking about wine regions only applies and corresponds to the reality of countries with a long history of wine production, mainly European countries. Since the new wine-producing countries have no tradition of wine production, they cannot have a terroir, or only imperfect terroir, since their place is without tradition. For that reason, European wine regions find themselves in privileged posture regarding the rest of the world where all regions are “new” to wine and considered without “tradition”, even places where wine has been produced for more than a hundred years, like in most places around the world.

14In the remainder of this article, I would like to show how tradition, in terms of discourse, only partially corresponds to the contemporary reality of wine production in two wine regions. In order to broaden our understanding of tradition, I propose what I call a materialist definition of tradition. This approach focuses on the historical, sociological and economic conditions that explain the emergence and specialisation of agricultural crops, in this case wine, in a given area. I suggest that tradition can be defined as the historical constraints and opportunities that have led people living in a specific place to produce a specific product. This definition of tradition corresponds and develops that of Massimo Montanari (2006), for whom tradition can be seen as “successful innovation”. As we will see, regarding terroir products, often the success is commercial. Here, the goal is to try to understand how these constraints and opportunities—mainly commercial, but also environmental and political—may have influenced the specificity of a given product produced in that place and compare it to what people say about tradition. I will apply this definition of terroir and tradition to two different cases: the thousand-year-old wine producing region of Calabria, Italy, and the much younger wine region of Western Canada. In what follows, I first present discourses on tradition in Cirò Marina and in the Okanagan. I then offer a historical analysis of the development of these two wine regions.

Tradition discourses in Cirò Marina and in the Okanagan

15Situated in Italy’s southern region of Calabria, Cirò Marina is a small town of some 15,000 inhabitants. Cirò Marina is the most important wine area of Calabria, producing 75% of the Denominazione di Origine Controlatta (DOC) “controlled designation of origin” wine of this region. Approximately 15 wineries produce Cirò DOC wines. Some are very small, producing wine in an artisanal fashion and selling it only locally, which makes it difficult to determine their precise number. In addition to these wineries, there are also about 1500 small grape growers who sell grapes to wineries and also to merchants, who in turn sell them all over Calabria to people who produce their wine at home. The regional fame of the local wine therefore also extends to the grapes. There is also one public cooperative. Almost all of the people who produce the grapes or own wineries come from families involved in this activity for generations. The total vineyard area is about 1235 acres. Red wine is produced mainly with one grape, the Gaglioppo, which is typical of and unique to this area, and white wine is mainly produced with Greco Bianco grapes. Since the early 2000s, the area has also begun to cultivate other grape varieties, illustrating a concrete evolution of tradition.

16The Okanagan valley is a region spanning 200 km from north to south in the interior of the province of British Columbia in western Canada. The region encompasses many towns and communities including Kelowna, the key city. As of 2020, the region supported approximately 214 wineries. Most winery owners are newcomers to the industry. The total vineyard surface is about 8830 acres. More than 80 different grapes are produced, but Vitis viniferas and certain French hybrids account for about 85% of BC vineyard acreage.

17In both Cirò Marina and the Okanagan, we found discourses about tradition and observed specific difficulties in the definition of tradition. In both locations, wine producers were aware of and sensitive to the role and importance of tradition in defining the specificity of the local wine. They were also aware of and sensitive to the importance of being able to present this specificity to their consumers and markets. In the case of Cirò Marina, the problem stems from the need to relate current wine production practices to tradition. As we will see, the winemaking tradition in Cirò Marina is so ancient that it doesn’t align with the contemporary realities of wine production. As a young producer was telling me in 2004: “If we followed tradition, you know how we should make the wine? It should be a wine at 18-19% alc./vol. which should then be added with water and honey, this is how the ancient Greeks did. But tell me if I can go on the market to sell a wine made at 18-19% alc./vol. like the cooked must, into which we then have to put water and honey?” (Owner and winemaker, Cirò Marina, 2004)

18In contrast, in the Okanagan, wine production is so young—with grape production dating to the 1920s, but the quality wine industry only to the late 1980s—that producers feel they have no tradition that influences the quality or peculiarities of their wines. Okanagan producers had difficulty identifying the specificity of their place as a wine producing region, using environmental features but no social or cultural arguments. However, history was used to provide a certain time-depth to the contemporary winemaking industry.

19In the Okanagan, grape production is said to date back to the first permanent European settlement in the valley, a French Oblate Mission established by Father Pandosy in 1859. In a letter to his superior, Pandosy wrote that the location would be suitable for various crops including grapes and expressed his intention to plant them. For this reason, it is said locally that grape and wine production date back to 1859—a claim we found repeated in various books, magazines and association websites. However, this is contradicted by Bernard Lequime in a paper published in 1937: “In 1859, Father Pandosy mentions some grape vines he was going to bring in and plant. But if any such grape vines were brought in I never saw or heard of them” (Lequime 1937, p. 18). As such, the introduction of wine production by Father Pandosy can be interpreted as a foundation myth—that is, an origin story which may be based in part on historical evidence, but which has been transformed or enhanced over time as regards the historical depth of the local tradition. Its raison d'être is to link current production to the most distant historical past. Alternate historical evidence presented in respect to the history of local wine production included the commercial production of grapes in the 1920s and the establishment of the first local winery in 1934. As a relatively young wine producing region, these were the only elements invoked by producers to identify their tradition.

21That being said, wine producers in Cirò Marina also had difficulty defining their tradition other than in very general terms. The tradition was primarily defined through its use of a specific grape: the Gaglioppo. Gaglioppo grapes are indeed unique to this place and not used outside of Calabria. Tradition is also defined through general references to the past and the old peasant way of life, although what this entailed was never precisely explained. In addition, tradition is defined through certain cultivation techniques, especially regarding grape production, despite the fact that no one cultivates their vineyards in the pre-1950s fashion, without rows, and that new ways of cultivating grapes have been introduced since the 1960s and 1970s.

22This aspect of modernization is even more important in the winemaking process. In the past, grapes were crushed on location in the vineyard and only the must, the juice of the grapes, was taken to village cellars to begin the fermentation process. Small grape growers vinified their wine themselves to sell to major local traders, who in turn would sell it to foreign merchants. Another practice of the past was to mix wine from different years. When a new batch was ready, it was used to “refresh” the wine left over from previous years. Since the 1960s, new production techniques and new legal and commercial requirements have continuously transformed vinification methods. Producers must therefore reconcile these new ways of producing with their traditional methods.

23This reconciliation is conducted mainly through their discourse. For that reason, in a previous book I have defined wine production as a cultural performance, the wine being produced as much through specific techniques as through discourses, ideas, meanings and arguments supporting and defining its specificity. For example, use of barriques (small French wooden barrels) was justified as a way to go back to the wood used by their grandparents in the days before cement tanks. For others, use of technology was justified as a way to better express the specific aromas of the grapes and soil, and therefore a greater typicality of the place. Certain more modestly equipped winemakers emphasized their use of traditional methods while actually using modern equipment, such as large cement tanks and a manually operated bottling line dating from the 1970s. Others also using equipment from the 1970s claimed that their wine was not only traditional, but also more natural, using emerging marketing arguments of the niche natural wine market (Viecelli 2021; Black 2013; Pineau 2019).

24Through these discourses, various producers defined their wine and production methods as “traditional”. With these elements, they were able to define the identity of their wine, the identity of the place as a wine producing region and, finally, their own identity as wine producers. But these elements didn’t explain the specificity of the taste of the wine, outside of the use of a specific grape. Furthermore, new grape varieties had begun to be cultivated in the area, such as Chardonnay, transforming the taste of the wine. These elements explain little about the real context of wine production. Such discourses present a more utopian interpretation of the local setting (cf. Dutton and Howland 2020). At this point, we can ask ourselves what the purpose of tradition is in the case of local products. Does it serve objectively to explain the specific taste characteristics of a product, as enshrined in the law? Or does it serve to construct the identity of the product, linked to the identity of the place, in the context of the market economy and global capitalism? From this perspective, I believe that we can examine how a specific production has historically been socially organized and discover richer arguments to explain how a given place produces a given product with specific qualities.

25We will now examine how specific constraints and opportunities have influenced the context of wine production in Cirò Marina and in the Okanagan as well as how they have influenced the specificity of the wine being produced in these places. Through this examination I want to show how these constraints and opportunities might offer a broader understanding of each regions’ “traditions”.

How the constraints and opportunities of the past have influenced the specificity of the wines of Cirò Marina and the Okanagan

27Key transformations began in the 1960s, when wine from Cirò Marina first received a DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controlatta). First, in order to meet the fixed criteria of this regulation process, local wine producers had to decide how Cirò Marina wine would be defined. Despite the fact that up until this point, different grape varieties had been cultivated and used in Cirò wine, they limited the definition to wine made from Gaglioppo grapes. During my stays in the region, this decision was criticised by the producers, and in 2005, the Cirò DOC regulation was expanded to include new grape varieties (maximum 10% Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and/or Sangiovese). Second, the DOC was linked to technical requirements to guarantee a level of quality for consumers. Producers therefore had to follow production rules and be subject to different controls in the vineyards and cellars. These two transformations had the effect of homogenizing local wine production. Thirdly, these transformations made wine production and commercialisation more complicated and difficult, pushing many small winegrowers out of winemaking activity. Fourthly, following the legal requirements regarding wine production, instead of buying wine from the small growers who were also producing it, local traders instead began to buy their grapes and vinify the wine themselves.

28These transformations drove the majority of small scale grower-producers to give up winemaking and devote themselves solely to grape production. Undoubtably, it impacted the characteristics of the wine. From this time on, the local wine industry started to become concentrated in the hands of the few producers with the means to adapt to these transformations. At the same time, subsidies available for economic development in the 1970s enabled certain groups of landowners to open large wine production facilities. Wine production therefore began to be concentrated in the hands of a few large-scale wineries who, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mainly aimed to produce large volumes of cheap wine. Subsidies for grape production also encouraged grape growers to produce large volumes of grapes, emphasizing quantity over quality. The impact of this, according to the producers I met, was to lower the quality of the local wine, which according to them had previously been a quality product.

29Pressures to improve the quality of the wine came to the forefront in the 1990s, and various investments were made in vineyards and cellars. New and foreign technologies were introduced, including temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks and pneumatic presses. During my last stays in 2016 and 2019, all wineries were hiring permanent or consultant winemakers trained elsewhere in Italy. Through this brief overview, we can see how the evolution of local production has been influenced by different constraints and opportunities. In addition, we can see how these affected the production orientation and, ultimately, impacted the taste of the final product over time. But these different elements and transformations are never part of the local discourses about tradition. This is even more the case for wine production in the Okanagan where producers believe thy don’t have any tradition.

30Many dimensions of wine production in the Okanagan stem from historical opportunities and constraints. While the region’s grape growing and wine production date back to the 1920s and 1930s, major developments began in the 1960s. At this time, two trends would emerge. In one stream, large industrial wineries were producing large volumes of cheap wine. Until the end of the 1980s, these producers were obliged to buy all locally available grapes before they would be authorized to buy grapes from California. Local grape growers had no incentive to produce quality grapes. Most grew Vitis labrusca (fox grape) or French hybrids, climate hardy but not suited for the production of quality wine. In another stream, beginning in the 1970s, European immigrants began to plant and develop small vineyards and wineries. They also grew French hybrids and Vitis labrusca, but sometimes added white Vitis vinifera (common grape) varieties from their country of origin or from cool climate wine regions like Germany and Switzerland. Okanagan wine of this period was not renowned for its quality.

31In 1988, the signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement brought important changes to the industry. Many expected the local industrial wineries to disappear since they would now have to compete with cheap and fairly good wine from California. The government attempted to help by offering subsidies for the replanting of the old vineyards with Vitis vinifera in order to improve the quality of the wine. Almost all producers of this time took the money and walked out of the business. But, building on the dozen wineries that remained, a new industry started to emerge.

32Small farm gate wineries received legal authorization to receive visitors and sell their wine on site. This allowed development of a tourist industry built around the activity of visiting wineries and vineyards. The Okanagan, offering beautiful lakes and surroundings and a warm, dry climate, was already a tourist destination for vacationers from elsewhere in British Columbia, nearby provinces and U.S. states. Wineries benefited from the presence of tourists, which had a profound influence on the type of industry that emerged and the types of wine produced, as I will explain shortly.

33It must also be mentioned that the early winery owners of European origin were soon joined by new owners, mainly from British Columbia and Alberta, who bought old fruit orchards, turned them into vineyards and opened wineries. Each year, the number of Okanagan wineries increased, bringing the current total, 30 years later, to 214. The new owners, from a variety of professional backgrounds including law, medicine, business, and finance, embraced the romantic idyll of wine production. Most of these new owners had no previous knowledge or culture of wine production. They learned hands-on in their cellars, by taking courses and by talking and exchanging information with other wineries. Now, new owners tend to hire consultants or employ professional vineyard managers and winemakers.

34Individuals involved in the Okanagan wine industry have diverse backgrounds. Some began as amateur winemakers and learned the winemaking process independently. Some are descendants of German immigrants and returned to Germany to train at winemaking school. Some were trained in different types of chemistry or food transformation and learned winemaking while working in Canadian wineries. Some are professional winemakers from abroad who trained in foreign countries (mainly Australia, New Zealand and the United States). Some are young Canadians who travelled to foreign countries to get training and a degree in oenology, often working for some years in these countries, and returning to work as professional winemakers in Okanagan wineries.

35These backgrounds lead to different preferences and ideas about wine, which influence the end product. As such, an element that serves to define the specificity of the type of wine produced in the Okanagan is its diversity. The most popular grape varieties in the world are all cultivated in the Okanagan. The different styles of wine produced in different places around the world inform and influence the style of the locally-produced wines: fresh and aromatic white wines comparable to those from Alsace and Germany; elegant Pinot noirs like those from Burgundy or New Zealand; bold and powerful Bordeaux blends like those produced in Bordeaux or in California; rich Chardonnays like those of Burgundy or California; and rich Syrahs comparable to those produced in the northern Rhône valley, to name only a few.

36This degree of variety can often be found within one winery, with most easily offering around fifteen different wines, and some wineries over thirty-five different wines. At the same time, the total output volume of each winery is quite low, as compared to the production volume of wineries in other countries. Many produce only 1000 cases per year, others around 5000 cases, and only about 30 wineries produce 30,000 cases or more. Two elements explain this situation. First, since the wine is for the most part sold on-site at the winery, the price per bottle can be quite high, with a mean of approximately $16 CAD (10 EUR) per bottle, and with most wineries selling bottles at prices as high as $45 (29 EUR), $60 (38 EUR) and occasionally over $100 (64 EUR). In this market, customers accept such prices, because they are accustomed to state monopoly provincial wine stores where wine prices are high due to taxes imposed on the product. Second, because most of their sales are to winery visitors, owners want to be sure that if someone walks in, they don’t walk out empty handed. In order to maximize profits, they aim to offer wines for every taste preference and budget. These opportunities explain certain production orientations and, ultimately, the types of wine produced. Therefore, while they may not frame it this way themselves, one could say that Okanagan producers share a specific tradition which influences the types and tastes of the wines they produce. Why are these elements not included in the discursive definition of tradition? Is it because they are not sufficiently valued and rewarded? Or do they seem undesirable because they are too new, too technical or too commercial? Or simply because they do not fit into a certain common idea of what tradition should consist of?

Conclusion

37Through the concept of terroir, tradition reinforces the connection between wine and place. The way tradition has been used and defined around wine region has been mostly folkloristic, using idealized aspect of the past in order to build certain interpretations in the present. Used in this way, tradition serves to construct the commercial identity of the product with the equally constructed identity of the place. It makes it possible to construct an idealised version of the history of the product and its production. It does little or nothing to explain the taste characteristics of a product, even though this is why tradition is officially considered important. As an alternative to this problem, I have presented a materialist approach to tradition, defining it as the constraints and opportunities of the past that have shape the organisation of a given production in a particular place, which in turn impacts the final product. While I do not reject the study of tradition through discourses, which is important to understanding cultural aspects of wine production and producers identities, I believe that reintroducing the social, political and economic dimensions of production and linking them to the specificity of the wine produced permits a different understanding of how specific places produce specific tastes. In line with this view, I have illustrated how the specificities of wines produced in Cirò Marina and the Okanagan are linked to different constraints and opportunities over time, which I argue should be understood and perceived as being part of the local traditions of winemaking.

38Building on that basis, tradition discourses about wine could be analysed more critically. We could try to understand why certain specific elements and dimensions of the past or the present are emphasized in the cultural construction of tradition of wine. For instance, the role played by the foundation myths. It seems that it is important for producing regions to root their production as far as possible in time, even by doing idealized claims, instead of using more recent, but less noteworthy historical evidence, like a railway construction. In fact, the most recent development seems to be explicitly unworthy of the definition of tradition and is even in danger of shattering it. We could also try to identify specific omissions, which could shed light on specific local beliefs or dynamics. How and why certain elements are accepted as worthy components of tradition, while others are rejected, hidden or simply not considered reliable as part of tradition? Does identity weigh too heavily in defining tradition? What role does capitalism and the commercial incentive play in the definition of tradition?

39The case of wine is interesting because its production involves the use of the latest knowledge and technology. The contemporary reality of winemaking has little to do with tradition. In that perspective, I believe a more materialist approach to tradition can be useful to help producers better understand and define the identity of their wine and their place as a wine producing region. In the case of old wine producing regions, certain more modern elements could be acknowledged and embraced as part of their tradition, instead of been rejected because of their ‘modernity’, in favour of ‘folkloric’ ones. As demonstrated in this paper, this could help newer wine producing regions to better understand and identify their identity and tradition, especially those who perceived themselves has been without tradition. If tradition is invented, why not embrace its potential? This could help to undermine power relations between regions that have traditions and regions that are not considered to have traditions, or between regions that are known for their traditions and regions that are not.