Burgundy: A Global Anthropology of Place and Taste

Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork, this book explores the professional, social, and cultural world of Burgundy wines, the role of terroir, and its transnational deployment in China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. It demystifies the terroir ideology by providing a unique long-term ethnographic analysis of what lies behind the concept. While the Burgundian model of terroir has gone global by acquiring UNESCO world heritage status, its very legitimacy is now being challenged amongst the vineyards where it first took root.

Marion Demossier is Professor of French and European Studies and Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Southampton, and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in Paris. She has been involved as an expert with the wine industry in France and New Zealand and is a member of the UNESCO network Chair Culture of Wine, Dijon since 2006.