Vine and Wine

Wine is an iconic marker of French identity. Through winemaking, France effectively colonized not just its own empire, but the entire world of wines. While Georges Durand’s article on Vine and Wine in Pierre Nora’s Les Lieux de mémoire celebrates French hegemony in the wine world, underscoring wine’s place in personal and collective historical memories, this article explores the development of indigenous and settler wine industries in France’s former colonies and territories – Canada, Reunion Island, Algeria and Vietnam. These (post)colonial experiences of winemaking challenge French visions for vines and wines in New World contexts, repudiating received wisdom about terroir, climate and culture. This article demonstrates that vine and wine are inherently imperial, but can be subversively harnessed for emancipation through experimentation.