Ten Prompts and Provocations – Thinking With and Through Pinot Noir
Jacqueline Dutton
Every grape variety has its challenges. Pinot Noir has arguably faced more challenges than most – and largely overcome them – despite being thin-skinned, climate-sensitive, low-yielding, and one of the least likely to succeed in evolutionary terms. While much of the wine industry is facing a polycrisis caused by climate change, environmental concerns, anti-alcohol health recommendations, declining consumption, and overproduction, Pinot Noir is still doing well in economic, environmental, and socio-cultural terms. Does this mean that everyone should be planting Pinot Noir? Absolutely not!
In this brief plenary presentation, I suggest instead that Pinot Noir could be a good grape to think with and through the current – and future – polycrisis. By virtue of its well-documented historical trajectory and its physical qualities and susceptibilities, Pinot Noir potentially offers us a road map to re-examine responses to some contemporary challenges. Observing how Pinot Noir has been forced – due to historical or physical constraints – to evolve, diversify, and innovate, might producers, intermediaries and consumers consider applying similar measures more widely across the industry? What might we learn by thinking with and through Pinot Noir to alleviate the pressures currently compounding in the wine world? I propose ten prompts and provocations to explore thinking with and through Pinot Noir.
Jacqueline Dutton is Professor of French Studies at the University of Melbourne, specialising in wine and food as transcultural products of regional, national and international geopolitics. Her interest in future-oriented methods guides her search for better ways of thinking, working, and being together. She is Founding Director of The Pinot Noir Project and has curated major international festivals and events in Australia, France, and Myanmar. She is also Co-Chair of the Global Humanities Alliance, Sustainability and Climate Change Working Group. https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/4911-jacqueline-dutton