Crafting Alternatives through Wine: An Ethnography of Female Natural Winegrowers in Italy

Abstract

This thesis examines the production and consumption of natural wines through an ethnographic account of the work undertaken by female winegrowers in Italy. Drawing on ethnographic materials collected in two Italian regions (Piedmont and Sicily) between 2017 and 2018, this study investigates the multiple meanings and values attached to the production and consumption of these wines. Produced through a minimal interventionist approach which is based on the rejection of synthetic chemical substances in the vineyard and oenological additives in the cellar, natural wines are a debated product category which polarises opinion and lacks a legally recognised definition both at a national and European level due to their alternative sensorial aesthetics. At the interface between traditional claims to terroir, new environmental sensitivities, and consumers’ desires for ecologically and socially embedded food products, natural wines represent a flourishing niche market supported by a transnational network of sales agents and cultural intermediaries. Analysing how female natural winegrowers interact with nature and craft their wines, I argue that these producers frame their work through a highly reflexive posture which informs the ways they critically engage with their locality, approach the organic certification, and challenge the existing normative frameworks of quality. By producing wines through a careful sensorial engagement which preserves the non-human elements inhabiting their vineyards and cellars, these women promote a relational understanding of terroir and taste which emphasises the unfolding materiality of production and consumption. As relatively new social actors in a field historically dominated by men, I argue that these women are powerful agents of change who have successfully carved out their own space within a world which has traditionally excluded them from leading positions and entrepreneurial roles. Through their wines, they craft alternative ways of being in the world which re-shape the relationships between tradition and techno science, culture and nature, and local and global scales.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Clelia Viecelli: orcid.org/0000-0001-6646-3073

ORCID for Marion Demossier: orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-1461

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