6533b872fe1ef96bd12d2bc6

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Republican control of the market. Political and cultural conflict between growers and wine merchants under the French Third Republic

subject

description

Initially -in keeping with isues examined by Neil Fligstein- the change around in the market for Burgundy wines to the detriment of the Beaune wine merchants was clearly political in origin: the mass unionization of vineyard owners and the political control exerted by Parliamentarian owners after the republicanization of the countryside enabled them to make the most of republican ideology when reshaping the legal framework of the market although the change had been initiated by the wine merchants. The 1919 statute on denominations of origin and its application attributed the surplus value to the vineyard owners and not to the wine merchants' brands. But this political move alone cannot explain the victory won by the vineyard owners of Nuits-Saint-Georges and Meursault. They subsequently managed to impose an image of a traditional wine tightly bound to the locality. This is where the cultural sphere became involved and the complex work of bringing together the regionalist revival, the invention of traditions, and the promotion of the small vineyard owner as the emblematic figure of the Republic. Burgundy wine together with all the value enhancement of the food economy through terroir and tradition is therefore both a political and a cultural construction.