Wine Drinking Culture in France

A National Myth or a Modern Passion?

Marion Demossier

• Éditeur: University of Wales Press
• Année: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781783161225
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Sozialwissenschaften
• Sous-sujet: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

This book provides a new interpretation of the relationship between consumption, drinking culture, memory and cultural identity in an age of rapid political and economic change. Using France as a case-study it explores the construction of a national drinking culture -the myths, symbols and practices surrounding it- and then through a multisited ethnography of wine consumption demonstrates how that culture is in the process of being transformed. Wine drinking culture in France has traditionally been a source of pride for the French and in an age of concerns about the dangers of 'binge-drinking', a major cause of jealousy for the British. Wine drinking and the culture associated with it are, for many, an essential part of what it means to be French, but they are also part of a national construction. Described by some as a national product, or as a 'totem drink', wine and its attendant cultures supposedly characterise Frenchness in much the same way as being born in France, fighting for liberty or speaking French. Yet this traditional picture is now being challenged by economic, social and political forces that have transformed consumption patterns and led to the fragmentation of wine drinking culture. The aim of this book is to provide an original account of the various causes of the long-term decline in alcohol consumption and of the emergence of a new wine drinking culture since the 1970s and to analyse its relationship to national and regional identity.

Chapter One

Drink, Consumption and Identity

Wine consumption in France provides a window on to the changing nature of what it means to be French. What follows is a case study exploring the construction of a national drinking culture – the myths, symbols and practices surrounding it – and then through a multi-­sited ethnography of wine consumption a demonstration of how that culture is in the process of being transformed. The aim is to provide an original account of the various causes of the long-­term decline in alcohol consumption and of the emergence of a new wine drinking culture since the 1970s, and to analyse its relationship to national and regional identity. To do this it is necessary to examine a number of key developments, including the broader shifts in atti­tudes towards the drinking of alcohol, and to consider how individuals engage with the past and build their future through the consumption of wine as a cultural artefact and as a commodity. It is also important to analyse the impact of economic globalization on wine culture as well as its wider cultural resonances. In addressing these and other questions an anthropological approach is particu­larly valuable because wine as a product and a cultural object is a repository of memories enabling French people to position them­selves in relation to the past through the process of consumption. However it is also helpful to draw upon other theoretical models, and by consciously seeking to combine the insights of other disciplines it is possible to analyse wine culture and consumption in a French national context by using a multilevelled analysis that embraces producers, the wine profession and the consumer.

This chapter sets out the theoretical background to the study of a national drinking culture by presenting the dominant theories dealing with national identity, regionalism, consumption, taste and memory. These are, in turn, examined in relation to the concept of wine drinking culture, arguing that the national dimension of French wine culture no longer relies on consumption, but has more to do with specific emblematic values which are today used as markers of identification through culturalization, which I define here as a process of creating cultural meanings. Wine consumption in France can be seen as a way of reshaping old ideologies, and it is certain that paradoxes such as tradition versus modernity, or wine as an alcohol opposed to wine as a cultural product, are embedded in French wine drinking culture. For wine producers and wine lovers, despite the modernization of their society, wine remains very much a part of the wider phenomenon of the French ‘cultural exception’. Yet this belief is not shared equally by the whole of French society.

1. Drinking and national identity

In the debate about the nature of national identity, political and social scientists have generally been divided into two dominant camps, placing more or less emphasis upon culture and identity in the formation of the nation. The essentialist approach to identity formation argues that political identities flow more or less directly from the underlying cultural raw material, while the constructivists/modernists contend that the connection is more tenuous. Both interpretations share the assumption that the nation is inherently a cultural entity, as cultural as it is political.1 While the essentialist approach to identity formation is driven primarily by cultural back­ground variables, which are constituted of roots, heritage, language and religion, the constructivists place greater emphasis upon poli­tics seen as an active process of identity formation entailing the manipulation of cultural symbols. Their points of divergence are connected to the wider debate about whether or not there is a biological or other deep ‘essence’, a fixed character to any partic­ular identity or whether identities are socially constructed.

Anthony D. Smith,2 who has produced an influential definition of the nation that combines the insight of both models, provides us with a multidimensional definition of the nation, listing five main attributes: historic territory or homeland, common myths and historical memories, a collective mass public culture,3 shared legal rights and duties for all members, and a single economy with terri­torial mobility for members. National identity is therefore a cultural phenomenon through which a community sharing a particular set of characteristics is led to the belief that its members are ancestrally related. One of the means to foster this cultural dimension is to transmit values, beliefs, customs, conventions, habits, languages and practices to the new members who receive the culture of a partic­ular nation. The process of identification with a specific culture implies a strong emotional investment, one that is able to create bonds of solidarity amongst the members of a given community.4 Thus they imagine and feel their community to be separate and distinct from others.5 But how does it apply to wine production and consumption as an element of national identity?

The link between French national identity and wine is complex. Wine refers to both a political process – with the progressive emer­gence throughout French history of an increasingly unified, regulated economic space divided between production and consumption, and the establishment of a regional wine hierarchy symbolized by the AOC and constructed around the idea of terroir – and a cultural construction establishing and promoting wine as an essentialist element at the core of French identity.6 Indeed wine’s powerful imagery in France has become especially important because of the way it is presented as the essence of the French nation, illustrated by the old expression boire un pot (have a drink together), which is still used and associated with red wine and shared sociability. Another patriotic example is le pinard (red plonk), which was associated with French soldiers during the Great War. At the mobilization in August 1914, the soldiers of the Midi were said to have shouted: ‘We’ll be back home for the wine harvest.’ 7 Later, in 1939, wine came to be the vin triste of the conscripts, as poignantly described by Jean­-Paul Sartre in his Carnets de Guerre (Wartime Diaries). Another example of this strong involve­ment of the nation with wine is exemplified by the Creation of the Comité de Propagande du Vin, which was established in 1931 by the government and embodied official views of wine in inter­-war France and its role at the heart of various debates surrounding issues such as national and rural identity, health and patriotism.8 Wine has, therefore, deep historical resonances for French national culture, inspiring patriotic sentiments with its representations rooted in the essentialist concept of the nation, and it remains a powerful symbol of cultural continuity in the face of the changing relationship between global, national and regional identities in France.

According to Thomas Wilson, culture should not been seen simply as a good tool with which to understand the real or true nation, and culture and identity are not windows on to the nation, they are the nation itself.9 Wilson further contends:

Drinking […] is a historical and contemporary process of identity formation, contributing to its maintenance, reproduction and transformation […] Rather, drinking is the stuff of everyday life, quotidian culture which at the end of the day may be as important to the lifeblood of the nation as are its origin myths, heroes and grand narratives.

In the case of France, drinking wine is not only an element of a shared culture, but it is embedded in other characteristics of the nation encompassing its five dimensions: psychological, cultural, territorial, historical and political.

The psychological dimension of this traditional French drinking culture is marked by the role of moderate consumption through the ritualization of drinking, its association with the process of eating and a collective and public demonstration of self-­control. Historically, local landowners and professional elites played a crucial role in trans­mitting this cultural model, with their clubs, confraternities and gastronomic associations, as well as the public festivities that punctu­ated the republican calendar.10 It provided the basis for the consciousness of forming a group based on the sharing of conviviality in an atmosphere of pleasure and enjoyment.11 Proverbs and songs collected during the nineteenth century in Burgundy, Bordeaux and elsewhere attest the formation of a drinking culture emphasizing the relationship between moderate consumption and the quality of wine production at a time of major tensions for both elements. A convincing illustration of this new literature is exemplified by Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière and his Almanach des Gourmands which in 1803 published an ‘Eloge du vin de table’ encouraging wine consumption and moderation. At a regional level, the image of elitism and wine consumption was strongly promoted, as is illustrated by the example of the engraving of the figures of L’Amateur de Bordeaux or L’Amateur de Bourgogne, which were in circulation promoting the wine drinker to the rank of the bourgeois.

It was through eating and drinking that the French nation essen­tialized the link between wine and the public republican sphere, enabling a strong identification between the daily collective consumption of wine and the imaginary consumption of the nation. In other words, drinking wine provided until recently a means of belonging to the nation by consuming one of its main ingredients in a way that was impossible for other alcoholic products. This is exemplified by the figure of Nectar created by the wine retail chain Nicolas in 1922, which incarnates the Parisian delivery man, a handlebar moustache, big eyes full of charm and his arms full of bottles of wine. Another example is provided by the state campaign to encourage wine drinking conducted in 1930 and entitled ‘Drink wine and be happy’, illustrated by a young couple represented on the background of a France made of grapes. Yet the situation was more complex than simply seeing wine as an expression of being French because it also emphasized regionalism (Burgundy, Bordelais, etc.), and the situation was also different for non-­wine­-producing regions such as Brittany and Normandy. In fact, the national model which emerged coexisted with touristic and regional literature promoting local products and regional identi­ties. It could be argued that each region had its unique formulae to promote its drinking culture.

Through the creation of the notion of terroir and its corollary, the label of denomination of origin, the French landscape attached to wine production has become historicized and politicized, and is presented as a major component of a certain image of the French nation, an element of the national heritage and history that is worth fighting for. French wine production is an economic space delin­eated by boundaries and markers, differentiating one area from another on the same basis as French national identity is constituted by the diversity of regional identities. For the historian Loubère the ‘wine revolution’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century corresponded to a major transformation of wine consumption in France which can be better understood by five dimensions: progress of science with the birth of oenology, major technological changes, an economically considerable increase of wealth accruing chiefly to the makers and sellers of fine wines, rise of an affluent bourgeoisie and decline of the industrial and rural proletariat, and finally reversal of governmental policy that was a great stride away from the tradi­ti...