The renaissance of PGI vineyards in the region Île-de-France: A journey into the future of potential terroir

Abstract

Over the last decade, the liberalization of EU regulations on planting rights has stimulated the emergence and development of local vineyards in regions where professional vineyards almost disappeared since WWII (Meloni and Swinnen, 2016). In this communication, we analyse the renaissance of professional vineyards in the French region Ile de France since the late 1990 to the present, and the role of its registration and recognition as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in 2020. It thus seeks to revive what was, in the 18th century, France’s largest vineyard, with more than 25,000 hectares of vines (Lachiver, 1982). The analysis explains how the appellation accreditation process translates into dynamic, constantly evolving discursive strategies to redefine the concept of terroir, its geographical characterization, the typical characteristics of the wines it refers to, the interests of the actors promoting it, as well as how they position themselves in relation to each other. Wine growing in the Paris region is characterized by a wide variety of stakeholders, including municipal associations seeking to rebuild rural-urban links, brotherhoods reviving a wine-growing past, neo-ruralists engaging in wine-growing projects, and farmers diversifying their crops. All these projects seek to promote their production, which contributes to the redefinition of micro-terroirs with distinctive characteristics and economic, cultural, or landscape value. It is the strength of local identities and affiliations that makes the terroir relevant, both as a rooting in a physical and human environment (Wilson, 1998), as a space for collective projects through the will of its protagonists (Hinnewinkel, 2004), and as an economic asset that creates a hierarchy in which each social group seeks to distinguish itself in order to assert a typicality and quality concomitant with its micro-terroir (Valceschini E. (2011). With the challenge of bringing together initiatives around the idea of a terroir that symbolizes the wine-growing roots of the Ile de France region, the registration of the PGI is accompanied by the affirmation of a mosaic of terroirs where new links are being forged between wine-growing and the inhabitants of the region.

References

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Lachiver M., Vin, vigne et vignerons en région parisienne du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, Compiègne : Société historique et archéologique de Pontoise, du Val-d’Oise et du Vexin, 1982, 957 p.

Meloni, A., A, Swinnen (2016) The Political and Economic History of Vineyard Planting Rights in Europe: From Montesquieu to the European Union, Journal of Wine Economics, Volume 11, Number 3, 2016, Pages 379–413, doi:10.1017/jwe.2016.18.

Valceschini E. (2011), « La valorisation économique des terroirs sur les marchés alimentaires », La mode du terroir et les produits alimentaires, Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 358 p.

Wilson, J.E. 1998. Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture in the Making of French Wines. California: University of California Press.