The taste of globalization: The wine industry of Ontario.

In this thesis I examine the effects of hegemony and globalization on the wine industry of Ontario. The purpose of this thesis is to call attention to the political and economic power system that is controlled by a few key decision makers whose goal is to naturalize consumers\u27 taste for wine. Since Prohibition, governmental and industrial agencies have promoted different tastes for Ontario\u27s wine in the hopes of gaining a profit. Each change in the promoted taste creates a dramatic impact on consumers. Today\u27s goal of the industry is to produce internationally competitive wine and turn Canadians into natural wine drinkers. Throughout this thesis I look at the history of the Ontario wine industry and identify the key governmental and industrial agencies whose objectives have changed the course of Ontario\u27s wine production and promotion and have thus invented and reinvented the taste and image of Ontario\u27s wine. I argue that these changes in image and taste influence people\u27s perceptions in order to benefit the domestic wine industry and government agencies. In order to further understand how and to what extent the power system works, I examine the ideology of a globally objectified taste in wine tasting and competitions as well as interview four South Western Ontario winemasters as examples of creators working within the political and economic hegemonic system. In the end, I reveal that the perception of winemaking as a subjective art persists within the global objectification of taste and that believed subjective taste for wine is always being limited by objective political and economic parameters. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-06, page: 2190. Adviser: Max Hedley. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1996