{"id":64,"date":"2015-01-30T15:49:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T15:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/?p=64"},"modified":"2015-02-22T04:01:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T04:01:27","slug":"commodification-of-northern-californias-wine-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/blog\/2015\/01\/30\/commodification-of-northern-californias-wine-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Commodification of Northern California’s Wine Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"53486e4805cc1_preview-620\"<\/a>Oftentimes landmarks and monuments at local sites provide symbols of local culture that provide an area with an iconic identity that anyone can recognize.\u00a0 Who doesn’t associate the Statue of Liberty with New York or the Golden Gate Bridge with San Francisco?\u00a0 How would perceptions of the area change of there wasn’t a Hollywood sign?\u00a0 Like it or not, tourist sites attract visitors from all over the place, bringing with them money and resources that can transform local cultures and economies.<\/p>\n

Heritage tourist sites are no exception. In Northern California, the emergence of the\u00a0wine country and the wine industry has created\u00a0a unique system of local and regional commodification of heritage sites. The wine industry is a billion-dollar industry.\u00a0 According to The Wine Institute, in 2013 there were over 4,100 wineries producing 214.6 million cases of wine at an estimated export value of 1.55 Billion dollars (1).\u00a0 At the state level, the Northern California Wine Country is a huge part of the economic prosperity California enjoys.\u00a0 It is estimated that the wine industry in total has had a 61.5 Billion dollar impact on the state and created over 330,000 jobs (1).<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that the burgeoning wine industry has had a tremendous, positive\u00a0economic impact on\u00a0regional and local governments (on taxes alone) and on local and national businesses.\u00a0 The question, however, is at what cost?\u00a0 In his article, Heritage as a Tourism Commodity: Traversing the Tourist-Local Divide<\/em>, T.C. Chang seems to argue that people are overstating the damage caused by the tourist industry on local cultures.\u00a0 He uses the Alarde ritual in Spain to argue that changes were not only positive but also inevitable; social change is a normal part of larger social forces.\u00a0 I would argue, however, that Chang\u00a0has understated the costs.\u00a0 Due to drastic increases in wineries (up 119% in 2013), more and more\u00a0land devoted is devoted to growing wine.\u00a0 This is pushing out traditional local economies that have been around for decades.\u00a0 Largely gone, for example\u00a0are the cattle and sheep ranches that used to dominate the area.\u00a0 Cattle ranches used to symbolize the cowboy culture of the ‘Wild West’.\u00a0 The area used to be largely unpopulated, a pristine region that brought in its own variety of tourists.\u00a0 With the advent of the wine industry, however, the land for growing cattle is disappearing, and the money pouring in has enticed ranchers to grow grapes instead.<\/p>\n

This added money, again a boon to local economies, has also forced people native to the area to move out.\u00a0 As a former resident who was born there, I can tell you that the prices of land and homes have gotten so high that people are finding it hard to live there.\u00a0 Those that do usually have to bring in two incomes just to survive.\u00a0 Displacing indigenous people of the wine country has decimated previous cultures in exchange for new ones.\u00a0 Whether or not this is a good thing is for individuals to decide.<\/p>\n

Finally, and perhaps most importantly to somebody who understands the rich history of the area, the wine country industry and the ancillary industries that have sprung up in response to the industry (cheese, for example) has transformed the perceived history of the area.\u00a0 In Sonoma, for example, the history of the Bear Republic, where resistance to Mexico’s rule was initially found, is lost in the sea of wine tours and tourist attractions.\u00a0History in a way has been rewritten; instead of the history of California, indigenous peoples (e.g. Native Americans) and past history, histories of the wine country has taken its place.\u00a0 While this history is important, it is only part of the recent story of Northern California; unfortunately, it is not placed in this context.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The positive impact of heritage tourism on the California economy is clear.\u00a0 Due to the wine country, revenues have been gained, jobs created and an identity has been formed that residents in those areas are proud of.\u00a0 At the same time, however, local industries have been destroyed, the cost of living has gotten so high as to displace local residents, and local heritage landmarks that celebrate the history of California have been so commodified to the point that they are an ancillary byproduct of the wine and cheese industries.\u00a0 Perhaps Chang is right, that\u00a0governments and industries\u00a0 have negotiated a compromise that tries to keep local culture intact while reaping large rewards.\u00a0 However it is folly to think that the Wine Country would have evolved without tourism.\u00a0 The wine country has created an artificial identity, for good or for ill.<\/p>\n

1) The Wine Institute. California Wine Profile 2013.http:\/\/www.wineinstitute.org\/files\/CA%20Wines%20Stat%20Profile%202013.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oftentimes landmarks and monuments at local sites provide symbols of local culture that provide an area with an iconic identity that anyone can recognize.\u00a0 Who doesn’t associate the Statue of Liberty with New York or the Golden Gate Bridge with San Francisco?\u00a0 How would perceptions of the area change of there wasn’t a Hollywood sign?\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogposts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/nmaximov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}