Winemaking and the Politics of Identity in Alsace, 1918-1939

Abstract

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. This article examines the politics of wine making in Alsace in the two decades after the region returned to French rule in 1918. During these years Alsatian wine makers worked to transform their wines to meet the tastes of French drinkers, following five decades of producing wine for German consumption. As wine makers grappled with the question of how to secure the future of their industry, Alsatian wine became emblematic of the most contentious aspects of Alsace's reintegration into France. The introduction of new laws on viticulture raised the question of what was French about wine, the wine industry's woes symbolised the difficulties of Alsace's economic reintegration and wine became an emblem for often fierce wrangling over identity and belonging in the recovered region. This article traces this process and argues that while wine became a symbol of the complications of reintegration, its importance in understandings of French national culture equally allowed it to offer a solution to the problems that return to France caused for Alsace's wine industry in the interwar years. In this way, this case study of the politics of wine making in Alsace is suggestive of wine's broader power as a symbol of national belonging.