New wine merchants and gentrification: spatialization of discourses and local commercial landscapes

Abstract

The status, image and role of the wine professional have evolved simultaneously in France with the metamorphosis of the wine trade and wine consumption. In the French society of the 1960s and 1970s, wine conveys a positive image that is mainly rooted in the rather traditional and earthy French identity. Building on this cultural trait, supermarkets emerge by relying on generous wine shelves (several hundred references), special events (wine fair — foire aux vins), and low prices, to attract a broad and diversified clientele. However, geographically speaking, this deployment of mass distribution is not uniform, it tends to be concentrated mainly on the outskirts of towns, somewhat sparing the city centres. This spatial pattern helps specialized wine stores to maintain themselves by deploying its stores in those centres. Since the early 2000s, New wine merchants and shops have appeared in the major metropolitan centres. This article aims at showing that these new shops assert their specificity through the very figure, although renewed, of the wine merchants. We will see how their personalities, but also their life courses, have been put into use in a process of commercial singularization in the urban space. In this way, they lay the foundations for a distinctive wine discourse in phase with a specific urban setting and commercial landscape, born out of the dynamics generated by the commercial gentrification.