Wine Tourism and Gastronomy
12.2 Theoretical Background
Research works looking at the links between wine and gastronomy are few and far between. There are technical and professionally orientated works looking at wine tourism (in particular the Dubrule Report from 2007), which do not address the topic from the perspective of the construction and the dynamics of a (wine) tourism system which combines stakeholders, activities, and geographic areas (Knafou, Stock and the MIT team 2002). A few authors, particularly geographers like Sophie Lignon-Darmaillac, have put forward a defi nition and a scientifi c characterization of wine tourism with an empirical study of several vineyards in France and on the Iberian Peninsula. This scientifi c approach focuses primarily on an analysis of wine-tourism offers and rarely discusses the activities and the intended activities of wine-tourists.
Similarly, the approaches regarding food are limited to the professional world of hospitality and food critics on the one hand, and to the sphere of heritage stakehold- ers on the other (works produced by the Mission Française du Patrimoine & des Cultures Alimentaires (MFPCA)—the French Mission for Heritage and the Food Cultivation—particularly in relation to the referencing of the French gastronomic meal on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO 2010). Very often gastronomy is confused with cooking and excludes wine. The article “Gastronomie” by the historian Pascal Ory in Lieux de Mémoire led by Pierre Nora shows that this is a form of intellectualization of good food and
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good drink, emphasizing the Greek etymology of the two component roots of the neologism which appeared in 1801 from the pen of the poet-chef Joseph Berchoux:
gastro, le ventre et nomos, la norme, la loi . Strictly speaking, food is the norm/the law of the stomach, by which we mean a set of speeches and allegories concerning eating and also drinking.
In this context, it is not surprising that research works combining wine with food are almost nonexistent. In fact, the scientifi c literature dealing with wine forgets gastronomy and its role in tourism development. Only the recent works by geogra- pher Olivier Etcheverria working on the one hand to defi ne gourmet tourism and on the other to qualify the wine tourism in Santorini (Etcheverria 2015) try to identify the potential links between wine and gastronomy.
The role of wine-tourists and their changing activities are, it would seem, essen- tial. In order to understand the motivation (a recreational project), geographic distri- bution (travel and temporary ways of life) and the gastronomic content (experiences, the learning process and the acquisition of skills in relation to discourse and gastro- nomic images-allegories) it is possible to apply the concept of a theatrical gastro- nomic atmosphere for and by tourists suggested by Cécile Clergeau and Olivier Etcheverria. The concept of a gastronomic atmosphere (Clergeau and Etcheverria 2013a , b ) can be linked to the industrial atmosphere developed by Marshall in 1890:
a grouping of shared knowledge, values, norms, and traditions which bring a region to life, especially the local labor market and the social relations between enterprises which promote creativity and innovation. This notion of an industrial atmosphere was then taken on by Beccatini at the end of the 1970s by applying it to the industrial landscape of the Third Italy characterized by a large number of small specialized companies within the same business sector and with good export fi gures. The indus- trial atmosphere is both an osmosis factor and a transmission of skills factor within the system. It is therefore possible to defi ne the gastronomic atmosphere as “a local accumulation of know-how, knowledge, activities, discourse and gastronomic alle- gories linked to taste that promotes learning and skills-acquisition by the protago- nists of the co-construction of the tasting experience” (Clergeau and Etcheverria 2013a , b : 53). So that the atmosphere is appropriate and understood by tourists, it must be dramatized by the various stakeholders in the tourism industry. This is a theatrical staging providing visibility and readability for the temporary residents. It is a transformation of the gastronomic atmosphere into a tourism challenge. In fact the tourism development of the gastronomic atmosphere depends on the ability of the tourism-promotion stakeholders to provide an experience for the temporary resi- dents (Pine and Gilmore 1998 ). This experience distances them from their daily life and their ordinary existence. The tourist transformation of the gastronomic atmo- sphere is as such a matter of the production of an experience (Filser 2002 ). But the work of Holbrook and Hirschman ( 1982 ) shows that the production of a consumer experience comes through a staging related directly to scenery (the dramatization), to intrigue (the story) and action (the consumer’s relationship with the product). It is via this dramatization that tourists fully appreciate the gastronomic atmosphere.
This is co-production economics. In this sense, the dramatization of the gastronomic
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atmosphere involves and directly links the tourist to the dynamics of tourism devel- opment. The gastronomic atmosphere is dramatized, which is to say made accessi- ble and understandable by tourists, and ultimately shared or co-produced by these tourists. This is because if tourists take ownership of, and enjoy this theatrical gas- tronomic atmosphere, they transform and enrich it at the same time. They make it even more tourism-orientated. Tourists, with their activities, and feedback of experi- ences, participate directly in this process of tourism development.
When the theatrical gastronomic atmosphere is actually attractive from a tour- ist’s point of view, which is to say it becomes the purpose of the travel and tourists’
mobile activities, it is then possible to identify the appearance of a gourmet tourist destination. For a gourmet place to become a gourmet tourist destination, it needs four qualities. Firstly, a tourist destination is a place represented and launched by tourists. As such, the destination is “an area that lends itself to a tourism interpreta- tion” (Hazebroucq 2009 ). In the same sense, Violier ( 2009 ) defi nes the destination as “a representation of a place or an area in which the tourists see themselves able to undertake a recreational activity (rest, play or discovery) and as a lived-in space, which is to say, perceived and used by the tourist, the destination is the link between the world and the place.” Secondly, it is an area allowing meetings, physical and ideological confrontations and experiences combining both permanent and tempo- rary residents and between the temporary residents themselves. It is a place for cohabitation. A destination is a crossroads between activities and social representa- tions of both the local and the global, of the microcosm and the macrocosm. It is an intermediate place, the articulation of opening and closing, co-constructed by the tension between the major global trends and various local counter-trends. Thirdly, the tourist destination is a place driven, promoted and enhanced from a tourism point of view by a “ central ” stakeholder (private or public, individual or collective).
In their article Politiques urbaines du tourisme (2007) Violier and Zarate stress the role of a “central” identifi able tourist stakeholder who is identifi ed from within and, in particular, from the outside so as to be able to project and promote, invigorating a range of local stakeholders and enhancing the surprising qualities of a place. They invite us to think of tourism development “in terms of interrelationships between groups of stakeholders and the qualities of places in a specifi c local and global con- text.” The destination is co-constructed at the crossroads of projects, strategies developed by the system of tourism stakeholders and the activities of stakeholder- tourists. And fourthly, it is an ordinary, everyday, place which undergoes a tourist transformation that transforms it into an extraordinary and exceptional place. The destination is a place transformed in a time of temporary mobility and the space of tourist developments. The tourism capacity of a destination is linked to the capacity of stakeholders to understand this transition to the extraordinary and exceptional aspect in their structure, the mastering of the different development phases of the destination, the management of the dynamic and the progress of the destination and in the permanent and responsive adaptation to the processes of changing activities and social image of tourism. The destination is built around a web of expectations and interlinked viewpoints on various scalar and temporal levels.
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