Aesthetic-led Pathways to Market Change and Sustainability in the Natural Wine Market

• In Event: 477 - Section on Consumers and Consumption: Consumers, Social Movements, and New Market Relations

Abstract

The paper examines how aesthetics shape markets, focusing on the typically understudied perspectives of cultural producers. My empirical focus is ‘natural wine’ and I draw from research with winemakers, writers, sommeliers and retailers explicitly involved with natural wine, primarily in Australia, France and New York. Broadly speaking, natural wines are made with few, if any chemical interventions in the vineyard or cellar; proponents claim this alternative approach is crucial to making the highest quality wines. While arguably more environmentally sustainable, such a mode of production nevertheless entails particular risks: crops are more vulnerable to failure, vintages can be highly variable and often confound established product expectations, and the legitimacy of ‘natural’ wine remains questionable in the eyes of many. The analysis focuses on the role of cultural producers’ and intermediaries’ sense of taste in their decisions to ‘do things differently.’ I outline the characteristics of their shared aesthetic regime (specifically, a ‘taste for the particular’), detail how such a taste constructs coherence for an emergent, fragmented market, and elaborate on how taste operates as a market device providing rationales for action and operational principles that support the adoption and promotion of alternative market practices. Improvement to the sustainability of consumer culture is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, yet research has narrowly focused on consumer perspectives and moralistic rationales. The paper’s wider aim is therefore to contribute an alternative approach, by focusing on producer/intermediary perspectives, and on aesthetic-led pathways to market change.

Author

• Jennifer Smith Maguire, University of Leicester