Abstract:
In this paper I use the concepts of hybridity and socionatural landscape production to explore the notion of the wine region as a socionatural process understood through the theoretical construct of the "edible landscape." The edible landscape refers to both a physical setting and the social relations between humans and non-humans that are co-produced in dialectical relationship with this setting and which render it consumable and reproducible through food.
A focus on the edible landscape of northwest Portugal, home of the "vinho verde" region, reveals wine regions as unfolding within the broader socionatural networks of food production and consumption in which wine-related activities are embedded. In this case, the key processes include cultivation, harvesting and consumption of maize (Zea mays L.), a companion crop to wine grapes in northwest Portugal. In the context of the edible landscape framework, wine regions can be understood as a specialized subset of routines, practices, knowledges and social relationships within wider geographies, or landscapes, of food production and consumption. This perspective allows the analysis and interpretation of wine regions to account for "non-wine" actors and processes that nevertheless play a functional role in producing wine regions. The paper illustrates and elaborates on these points with visual data from ethnographic fieldwork in the Sousa Valley of northwest Portugal.
