‘Insofar as the Ruby Wine Seduces Them’: Cultural Strategies for Selling Wine in Inter-war Burgundy

Abstract

AbstractBurgundians developed new cultural strategies to market their wines during the inter-war years. Regional leaders, cultural intermediaries and the wine industry collaborated to overcome overproduction, prohibition and foreign as well as regional competition by exploiting the concept ofterroirto develop a repertoire of popular festivals such as the Gastronomic Fair of Dijon, the Paulée of Meursault, Saint Vincent parades, an annual wine auction at the Hospice in Beaune and a Burgundian Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. These drew attention to the unique qualities of their wines and suggested how they might be best consumed. This aggressive marketing strategy was so successful that it became a model for French agricultural products promoted through thesystème d'appelation d'origine controlée. The result united natural resources, historical memory, marketing strategies and cultural performance into an imaginative and enduring form of commercial regionalism.