ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the terroir utopias of wine producers in Cirò Marina in Calabria (Italy). Based on a content analysis of wineries’ websites and on an anthropological fieldwork with wine producers, it demonstrates how terroir utopias are intimately linked to the ways commercially produced wine is marketed both locally and globally. Wine is a commodity and through time its commercial nature has informed the cultural meanings associated to wine production and consumption. Legal systems encompassing wine production have been created for commercial reasons and have defined and legitimised terroir through the use of space (place) and time (tradition). Various contemporary narratives about wine must be seen as a specific form of commercial discourse and as so, offering idealised interpretations of reality. But because consumers and producers alike view these interpretations as real and authentic, these interpretations turn into utopias. Ethnographic evidence offers a more complex understanding of local wine production and allow us to put into comparative perspective the utopian market-oriented version of terroir being presented on wineries’ websites. But this illustrates how terroir utopia effectively allows producers to imagine an idealised past and present and enables them to envision a better future.
