Challenges and Opportunities: Comparing the Emerging Wine Industries of Changhua County, Taiwan and the Kofu Basin, Japan

• In Event: Wine and Viticulture in East Asia: Changing Landscapes, Political Economy, and Global Shifts

Abstract

Scholars, policy makers, and industrial leaders share broad interests in the conceptual and practical ways to maintain the economic vitality of rural areas and their agro-industries. Advanced economies often find both primary and secondary sectors hollowed by global sourcing. These processes have occurred at various levels in the wine industries of Changhua County in Taiwan and the Kofu Basin in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. Although both regions are at the center of domestic wine production in their respective countries, they have long failed to earn considerable market share in either the international or domestic marketplace. However, recently wineries in both regions have been experiencing newfound economic growth, partially based in shifts to production styles and flavor profiles that meet internationally defined parameters of quality in wine. Drawing on extensive and varied qualitative fieldwork in both regions, this paper seeks to explore these developments from more cultural perspectives. Specifically, this paper first identifies the more salient aspects and traditions of viticulture and winemaking of each region to frame their contemporary industrial revivals. The paper then shifts to compare not only the considerable challenges facing, but also the opportunities available to these two wine producing regions. In so doing, it teases out the agents, policies, and processes by which wineries in both regions are able (and struggle) to construct new cultural forms and raise the actual and perceived profile of their production.

Authors

• Aaron Kingsbury, Mayville State University

• Liang-Chih Chen, National Taiwan University