Eating Landscape: Marketing Agricultural Products as Aesthetic Experience in the Twentieth Century

Behind the appellation d’origine controlée (AOC) and more recently the EU quality schemes—such as Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI)—is the concept of terroir.  This is the idea that when it comes to food the place of production matters.  To demonstrate how terroir served as a cultural code with market utility.  This paper argues that terroir served as a unifying cultural code to cover up social and political conflict in a process that I term "culinary keynesianism."  Culinary Keynesianism—much like Keynes' economic idea—was to expand of aggregate demand while veiling or occluding class and social differences.