Tradition, Territory, and Terroir in French Viniculture: Cassis, France, and Appellation Contrôlée

Abstract

Many French wines, and now other kinds of agricultural products, manifest the process of “patrimonialization” as a counterforce to the homogenizing trends in the globalization of world food systems. The appellation contrôlée (AOC) concept, which dates from 1935, is the oldest expression of that patrimonial process. In it, the characteristics of a place—the terroir—are used to gloss its legally protected, territorial definition on which hinge claims to a place-based product authenticity and, by extension, quality. AOC implementation, now with almost seven decades of experience in France, serves as the model to understand how the application of terroir to place has focused on land-use practice, wine definition, vinicultural tradition, and landscape preservation. A complementary process at work is product salience that establishes its individuality in an interactive expectation between producer and consumer. Fieldwork in the commune of Cassis (Department of Bouches-du-Rhône) in the South of France sorted the set of historical, environmental, and economic conditions to reveal the actual functioning of these two processes at a local level. Appellation Cassis contrôlée, the third oldest and one of the smallest AOC in French viniculture, comprises 180 ha of vineyards and fourteen wine growers. In this case, establishment of product authenticity has been a continuous process. Wine types have evolved in spite of the absence of real innovation; political territory has been used to define terroir; the discourse of quality depends heavily on the historic past; vineyards have acquired a community value beyond any productivity; and producers have defined and defended their territory to boost its prestige to themselves and their consumers. The key entity in the appellation is the lower winegrowers syndicate. Presumptive statements, promotional rhetoric, consumer desire, and the politics of local decision making have shaped this wine region far beyond its environmental associations.

Key Words:

• appellation contrôlée
• Cassis
• France
• territory
• viniculture
• wine
• patrimonialisation

Acknowledgments

A five-month residential award in 2000 as a Fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, whose director was Michael Pretina, provided the necessary conditions for field and archival work on this project. I thank also the viticulteurs cassidains, especially François Paret, Jean-Jacques Bontoux, François Sack, and François Dumon, as well as the Annals editor and reviewers who offered sound suggestions for manuscript improvement.

Notes

1. The meanings of terroir in French are (1) as an ensemble of lands used by a rural collectivity or (2) an extent of land having a certain physical homogeneity or tied to agricultural technology (Trésor 1994, XVI, 142). Its use in English is attested as far back as the fifteenth century and, for a long time, simply meant either a territory or a soil, without the nuances given to it in French. More recently, the meaning of that word has expanded to include the subsoil, siting, drainage, and microclimate and sometimes the vine itself. The geologist Wilson (1998) analyzed terroir in several elite wine regions mainly in terms of rock composition; White (2003) placed soil as the most important terroir component.

2. The Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO), founded in 1935, has its headquarters in Paris. From 1935 to 1947 it was known as the Comité National des Appellations d'Origine (CNAO) and from 1947 to 1990 as the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine des Vins et Eaux-de-Vie. Although INAO receives most of its funding from the French government and is administered by the Ministère de l'Agriculture et de la Pêche, it is, strictly speaking, not a governmental entity. INAO has the power to issue decrees and enforce its own rules. A statute prohibits the government from modifying the proposals of the national committee of INAO. Syndicates have most of their regular contact with regional committees; the one for southeastern France is located in Hyères (Var).

3. The law of 2 July 1990 officially defined an appellation of origin (AOC) as “the name of a district, region or locality serving to designate a product which comes from there and which its quality or its character are due to the geographical environment, including natural and human factors” (INAO 2001).

4. Five kinds of sources have formed my information base on Cassis viniculture: discussions with local vignerons; minutes of syndicate meetings (Syndicat des Vignerons de Cassis, 1985–1997); unpublished and published documents in the Archives départamentales des Bouches-du-Rhône in Marseille (Cassis 1832); unpublished information in the Mairie de Cassis; and records of the INAO regional office in Hyères (INAO 1997).

5. Cassis is sometimes confused with cassis (pronounced ka sēs), the black currant (Ribes) grown especially around Dijon, from which a popular liqueur crème de cassis is made. No currants are grown in the Commune of Cassis (pronounced ka sē), nor does the wine have anything to do with the fruit of that name.

6. This oenological practice, permitted in many appellations in the cooler parts of France, is forbidden in the south. It is now called by the euphemism, enrichissement du moût (enrichment of the must) to remove the stigma attached to the word chaptalisation (in English, chaptalization).

7. The most well-known line of Mistral's (1887, 107) poem “Calendal” reads: “L'abeille n'a pas de miel plus doux: il brille comme un diamant limpide, et sent le romarin, la bruyère et le myrte, qui recouvert nos collines; et dans le verre …” [The bee has no sweeter honey; it shines like a clear diamond and smells of the rosemary, heather and myrtle that cover our hills—and in the glass …]

8. A recent “coffee table book” conveys what in France is deemed worth knowing for the public about Cassis wine and viniculture (Chastel-Chagnaud 1999). Lovely colored photographs, recipes, wine labels, and extravagant prose make this volume a winsome promotional tract. A sober, dispassionate account, even if the criticism were tempered with acclaim, would not be well received. The wine-consuming public gets much less depth, complexity, and balance in their reading than in the wines they drink.

9. A more restrictive system known as métayage prevailed until diversified farming gave way to specialization on wine grapes (Livet 1962, 356–60).