Maps, markets and Merlot: The making of an antipodean wine appellation John Overton * , Jo Heitger Victoria University of Wellington, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand Keywords: Wine Geographical indictors Land values Land use Terroir Industry cooperation abstract Rural places acquire value in different ways and geographers have adopted a range of approaches to understand the way value is created in land and place. This paper analyses the case of the Gimblett Gravels wine district in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. This district has been transformed over the space of 20 years from a peri-urban wasteland to, now, one of the most sought-after and expensive winegrowing areas in the country. In this process of revaluation, several forces were evident. There was an economic– environmental process, by which grape growers and winemakers learned that the district possessed the ability to produce consistent harvests of high quality red grapes and, consequently, land was purchased at ever-increasing rates. There was then a deliberate attempt to ‘construct’ the Gimblett Gravels district in the market place, the result of concerted co-operative action by winegrowers in the district to promote the idea of a Gimblett Gravels terroir in a registered trademark. Finally, we can see that the revaluation of the district has also been related to the wider social acceptance of wine as a fashionable commodity. These processes have occurred in a virtual legislative vacuum in New Zealand regarding the protection and regulation of geographical indicators, though this may soon change. Thus, to understand the value of place, it is argued that we need a multi-faceted approach that incorporates environmental and economic processes alongside political regulation and social construction. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Rural land is valued in diverse ways. Embedded in land are values that different people ascribe to it in different ways at different times. Such values may be economic, cultural, social or spiritual and may be held by individuals or collectively. To a large extent, land values are manifested most commonly in monetary terms and, often, through the operation of a land market. Yet, even in this case, values other than economic return may appear and institutional factors, such as land zoning or regulation, may be reflected in the price potential owners are willing to pay. Further- more, land value, in turn, affects land use and the way the products of the land are marketed and priced. This paper explores the way a small region of New Zealand has been profoundly revalued over a relatively short space of time as a result of the rapid development of the wine industry. It demonstrates not only the interplay of land values and agricultural products but also the influence of factors such as marketing, co-operative institutions and regulation. Geographers have long-held interests in land values. Economic geography has been founded on the concept of land rent pioneered by von Thu ¨ nen; a concept which analyses the economic return for an area of land with different land uses. For von Thu ¨ nen and others, the value of agricultural land is primarily a function of the market demand for products devalued by their costs of transport. In contrast, cultural geographers in recent years have stressed the way space is socially constructed. Thus, writers such as Lefebvre and Soja have suggested that the value of places is not only apparent in market processes but in the way places are produced and revalued as part of wider social processes (Unwin, 2000). A third perspective is provided by the regulationist school. This places emphasis on the role of the state in controlling the use of space, through its regulation of production and society (Barker et al., 2001). Barker (2004) has produced a novel approach which has incorporated both the social construction and regulationist perspectives in a study of the legal geographies of wine in France and New Zealand. Yet, whilst such approaches provide a sound critical platform for analysing deeper social and political processes and a wider framework for examining the development of industry, we still lack ways of analysing the broad dimensions of the value of places and land. Here there is a need to re-incorporate an understanding of concepts such as land rent and land markets. Studies of the wine industry present some opportunities to unravel such theoretical complexities for it seems to provide examples of strong economic forces, state intervention and socio- cultural dimensions. Studies of the French wine industry, for * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ64 4 4635281; fax: þ64 4 4635186. E-mail addresses: john.overton@vuw.ac.nz (J. Overton), joheitger@yahoo.com.au (J. Heitger). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud 0743-0167/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.01.002 Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 440–449