Defining Regions: the making of places in the New Zealand wine industry

Abstract

As a product, wine is closely associated with place. The industry has devised various strategies in order to delimit space and create places that are marketable as brands. Although demarcated by supposedly ‘natural’ features, these spaces are socially constructed in order to maximise accumulation. This article reports on the use of place-making strategies in the case of the New Zealand wine sector and the role of capital and agency in their production. Two case studies—Martinborough and Gimblett Gravels—are offered where contrasting geographical strategies have been employed. The work concludes that the employment of flexible delimitation is a strategy that allows contestation in creatively destructive ways. Such an approach allows for specialised identity construction within the framework of semi-porous boundaries. This calls for local economic policy that sits between the two extremes of open-ended neoliberal capital accumulation and arbitrary regional planning.

Keywords:

• Wine
• place-making strategies
• geographical indications
• capital accumulation
• terroir
• New Zealand

Notes

1. Thus a bottle of wine with, for example, ‘Marlborough’ on its label must contain at least 85 per cent of its wine from that region. The same applies for the specified vintage and variety.

2. Of relevance to this paper, this schedule includes Martinborough but not Gimblett Gravels.

3. Craggy Range remains the only large wine operation in Martinborough that has significant holdings outside the region. It is notable that the name given to the Te Muna Road property that Craggy Range purchased that is on the title deeds, if not its wine labels, is ‘Martinborough Terrace’.