ABSTRACT
Over the years, the notion of terroir has come to encapsulate the European idea of a connection between locality and quality in an era that is often described as intensively globalized. European agriculture, which is one of the oldest areas of policy making in the EU, has entered a post-productivist era, which is defined by the buzzwords of multifunctionality, rural development, heritage and environmental concerns. At the heart of the process of European integration, agricultural modernization has been characterized by the emergence of a growing interest in quality foodstuffs and agricultural products encapsulated by what are termed legally as Geographical Indications (GIs), or more imaginatively, the concept of terroir. More recently the discourse of terroir has been applied to issues of local development and territorial definition and it has also been widely adopted by food producers at the European level as a commercial and economic strategy.
