Restaurant professionals as curators of wine spaces: norms and practices guiding wine quality and sustainability

ABSTRACT

Little is known about restaurant professionals’ views on wine sustainability and how these beliefs are embedded in cultural norms of wine quality. Using wine spaces as an entry point, this ethnographic study sought to explore the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. The article depicts wine spaces as emblems mediating a particular wine culture with its own norms which guide such assessment. These spaces provide professionals with a setting to accumulate culinary capital as curators, and so wine spaces can be understood as the realm of experts. The results show that incorporating sustainability in wine assessment is challenging for restaurant professionals. First, there are inherent conflicts between environmental and sociocultural sustainability. Second, some norms and practices ingrained in heritage and tradition act as barriers to the adoption of, for example, more sustainable packaging. Third, the perceived sensory attributes of more sustainable wines are sometimes considered detrimental to wine quality. However, we argue that in their role as curators and intermediaries, restaurant professionals can use their expert status to challenge norms and give sustainability the same importance as other parameters such as acidity, tannins, and overall balance.

KEYWORDS:

• Wine storage
• quality
• sustainability
• culinary capital
• norms
• restaurant professionals

Introduction

Over the counter, there are around 40 bottles of the same wine, which are certified organic, standing vertically at room temperature. The sommelier mentions that she buys these wines for events, from large wine producers. She then explains that large producers have the means to be certified and are also reliable with regard to availability and the ability to negotiate a ‘good’ price. This is why she is strict about demanding organic wine when buying large volumes. In contrast, for the restaurant wine list, she chooses small producers that are not necessarily certified but that she ‘knows’ work sustainably and with traditional practices. These more ‘special’ wines are stored horizontally, in racks in the wall, within a very small, hidden, and cool room. (Field note from The Gastrobistro)

Sustainability has become increasingly central in the wine industry (Golicic, 2021). In our fieldwork, we have repeatedly encountered scenes like the one described above, where the restaurant professionals reflected on their choices to buy, allocate, store, and age wine in different spaces. They often referred to these wine spaces as places that held a greater meaning and afforded certain practices. Beverage storage practices were connected to norms and perceptions of wine quality that in turn intersected with how wine sustainability was understood.

When researching food storage practices and ideals of sustainability within the Swedish hospitality sector, we noticed a distinction being made between food and wine (Carrillo Ocampo et al., 2021). However, discussion of sustainability within the wine world often centres around environmental issues, since wine is an agricultural product (Flores, 2018). Sociological and cultural studies, on the other hand, recognize wine as a cultural product and wine consumption as a social practice (Charters et al., 2022). Nevertheless, wine sustainability is rarely examined as a phenomenon embedded in cultural norms and ideals. The influence of sustainability on how restaurant professionals select wine and manage their wine spaces is sparsely studied. One recent exception is a quantitative study by Gazzola et al. (2023) focusing on the acceptance and inclusion of natural wine within haute cuisine restaurants in Italy. Although their study did not yield significant results on how natural wine is characterized, the authors stressed the need to include restaurateurs’ perspectives on sustainable wines, as these perspectives have been neglected in earlier studies. Applying a qualitative approach, we address this void by using the content, appearance, and curation of wine spaces in restaurants as an entry point to study restaurant professionals’ views of sustainable wine.

Wine spaces, such as cellars and fridges, secure the quality of wine and add to its value (Liu et al., 2019). While research has focused on wine cellars and their role in wine aging and tourism (Arredondo-Ruiz et al., 2020; O'Neill & Palmer, 2004), other facilities used for storing and serving wine e.g. closets, service stations, etc., (here grouped as wine spaces), are scarcely studied within the restaurant context. On a general level, restaurant storage facilities have been studied as representations of restaurant professionals’ beliefs regarding sustainability, and as spaces used for pacification and mediation (Mandel, 2022; Ocampo et al., 2021). Building on these studies on storage practices and facilities in restaurants, we address how the materiality of wine spaces allows restaurant professionals to portray their own understandings of wine quality and sustainability, and the norms guiding such assessments.

According to Taylor et al. (2023), the materiality of wine spaces – for example, storage, cellars, layout, and wine bottles – forms part of the aesthetics used as cultural signs to communicate restaurant wine culture. The authors borrow from organization culture framework to argue that three aspects are central to the creation of a wine culture: artifacts, norms, and assumptions. Although Taylor et al. (2023) mention that norms and assumptions are central to wine culture, they do not specifically describe what these norms and assumptions are. We address this gap by focusing on the norms that guide wine quality assessments and influence restaurant professionals’ beliefs regarding wine sustainability. Hence, the aim of this study is to explore the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. Our research questions are: How do normative expectations of wine quality influence restaurant practices related to wine sustainability? What is the role and function of restaurant professionals in managing wine spaces?

Drawing on the concepts of social norms and culinary capital as theoretical framework, we argue that it is challenging for restaurant professionals to rigorously incorporate sustainability as a key parameter when assessing and selecting wine. This highlights the relevance of having clear guidelines for including sustainability aspects when assessing wine quality within wine training and education. Furthermore, this theoretical framework allows us to contribute to the research on sociocultural relations and practices that occur in restaurants. We proceed by first discussing restaurant professionals and the literature on wine quality and sustainability, and then elaborating on the theoretical framework.

Restaurant professionals, wine quality, and sustainability

Restaurant professionals can be defined as all staff working in the front and back of house who handle food and beverages and/or interact with clients. Past research has primarily focused on management as decision makers and leaders; however, lower positions also influence restaurant wine operations, as they have direct contact with guests (Ruiz-Molina et al., 2010; Taylor et al., 2023). Furthermore, individuals have their own beliefs which may not be aligned with the establishment’s philosophy, and the staff interact and influence each other constantly; all of this can affect a restaurant’s wine culture (Scander et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2023). In this article, we use the term ‘restaurant professionals’ to refer to staff working at restaurants whose duties include purchasing, storage management, food/beverage preparation, and contact with guests; more specifically, sommeliers, waiters, cooks, and managers. Wine promotion tasks are often performed by front-of-house staff, while wine selection is generally performed by sommeliers, as they have the skills to assess wine quality, and management is often involved in wine purchasing (Scander et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2023).

In general, the quality of a wine is assessed by evaluating its sensory attributes, with the notion that taste is as important to wine evaluation as it is to art appreciation. Both wine and art provide pleasure, involve sensory experiences, evoke emotional and cognitive responses, and are complicated by issues of personal taste (Charters & Pettigrew, 2005). Scander et al. (2020), who studied how sommeliers acquired competence and taste, found that taste is also built through social relationships with other sommeliers. In this article, wine quality is understood as experiential and holistic, meaning that wine quality includes symbolic aspects related to the product; for example, terroir, taste, flavour, perceived sustainability, and materiality such as packaging. Simply put, wine quality can be understood as a set of cultural norms that guide restaurant professionals in their daily practices.

Experts’ opinions and beliefs are widely recognized as influential for wine consumers, but these are neither homogeneous nor free from biases. Grohmann et al. (2018) found that wine sensory attributes such as spicy aroma, bitterness, acidity, and balance are scored differently by experts in separate geographical locations. They attributed these differences to distinct sociocultural contexts and training, arguing that this has a direct influence on the taste culture of different locations. Moreover, Ben Dewald (2008) argues that sommeliers influence the way guests experience wine. This means that potential biases in their perception and thus their wine assessment, whether conscious or unconscious, impact on what constitutes a good or bad wine for many customers. In other words, restaurant professionals, sommeliers in particular, have a status that allows them to label wine as being of a certain quality.

Wines perceived as being of high quality are expected to express their terroir, or taste of place, which adds to their value (Smith Maguire, 2019; Trubek, 2008). Terroir is a culturally embedded concept that encompasses the geographical setting and conditions where grapes are grown as well as the work done in the vineyard and winery. This involves practices anchored in traditions that may be as old as wine making itself (Jung, 2014). The notion of terroir has now expanded to include non-traditional wine regions and practices, and has lately become the standard for quality claims regarding natural wine, which is broadly understood as alternative and more sustainable (Gazzola et al., 2023; Smith Maguire, 2019). Associations between wine sustainability and terroir are based on the argument that wines made with less human intervention are more able to express their origin, thanks to the avoidance of industrial practices such as chemicals, pesticides, and other inputs commonly involved in modern and conventional agriculture and wine making (Ascionea et al., 2020; Smith Maguire, 2019).

Research on wine sustainability has primarily either focused on the context of wine production or viewed sustainability as an attribute that attracts consumers. Although sustainable practices have increased along the wine supply chain in the last 15 years, there is still uncertainty and confusion among producers and consumers about the meaning of sustainability (Gazzola et al., 2023; Golicic, 2021). An abundance of certifications, logos, and labels are used to assure and communicate wine sustainability, but these rarely communicate the intended message (Ginon et al., 2014). In their role as experts and intermediaries, restaurant professionals are left to interpret what counts as sustainable. Besides deciphering if a wine is sustainable, they also need to determine which aspects of sustainability have been considered, since wine sustainability is often assessed differently in comparison with other food products (Kemp et al., 2022; Ocampo et al., 2021). This resonates with Charters’s (2022) call to pay more attention to the intermediaries within the wine world, as previous research has focused on wine consumers and producers. Charters argues that intermediaries’ own cultural influences are particularly neglected. Given that research on wine sustainability has overlooked the restaurant industry, the present article uses a cultural approach to start closing this gap by investigating the norms and beliefs of restaurant professionals.

Theoretical framework

Social norms

Norms, as social constructs, are based on a system of beliefs. Norms can be described as unspoken and informal social rules that affect how people within a certain cultural context think and act. The transgression of norms can result in sanctions that may be internal, such as a sense of guilt, or external, such as being outcast from a group (Bicchieri, 2014). Norm stability and compliance relies on empirical and normative expectations. While the former refers to the belief that the majority of the group conforms to the norm, the latter entails the belief that a majority of the group believe that they ought to conform in order to avoid some kind of sanction. Empirical expectations are what a person believes others will do, while normative expectations are what a person believes other members of the group believe. This difference is crucial to understand how change in social norms occurs (Bicchieri, 2014).

According to Bicchieri and Mercier (2014), normative expectations can explain what motivates individuals to conform to certain social norms. They argue that social norms foster particular practices, and that if the social norm is eliminated or changed, the practices embedded in it also change. This approach to social change is referred to as social norms interventions, and these have been proposed to encourage more sustainable behaviours (Constantino et al., 2022). The main factor in changing a norm is to change both the normative and the empirical expectations. To do this, Bicchieri and Mercier (2014) propose different strategies in which the role of an endogenous agent, such as a trendsetter and leader within the community, is paramount to exert change in beliefs that will in turn change or eliminate a certain social norm. If leaders and trendsetters are able to change a social norm by changing the belief system and the practices embedded in it, then it is important to understand how some people are given such status, power, and trust, in this case within the restaurant sector. This is particularly relevant as these professionals are also intermediaries between wine producers and consumers. To do this, we now turn to the understanding of culinary capital.

Culinary capital

According to Bourdieu (1986), the accumulation (or lack) of economic, social, and cultural capital creates different social classes and inequalities within the social world by giving power and status to those who possess it. He argues that all three forms of capital require an investment – mostly in time – to be accumulated and then mobilized through different social spaces. They can also be interchanged; however, only economic capital can be accumulated as money. Social capital is based on social relationships and cultural capital on knowledge. Those possessing considerable cultural capital dictate what constitutes good and bad taste, thus perpetuating inequalities in access to power and status (Bourdieu, 1986).

Extending Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, Naccarato and Lebesco (2012) focus on how food and food practices are central to individual identity formation and regulation. Through the concept of culinary capital, they argue that eating practices may convey or deploy an individual’s culinary capital, depending on the dominant norms and traditions of a particular place, situation, or community. Naccarato and Lebesco (2012) propose that culinary capital is acquired from two pathways: firstly by adhering to privileged practices such as the current ethos of eating well, sustainably, and in a restricted way, and secondly by engaging in food practices that oppose mainstream food culture such as the reverence of junk food. They conclude that hybrid foodways, where concessions can be made and alternative and mainstream food practices merge, are practices which give the most culinary capital to those who are able to navigate the contradictory norms and narratives.

In this article we combine culinary capital with the concepts of empirical and normative expectations as analytical tools to explore the norms guiding wine assessment.

Materials and methods: opening wine spaces

This article is based on an ethnographic study performed at seven establishments across Sweden: four in Stockholm, two in other major cities, and one in the countryside. The selection criteria were: (I) to include diverse wine spaces at restaurants and (II) to get a broad view of the high-to-medium-end restaurant industry. We included all types of wine storage to gather different voices, visions, and trends across the selected category. To find restaurants, we first consulted the White Guide, which is Sweden’s only nationwide gastronomic guide. As the objective was to include restaurants with diverse storage facilities (e.g. wine self-service dispensers or cellars) and these details did not always appear in the guide, we also relied on personal networks. All selected restaurants were contacted through email, and seven of them agreed to participate (Table 1). These establishments had different wine spaces, and some types appeared at more than one establishment; this enabled us to explore and compare distinct norms and practices. Each restaurant has been given a fictitious name representing its concept.

Table 1. Description of the establishments and the interviewed participants.

Name	Concept	Personnel interviewed (years of experience)	Wine spaces
The Swedish Bistro	Bistro style menu and large wine list and wine by the glass offering	Line cook (5) Co-owner/sommelier (17) Waitress (5) Head chef (14)	Wine cellar with controlled conditions on display Wine fridges and closets on display Underground beverages storage
The French Classic	French inspired with Scandinavian twist and large wine collection	Sommelier (8) Barman (12) Head chef (20)	Underground wine cellar with controlled conditions Wine fridges for service, not on display
The Mediterranean Restaurant	Restaurant specialized in wine and Mediterranean food, wine bar and winery	Food and Beverage manager (30+) Head sommelier (15)	Underground wine cellar with controlled conditions Wine fridges and closets on display Wine self-service dispensers on display Winery on display Wine cellar without controlled conditions
Gastrobistro	Plant-based bistro and serving mainly wine by the glass	Food and Beverage manager (30+) Head sommelier (10) Reservations manager (21)	Wine fridges and closets on display Wine by the tap stations Wine cellar without controlled conditions Beverage storage without controlled conditions
The Wine Bar	Wine bar serving mainly cold dishes and food platters for sharing	Owner/Head chef (30+) Head sommelier (30+)	A wall of wine fridges on display Wine closets on display
The Café	Café serving sandwiches and pastries, and wine by the glass	Events manager (25) Head chef (22)	Walk-in beverage storage Wine by the tap station
The Cellar Bar	Dining room and bar for events and wine cellar services	Owner/sommelier (30+) Operations manager/sommelier (7)	Underground wine cellar with controlled conditions Wine fridges for service, not on display

The fieldwork took place from October 2019 to September 2020 and consisted of semi-structured interviews and observations. When aiming to explore practices, interviews are not necessarily enough, as participants might omit information that they believe to be irrelevant but which would help elucidate the norms behind the practices (Kusenbach, 2013). The fieldwork was performed by the first author, who has inside knowledge of both the restaurant industry and wine distribution through her previous work experience as a sommelier. As such, she was positioned as both insider and outsider. This double perspective helped in approaching the participants, but demanded constant reflection on her role as researcher. All authors had substantial training and experience in qualitative methods.

Eighteen interviews were conducted with front- and back-of-house personnel (Table 1). The interviews covered topics such as storage practices, wine quality, sustainability, and restaurant work and lasted 31–88 min (average: 45 min). Two observation methods were chosen: walk-alongs with fridge stories (Joosse & Marshall, 2020) and shadowing observations (Earley, 2012). The walk-alongs were performed at all restaurants. During these walks, the researcher was guided through all the spaces where wine was stored/served and the content, the way the space was used, and reasons behind these choices were explained. All establishments were visited 2–6 times depending on their availability. Shadowing observations, where the researcher followed the participants through their regular activities, were also performed, although at only three establishments due to restricted access.

Observations revealed daily practices in situ and triggered conversations about the decision-making processes when selecting wine. While showing and explaining the spaces, some aspects of their work became visible also to the participants themselves, as in the ordinary course of their work they were not expected to explain or justify their advice. These methods permitted a deeper understanding of how they managed wine and wine spaces according to their own beliefs and standards. Nevertheless, the presence of the researcher always affects the environment being observed. Since the access was given by management, the researcher constantly stressed that the research was not an evaluation and that participation was voluntary and anonymous, so that the participants felt at ease and could continue with their daily routine. Here, the insider position was helpful to achieve a more relaxed situation.

The interviews allowed the participants to describe and narrate in their own words their perceptions about wine sustainability and quality by reflecting on the reasons behind their work routines. Follow-up questions were asked, and the interviewer tried to paraphrase the answers to acquire pragmatic validity (Sandberg, 2016). This permitted prompting for further explanations or uncovering new relevant aspects that had not been anticipated.

Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Observations were documented through handwritten field notes and photographs which were then transcribed into observation reports. Both interview transcripts and observation reports were analyzed inductively by thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2022). No software was used in the process. We followed the framework of (1) familiarization with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, and (5) defining and naming themes. Steps 1–3 were performed by the first author, and steps 4–5 by all authors. During the process, we nuanced the findings by comparing what was said to what was done (Cotton et al., 2010; Kusenbach, 2013). To improve credibility, preliminary themes were repeatedly discussed, modified, and revised within the research group. Only minor disagreements were found; when differences occurred, the discussion continued until agreement was reached. The other two authors are specialized in sociological and ethnographic research, and this helped to add different theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis. All codes that did not concern wine quality, wine sustainability, and wine spaces practices and descriptions were discarded. Next, the observation codes and the interview codes were merged to form the categories used to search for themes. Themes were patterned responses that were abstractedly interpreted according to the theoretical approach and research questions. This process was not linear; the codes, and categories were realigned, reorganized, and reassigned several times.

Ethical guidelines from the Swedish Research Council (2017) were followed during all steps of the study, including storage of the empirical material. All interviewees provided written consent prior to the interview, and were informed that their participation was voluntary and they could withdraw at any time.

Findings: wine cellars, wine fridges, and other wine spaces

The wine bar has two sections; both have the winery as background. The first one has plenty of wine bottles on display and a little blackboard announcing guided visits through the winery. The other one is a self-service wine bar. They use different themes for selecting the bottles and there was a sort of competition of wine with similar characteristics but from different areas and countries, to encourage guests to compare similar wines from different regions. (Field note from the Mediterranean Restaurant)

As exemplified in the field note above, wine was found in an array of different spaces, some designed to store the wine for short periods and other for longer periods. Different wine spaces contained different types of wine. Through their materiality and content, wine spaces conveyed different views of wine quality.

Two overarching themes emerged: wine spaces as emblems and the cellar as the realm of the experts. The first theme represented normative expectations of wine quality and the way these norms relate to wine sustainability, covering three different approaches: displaying tradition as a norm, sustainability as a challenge to the norm, and transgressing the norm. The second theme encompassed the role and function of restaurant professionals in managing wine spaces: sommeliers as curators who assess, select, and manage wine, with the implication of sustainability as an expert job.

Wine spaces as emblems

Wine spaces can be understood as emblems; that is, symbolic spaces that mediate a wine culture (Taylor et al., 2023). This was expressed by the sommelier at The Wine Bar:

We have a wine bar, which is unique in [town], with lots of wine, lots of champagne, a lot of white, red, rosé [wine]. That really makes us unique in [town], with the selection that we have.

While stressing uniqueness, the selection described by the sommelier adheres to a traditional wine culture reproduced by a culinary capital favouring certain wines, production methods, storage, and packaging over others. In this sense, it can also be seen as displaying certain norms.

Displaying tradition as a norm

Wine spaces were part of the atmosphere and were used for display and branding. They become emblems of the intended experience, in line with the restaurant’s brand. One example was The Swedish Bistro, where the wine had a central role. When entering the restaurant, one could not miss the wine cellar, and different wine spaces were visible around the dining room, adding to the ambience.

In a similar manner, the catacombs of The French Classic added to the restaurant’s atmosphere. These were dark, uneven in height and length, and cold; they smelled of humidity and had gravel on the floor, all reminiscent of traditional wineries. The restaurant offered tours where the sommelier showed their most precious bottles and told the stories behind them. These stories created an image of the wineries, the wines, and the places, and framed the normative expectations regarding wine assessments. The cellar thus became part of the norms that give wine its value. This experience was similar at The Mediterranean Restaurant and The Cellar Bar, which had underground cellars with controlled lighting, humidity, and temperature, designed to age the wine (cf. Arredondo-Ruiz et al., 2020).

These establishments had wine at the core of their concept and brand. All the practices embedded in the norms guiding wine assessment were on display through the wine cellars, and the professionals working there asserted their culinary capital by complying with such norms. This meant obeying the nominal expectation of narrating and displaying wine as tradition. However, tradition and sustainability sometimes afforded antagonistic practices. This challenged the professionals, who found themselves struggling with conflicted interests when trying to incorporate sustainability in their wine assessment.

Sustainability as a challenge to the norm

Sustainability was often seen as difficult to include in quality assessment when selecting bottles to enter the collection. The French Classic had an ongoing policy of working sustainably, but the sommelier found it difficult to include and explain the incorporation of sustainable wines to guests:

In my experience, organic wines and such, they aren’t always better, sometimes they aren’t good at all, […] they taste yeasty, many of them, so even if they’ve been produced using low energy consumption agriculture […], no additives, like conveying it [to guests] … ‘Let’s take this wine because it’s organic, fair trade’ … but it wasn’t very good!

For the sommelier at The Mediterranean Restaurant, the challenge of sustainable wine was not connected to its taste. Rather, she argued that some traditional wine regions cannot produce organic or biodynamic wines because of their geography, and to restrict those regions and make them change their way of production would impact the producers themselves. The production could be lost or drastically reduced, and this in turn would cause loss of jobs in a region which is dependent on vines and wineries. Thus, she reflected on the complexity of sustainability and the difficulty of integrating it within wine production.

Most of the wine displayed at The Swedish Bistro was termed biodynamic, organic, or natural. Despite incorporating sustainability into their wine selection criteria, they were still committed to traditional packaging, as all wine was in glass bottles.

For me, maybe there are other vessels that you don't think of, but a bottle, I think that’s the norm for quality. I don’t believe in bag-in-box, it's plastic, so it doesn’t feel good at all. Not tetra either. With wine, I mean, people have stored wine in glass for hundreds of years, and it’s turned out to be a pretty good thing [laughs]. (Waiter at The Swedish Bistro)

This commitment to traditional packaging was echoed at The French Classic, The Cellar Bar, and The Mediterranean Restaurant. For the sommelier at the latter, alternative packaging was a concern regarding wine quality:

No key-kegs. That’s because we don’t have the facility, but then again, we’re very concerned that it’s always quality. We're curious, but a little unsure about wine on tap, on how well it keeps.

The sommelier’s hesitance can be understood through the normative expectation of traditional packaging such as the use of a glass bottle and cork, associated with high quality wine by both guests (Barber and Almanza, 2006; Bicchieri & Mercier, 2014) and restaurant professionals. These normative expectations thus become barriers to the widespread usage of more environmentally sustainable packaging, such as key-kegs. A possible explanation for this reluctance to choose a more environmentally friendly packaging is the fear of negative consequences when moving away from a shared norm; in this case, the loss of culinary capital and even perhaps losing credibility among restaurant professionals.

This shows the difficulty that restaurant professionals, as intermediaries, encounter when assessing sustainability. They need to consider the complexity of sustainability and the normative expectations guiding wine quality which dictate the way wine should taste. This often creates a conundrum for the professional making the assessment. They understand the importance of sustainability in wine production and the restaurant industry, but this sometimes collides with the normative expectations of how a restaurant professional should assess wine. However, wine spaces in some restaurants also showed how these norms could be transgressed.

Transgressing the norm

The Café and The Gastrobistro, although different in size and genre, shared conceptual similarities. Both served wine on tap, and the management commented that they chose this serving system because its transport had a lower environmental impact. Tap stations were emblems of their approach to wine selection and quality assessment. In the case of The Café, this packaging served two purposes: it was easier to store in their limited storage space, and it aligned with their concept, as all wine on tap was either organic or biodynamic and functioned as a part of their brand. The events operations manager commented:

But we do try – although we are a big establishment – to be daring … and to choose things that we ourselves think are a bit fun and a bit different, and that also differentiates us … We ourselves, we like funky wines that go in a certain direction. We like it to be more exciting than ordinary rather bland wines.

This view, of finding difference to be an asset, is in stark contrast to the perceptions of the sommelier at The French Classic, who was more sceptical and did not consider natural wines to taste as good. The F&B manager at The Gastrobistro explained this difference in perception as the ‘commercialization of taste’, arguing that people have forgotten the ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ taste of wine and now find it strange or funky. The wine spaces at these two establishments were the emblems of alternative new norms of wine quality, where not only the wine itself is evaluated, but also the sustainability of its production, its packaging, and how it is transported.

These establishments could also be understood as transgressors of the norm of how to store and serve wine, particularly in connection to experiences of luxury and exclusivity. They are potential trendsetters, questioning the established order by behaving differently. According to Bicchieri and Mercier (2014), widespread change is possible if the ones breaking the norms are leaders in their community. This suggests that restaurant professionals transgressing the norms need to hold the necessary culinary capital to dictate the inclusion of sustainability as a parameter when assessing wine quality. We therefore now turn to the role and function of restaurant professionals in managing wine spaces.

The cellar as the realm of experts

For restaurants, wine is often a product holding high monetary value. Hence, management of wine spaces demands particular competences; or, more specifically, a certain level of culinary capital. Wine spaces can therefore be regarded as the realm of experts. Experts give meaning to the spaces, as described in the following field note from The French Classic:

The bottles stored here tell the story of something that happened a long time ago in a faraway place, with different costumes, language, etc. So, in a way the cellar is a time machine which allows visitors to travel in place and time, and the sommelier is the guide to these other worlds, only accessible through them.

In this way, the wine spaces need knowledgeable and trustworthy professionals, with skills comparable to those of art curators, to ensure that the wine collection is well-kept.

Sommeliers as curators

As curators, sommeliers not only narrate and ensure a specific visitor experience, but also control how wine is displayed and monitor which wine is allowed to enter the realm. It was through their expertise that wine sustainability could be incorporated in the quality assessment. They acquired culinary capital and affirmed their identities as wine curators through managing these spaces, and so the spaces became part of their professional identity.

Wine spaces were, regardless of size and content, restricted spaces where access was not given to all restaurant employees. This controlled access was based essentially on culinary capital. This was noticeable at The Gastrobistro, where the F&B manager who showed the premises did not show or even mention a particular small room during our first visit. On our second visit, the sommelier showed this significant space where the finest wines were stored. Although the F&B manager was her superior, only the sommelier had access to this space. This entails that wine spaces, as the sommelier’s realm, had a special meaning for the professionals managing them, as the sommelier at The Mediterranean Restaurant described:

It’s always a special feeling to enter a nice wine cellar with good wines. And I’d say … Even if I’ve worked here for a long time now, and I spend many hours each month in the wine cellar doing the inventory [laughs]. It’s always a bit special to open the door and enter.

The importance of knowledge and expertise in handling a cellar and its restricted access was further illustrated by an anecdote told during a guided tour at The French Classic. The sommelier narrated how a sommelier friend of hers ‘discovered’ a lost collection of wine including bottles of old vintages from renowned wine regions. She could buy them very cheaply as the owner did not know their actual value. This shows that the value of wine is anchored in norms which are embedded in narratives of traditional craftsmanship connected to a specific place and time, that can only be accessed through the sommelier. The economic value is here connected to the culinary capital owned by the wine expert and their ability to ensure that wines do not lose their meaning and value. Thus, knowledgeable staff are crucial. Since the restaurant sector has large staff mobility, restaurants are at constant risk of losing their experts and thereby access to their culinary capital (cf. Scander et al., 2020). At the same time, wine spaces need to be regularly maintained in content, appearance, and functionality. For sommeliers to keep their position as experts and curators, they need to notice market trends such as the growing demand for sustainable wines. Thus, assessing sustainability becomes a job for experts.

Assessing sustainability as an expert job

The underground cellars at The French Classic, The Mediterranean Restaurant, and The Cellar Bar had similar contents. Wines from classic and internationally renowned wine regions dominated, and this was the main criterion for wine selection. Their sommeliers shared a mistrust of wines labelled as natural, biodynamic, and organic. For the sommelier at The Cellar Bar, sustainability was not an issue for classic and traditional wines; he argued that the use of labels such as ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ were more of a marketing strategy for the new wines.

Many of the older wines are in fact natural wines. They’re organic, they’re sustainable, but they [the wineries] don’t feature this information because they don’t judge it to be necessary. They’ve always made their wine in this way. Or that they’re vegan, why should you say that a wine is vegan? But the new wines have large stamps on the bottle that say that the wine is vegan, organic, low CO₂, and here I question where their focus has been. Has it been on the actual wine or [laughs] to sell these claims?

This view is based on the widespread understanding that wine is ingrained in traditions relying on craftsmanship. All participants felt that traditional craftsmanship can only be performed within small-scale operations, meaning that these producers are most likely to work sustainably and close to nature, whether they are certified or not. The Swedish Bistro illustrated this reasoning when they prided themselves on collaborating with various small importers who worked with small-scale producers. However, it was only through their own expertise or culinary capital that they could assess if the wine was a product of craftsmanship and produced sustainably, as these producers were rarely certified. The sommeliers commented that they ‘knew’ the producers worked in that way.

In the absence of certification, the expertise and knowledge of the sommelier managing the wine spaces was essential both for upholding these spaces as the realm of experts and for assessing wine sustainability. This was visible at The Wine Bar, which faced financial challenges during the pandemic. On our first visit, their large, eye-catching fridges were full, and they had a long wine list with wines from different regions. The sommelier asserted her expertise when she commented on sustainability certification:

Some guests think that it must be written on a bottle that this is organic, this is vegan, […] it doesn’t have to be marked on every product. But […] I’ve chosen these [wines] because I can vouch for them.

During our second visit to The Wine Bar, there was no sommelier working at the establishment, many spaces were empty, and there was almost the same wine at every space. The wine fridges were now managed by the owner, who had basic wine knowledge and therefore had to rely on the supplier’s advice. This likely made it difficult to find strategies for buying wine that matched both the budget restriction and restaurant concept. Thus, sustainability was discarded as a parameter for wine quality. The owner lacked the trustworthy advice of the restaurant’s former wine expert, who had been able to identify a sales pitch and evaluate wine sustainability through her proficiency. As the curator of the enormous and eye-catching wine fridge was gone, the cabinet was turned into an ordinary, albeit expensive, fridge.

Storytelling was another important skill for restaurant professionals when recommending wines. This ability was central to overcome those norms of wine quality that collided with sustainability. As part of their sales argument, both the sommelier and the reservation manager at The Gastrobistro commented that they had to explain their choices by putting forward a narrative about its sustainability. Storytelling also played a role in the narrative of serving only local wine, something that was pursued at The Swedish Bistro, The Gastrobistro, and The Cafe. As this meant wine from Europe, it was the professionals who defined the concept of local and the acceptable provenance radius for wine to be described as locally produced. In other words, this storytelling practice signalized norms of what consuming local wine entails, thus simultaneously communicating a culinary capital based on these wine preferences and competences.

Concluding discussion: storing quality, sustainability, and culinary capital

By focusing on how wine spaces are curated, we have explored the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. Our findings show that restaurant professionals are influenced by different norms in their assessment of wine, and that quality assessment intersects in many ways with aspects of sustainability. It is widely understood that wine assessment, when performed by professionals, involves a systematic evaluation of the sensory characteristics of the wine and is thus deemed an objective evaluation (Grohmann et al., 2018). However, in their daily practices, restaurant professionals do not taste all wine before purchasing; instead, they use their acquired culinary capital, their knowledge about wine regions and grape varieties, and external cues, including subjective ones. The majority of the professionals interviewed followed the traditional approach to wine assessment, anchored in cultural notions such as terroir (Jung, 2014). Hence, the norms guiding quality assessment are in line with what Charters and Pettigrew (2005) call an aesthetic experience. The findings show that, as with art, wine needs to be handled and explained by a proficient curator. Wine spaces are regarded as emblems of a particular wine culture, only accessible to those with the culinary capital to understand and appreciate them (Chocarro & Cortiñas, 2013; Duhan et al., 2019).

A significant finding was that sustainability seemed challenging to assess and to incorporate consistently when curating the wine spaces. This was reflected in several ways. Firstly, there are inherent conflicts between sociocultural and environmental sustainability, and some believe that certification is merely a marketing strategy. This line of thought differs from how restaurant professionals assess the sustainability of other food products (Kemp et al., 2022; Ocampo et al., 2021). Secondly, heritage and tradition are still the basis for giving value to wine (Andrade-Suárez & Caamaño-Franco, 2020), as exemplified by the normative expectation of traditional packaging. Participants excused the use of less environmentally friendly packaging, because of the cultural value and culinary capital brought by serving wine from a glass bottle. Cultural norms and traditions may therefore be a barrier to sustainability. Thirdly, the more environmentally sustainable wines were sometimes considered not to taste as good, and so sustainable wine production was regarded as detrimental to wine quality. This contradicts the efforts that the participants said were taking place at their establishments to promote sustainable wine and gastronomy. Sustainability was a goal for almost all participating establishments, but most of the efforts were directed at kitchen activities. This mirrors research within sustainable gastronomy, which has primarily focused on kitchen-related activities as well as cooks’ and chefs’ capabilities for innovation (cf. Gössling & Hall, 2022; Madanaguli et al., 2022; Pereira et al., 2019; Sauer & Wood, 2018). Front of house activities and sommeliers have not received as much attention for their role in promoting and incorporating sustainability in their daily practices; the present study addresses this gap.

Following Naccarato and Lebesco (2012) focus on how power and status are gained through consumer choices in specific foodscapes, this article illustrates how restaurant professionals curate the restaurant ‘winescape’ in Sweden. Acting as intermediaries, these professionals have the power to create a frame of reference for understanding and appreciating wine culture in a specific context. As experts and leaders within gastronomy, restaurant professionals have the responsibility to use their role and power to influence and become trendsetters who take the challenge of food sustainability seriously (cf. Bicchieri, 2014). In particular, sommeliers are experts who may be able to change the norms guiding wine quality assessment. As such, we argue that they can use their expert status to make sustainability into a parameter as fundamental as acidity, tannins, origin, and overall balance.

To conclude, this article has shown that traditional notions of wine quality are now being challenged by sustainability issues within wine production. Wine quality assessment is not only a matter of evaluating a wine’s sensory attributes, but also obeys sociocultural norms. Departing from such norms entails a risk of losing culinary capital. Further, the results demonstrate that sustainability has not yet been incorporated as a fundamental parameter for wine quality assessments by restaurant professionals; rather, it is left to each professional’s own discretion. This is problematic, as there are still widely held beliefs among restaurants professionals that act as barriers to select more sustainable wines. However, there are already a group of ‘transgressors’; restaurants that attempt to be different. These establishments engage professionals who share their commitment to sustainability, and may serve as hubs that lead the way to a more sustainable gastronomic sector.

The implications for restaurant management are twofold. First, when assessing sustainability within restaurant operations, one should take a holistic view and include both front- and back-of-house activities. Second, there is a need to challenge the notion that the pursuit of gastronomic meals excuses the pursuit of sustainable meals; a sustainable restaurant should be seen as the norm instead of a style. Sommeliers, with their culinary capital, can be drivers of change by facilitating guests’ appreciation for more sustainable wine. This can be achieved by incorporating sustainability as an important dimension within wine education.

This was a small-scale study conducted in a specific societal context, and so it has some limitations. The sample was limited in size and scope, as it comprised staff from medium-to-high-end restaurants. A large-scale study and research in other types of restaurants (e.g. larger chains) is recommended to determine whether the results are generalizable to the larger sector in Sweden. Furthermore, research on the occurrence of different types of sustainable wines (e.g. organic, biodynamic, etc.) within the restaurant sector would add to the understanding of how wine sustainability is understood by restaurant professionals. As Sweden is not a wine-producing country, similar studies could be performed in wine-producing countries to broaden the understanding of and compare how restaurant professionals operating in different wine cultures integrate sustainability within wine quality assessments. Finally, the results provide a step forward for the field of gastronomic sustainability, as there has been little prior research into restaurant professionals’ perceptions of wine sustainability and quality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas: [Grant Number 2018-00677].