@article{372df60d95644d08a142ee6b6b379215,
title = "Terroir and Territory on the Colonial Frontier: Making New-Old World Wine in the Holy Land",
abstract = "Etymologically related, the concepts of terroir and territoriality display divergent cultural histories. While one designates the palatable characteristics of place as a branded story of geographic distinction, the other imbues the soil with political meaning. This paper traces the production of eno-locality in a contested space on both sides of the Green Line in Israel/Palestine. The case of the Yatir award-winning winery shows how terroir and territory are blended in the political economy and cultural politics of colonial place-making. Located on a multiscalar frontier-climatic, geopolitical, and viticultural-Yatir Winery positions itself simultaneously within the Mediterranean transnational landscape and in a biblical site of historical authenticity. Enacting strategic regimes of signification to target the increasing demand for high-end wines on both the global and local markets, it makes a claim for place, while appropriating Palestinian land and redefining ancient Jewish heritage. The result articulates a settler colonial landscape whose symbolic and material transformations are reflected in the Israeli search for rooted identity. Analytically, we explore the power of border and frontier wines to reconfigure the differences between New World and Old World paradigms. We conclude by outlining a comparative framework of the charged relations between terroir and territory that articulates the nexus between border typologies and the colonial politics of wine.",
keywords = "Israel/Palestine, Mediterranean, New World, border wines, food politics, settler colonialism, territoriality, terroir",
author = "Daniel Monterescu and Ariel Handel",
note = "Funding Information: 1 Wine professionals quoted in this article have given their written consent to reveal their real names after receiving the transcriptions of respective interviews and conversations. The project was reviewed by the CEU ethical research committee and received final institutional endorsement in November 2014. Acknowledgements: This article has been fermenting and maturing for almost a decade. Following initial fieldwork in 2011 it was first presented at the conference “Mediterranean Criss-crossed and Constructed” at Harvard University. With age, it was presented in numerous venues in Israel/ Palestine, Europe, and North America. We are grateful to the Central European University for the research grant that made fieldwork possible, to the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS CEU) and to the faculty and doctoral students of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology there for insightful comments at its unripe stages. We thank the Yatir Winery staff and Haim Gan at the Grapeman for sharing with us their stories and craft. Special thanks are due to Dafna Hirsch, Dan Rabinowitz, Alex Kowalski, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Vlad Naumescu, Marco Antonsich, Tatiana Fogelman, Gadi Algazi, John Comaroff, Merav Amir, and Naor Ben Yehoyada. We thank Shai Efrati for designing the map, Eran Barulfan for sharing his research on the legal wine regulation system, and David Newman for sharing the history and archival images of Palwin. The presentation of these conversations, as well as any omissions or errors, is our responsibility alone. Last but not least, we acknowledge with thanks the editorial team and anonymous reviewers at CSSH for challenging us with substantive comments that sent us back to the field and helped us ground the analysis in deeper roots. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History.",
year = "2020",
month = apr,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1017/S0010417520000043",
language = "English",
volume = "62",
pages = "222--261",
journal = "Comparative Studies in Society and History",
issn = "0010-4175",
publisher = "Cambridge University Press",
number = "2",
}