Wine advertising and other fabrications: From ‘Russian Jack’ to GI legal fictions and faux vineyards

Abstract

Abstract: Two promotional tropes stand out in the world of wine advertising and promotion. Both are marked by winegrowers seeking to claim uniqueness — or at least, the distinctiveness — of their wines, not only to stand out in what are crowded marketplaces, but ultimately to increase the rent value of their vineyards and grapes, and thus enhance the profits garnered from selling their wines.

The first trope, which is particularly notable among New World winegrowers, concerns promotions that assert tenuous, ‘stretched’, sometimes even fabricated, links between their winemaking endeavours, personnel (typically winemakers and vineyard owners) and/or vineyards and various actual historical figures, events and/or eras. I argue that this reflects attempts to assert a historical depth or longevity and unique temporal trajectories — and thus the authenticity and durability of the quality of their wines — in situations when actual genealogical links and associations are conspicuously missing. This I argue is ‘reflected historical glory’ fetishisation, which calls into service the exploitation of labour, nature and the desire of consumers for good wines, if not a ‘better world’, to advance the social and economic interests of elite land and business owners. Starting with a critical analysis of the promotional discourse, imagery and iconography on the labels of Russian Jack wines, which are made in Aoteaora New Zealand by a transnational company owned by American billionaire and one time Trump supporter — Bill Foley — I also analysis similar promotional tropes from English sparkling winemakers.

The second trope, which has kinship with the first, concerns place-of-origin claims that are enthusiastically asserted via varied terroir, appellation and Geographical Indication (GI) discourses. Such discourses are found throughout the global wine industry, although appellation declarations are particularly associated with the Old World of wine — for example, France, Italy, Spain and Germany, while GIs are mostly the preserve of the New World — Aotearoa, Australia and the United States. Both are underpinned by positive terroir evaluations and assertions. I argue such place-of-origin claims to growing grapes and making wines on distinct, infungible, and thus irreplicable and wholly unique, parcels of land, likewise seek to increase rent values and the premiums paid for associated wines. However, these discourses typically omit the power dynamics at play in asserting terroir or appellation status, downplay the influences of transient climate factors in favour of literally grounded soils in imparting flavour variations and quality to wines, and in the case of GIs, are premised on legal fictions that potentially provide moral underpinnings for the construction and sale of wines under faux vineyard and place names.

I conclude that consumers are not dupes in these promotional games, but neither are they stand up critics. Rather they are ensnared and jaded by living in a world of lies — especially those of capitalism and so-called representational democratic politics — and like the advertisers and promoters, wine consumers are mostly seeking to ‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative’.

The present text is an original scientific article by Dr. By Peter J. Howland. The text was written specifically for the Wine Research section of the "Russia’s Directions" journal (i.e., this journal). Despite the fact that the original language of the work is predominantly English, as a result of active and close collaboration on this research, author Peter Howland and the editor of the column Danila Ivanov decided to be the first to implement the publication in Russian. The translation retains the style of the author's, partly free style of Dr. Peter J. Howland, filled with locally New Zealand words and borrowings from the languages of the so—called "indigenous peoples", as well as his emphasis on using a Marxist glossary with the addition of complex concepts - the compromise for style transfer was the frequent preservation of English syntax (Anglicisms in translation).

For citation: Howland, P. J. (2025) Wine advertising and other fabrications: From ‘Russian Jack’ to GI legal fictions and faux vineyards. Russia’s Directions. Vol. 3. No. 4. P. 13–57.

Additional Info

Submitted: March 2nd, 2025

Reviewed: March 26th, 2025

Copyright: © Auhtors, 2025

Distribution: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)