Ungrounding Terroir

Robert T. Valgenti

pp. 41-58

in: Andrea Borghini, Nicola Piras & Beatrice Serini (eds), Philosophy of Food, East Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2), 2022.

Abstract

This essay examines the concept of terroir, or “the taste of place,” from a philosophical and broadly hermeneutic standpoint. I argue that terroir is a concept that can be reduced neither to its empirical, geological characteristics nor to the various human interventions that use the landscape and geographical region to produce distinct comestibles (such as wine, cheese, etc.); rather, terroir is a concept that captures a tension between taste and place that resists representation. My goal is to explain how terroir, despite its traditional uses to perpetuate hierarchies of wealth, status, and power, or its more recent deployments as a tool to open or assert economic and political imperatives, can nonetheless operate as a critical concept. I first present a definition of terroir that draws upon a number of recent studies to highlight its polysemic nature and its inherent yet productive tension. I then examine analyze this tension – one that can undermine foundations and resist its reduction to either a descriptive or a constructive function – by drawing upon the work of thinkers who have theorized a type of geophilosophy. In the essay’s final section, I suggest that terroir operates like a utopia and thus provides an impetus for the critical evaluation of our claims to territorial identity and aesthetic uniqueness.