Die Weinbauern von Morey-Saint-Denis

Lebenswelten in der Côte-d’Or

Abstract

The article describes at first the change of wine growing and wine merchandising in Côte- d’Or since the nineteenth century: the takeover of the wine-growing estates by the Seigneurs du bouchon as a result of the French revolution and the progress in Burgundian wine trade, the agricultural crises at the end of the nineteenth century and the consequences for the structures of property. This is followed by the new definition of the region as a wine paradise in the 1930s, therefore connecting to folklorism and the ‘globalisation of wine’. The second part of the article deals with the implications of this change for lifeworlds in the wine-growing village Morey-Saint-Denis. It turns out that the reactions are not primarily political but rather cultural: Winegrowers try to grow wine according to traditional methods without being reactionary. Moreover wine growing is stylised as an art and wine, an agricultural product, as artwork. Except for the festivity of Saint-Vincent, customs are hardly alive. Traditions und customs are only cultivated, if they have a reference to work practices.