| dc.description.abstract | According to the idea of terroir, the taste of an agricultural product derives from various features specific to its place of production. Terroir is especially related to wine. Different wine producing regions, for instance, is often associated with certain expressions or aromatic profiles. The local climate is an aspect of terroir particularly believed to influence a wine’s characteristics. However, according to a large share of climate researchers, the global surface temperature is increasing. Climate change is said to have both negative and positive implications for winemaking. The wines of the Mosel region, Germany, is by many believed to have benefited from increased temperatures. Simultaneously, others claim some expressions are being lost, partly due to these changes. Through conducting fieldwork in the Mosel region, the cultural embeddedness of taste and how it was connected to place, as well as issues of climate change was researched. Over a span of ten weeks during the fall of 2016, I carried participant observation with two, and interviews with ten local winemakers. Earlier research scrutinizing the concept of terroir has focused on how the idea has been institutionalized in wine laws, for instance in France. Few scholars have researched the meaning given to taste and place on an individual level, however. To analyze the social aspects of ‘Mosel terroir’, a theoretical outline is developed, building on practice theory and theory of structuration. While ‘Mosel winemaking’ is viewed as a distinct social practice, constituted by a shared set of beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge, the wine expression associated with the Mosel is studied a social structure. Especially Giddens’ notion of structuration, and his conception of structures as rules- and resource sets are applied in the analysis. It is found that attitudes and beliefs towards, as well as knowledge of winemaking that supports what is considered the typical style of Mosel wine, circulated among winemakers of the region. These represented ways of understanding the physical surroundings and were organized in narratives, where the aromatic profile of Mosel wines was explained and justified. Moreover, an extensive set of rules regulating acceptable behavior in the practice of Mosel winemaking that actively drew region’s natural resources, were frequently pronounced. Although a cool climate was largely used to explain the ‘Mosel wine style’, climate change was not considered threatening. In fact, the cool climate was used to discard worries about global warming having consequences for the taste of Mosel wine. Because the Mosel was so far north, other regions would be worse off than the Mosel, in case temperature rises would accelerate. | eng |