Constructing durian terroir and geographical indications in Penang,Malaysia

The tropical fruit durian in Southeast and East Asia has witnessed a surge in popularity in the past two decades to assume the rank of a fetishized commodity. This research investigates the construction of the multidimensional concept of terroir as applied to the durian economy of Penang, Malaysia based on personal interviews with orchard owners and state government officials to strategically embed the local in the global through the promotion of agritourism. While environmental terroir is a contingent dimension, the construction of a place bound cultural terror is anchored in a strong cultivation tradition, cultivar diversity, and a historical sense of community. This research deepens the cultural terroir dimension in two ways. First, it injects the otherwise aspatial concept of refinement to the cultural terroir narratives of orchard owners allowing the on-farm tourist consumption experience to be more geographically rooted. Second, it conceptually links cultural terroir to the marketing terroir instrument of the Balik Pulau geographical indication; while functioning as a governance tool to prevent fraud and to construct a place bound product valorization and differentiation within an expanding and larger scale durian economy, it also indirectly assists in preserving agro-diversity and local identity.     

Local traditions as a means for commercial production of historical beers: The case of Vossaøl,Norway

The aim of the article is to analyse challenges facing the commercial production of historical beers, which are ‘extinct’ beers. The concept of ‘fictive terroir’ is introduced to emphasize these challenges. The author addresses the following questions: What kind of knowledge is needed to produce historical beers? How can this knowledge be acquired? How can it be used commercially in craft breweries? The studied case is Vossaøl, a craft beer imitation of a beer produced in the early 19th century. The data were obtained from written sources and interviews with local home brewers and brewers at Voss Brewery in Norway. The study revealed the need to reconstruct the terroir in the early 19th century. Additionally, Voss Brewery had to acquire knowledge about how to process and combine the ingredients, which included the traditional yeast (kveik). Involving traditional home brewers was crucial to determine how ingredients could be combined to produce Vossaøl. The author concludes that a synthetic knowledge base was a useful point of departure in this respect. Participation in the traditional culture of brewing proved an important means when working with this knowledge base. The results are interesting in the broader context of the reconstruction of beverages and food.     

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

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.