Exploring the role of restaurant wine lists in communicating local sense of place to tourists

Abstract

Enjoying a ‘taste of place’ is an important component of an authentic tourism experience; whether savoring a Burgundy grand cru in a medieval cellar surrounded by vineyards, or eating street food at a hawker’s market in Malaysia. The close connection between food, wine, and tourism is ubiquitous in popular and academic writing on tourism, with print publications and innumerable blogs and websites dedicated to the topic, and scholars in many disciplines exploring dimensions of the phenomenon (see, for example, Fountain and Thompson 2019; Fusté- Forné and Berno 2016; Gunasekar et al. 2021; Sidali, Kastenholz, and Bianchi 2015; Sims 2009). Furthermore, many consumers feel growing concern over global food homogenization and are seeking out sustainably and ethically produced food and drink products, prioritizing locally grown and made produce, and exploring the people, practices, and places of production (Corsi 2018; Fountain et al. 2021).