Wine Tourism, Culture and the Everyday: A Theoretical Note

Abstract

This paper addresses the principal theoretical issues informing the significance of wine consumption as social practice and, within this, the significance of tourism to wine consumption. While recognising the work of Mike Hall and others, particularly in developing and applying Bourdieu's theory of distinction, the paper offers an alternative perspective. Drawing on the everyday experiences of serious leisure, the paper argues that distinction is attached to bodily rather than social practices — that people ‘become by doing’, rather than ‘doing to become’. In the case of wine, the ‘becoming’ is connected to entry to a ‘social world’ inhabited exclusively by those knowledgeable about wine. Others — tourists — are allowed access to some elements of this social world, such as drinking wine and visiting vineyards. This access serves only to convince them of how little they know, thus legitimising the prestige of the ‘full members’ of the social world. The paper thus offers a development of theory that links established work on ‘connoisseur skills’ and social distinctiveness to new understandings of tourism as an embodied journey around the self. This linkage is assisted by the growing body of literature on learning and the learning function, as portrayed in Elias's ‘back stage’, where people are able to develop their understanding and appreciation of wines away from the gaze of their home communities. The paper concludes by calling for a new research agenda that is driven by a deeper understanding of the significance to tourism of (wine) consumption as a bodily practice.