How to make an iconic commodity

the case of Penfolds' Grange wine

Ian Woodward

David Ellison

pp. 155-169

in: Jeffrey C. Alexander, Dominik Bartmański, Bernhard Giesen (eds), Iconic power, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

New approaches to iconicity in cultural sociology link the aesthetic surface of an object with the depths of its cultural meanings. Linking pragmatics and haptics with symbolism and mythology, such innovations offer a way of understanding how the aesthetic surface features of an object or image attract and enroll human interest by way of physical engagements. In addition, these approaches promise cultural analysts new resources to identify how such objects frame, and ultimately concretize in aesthetic form, complex culture structures of myth and narrative. By using the case study of a much-lauded wine, this chapter considers the conditions under which an object assumes iconic form, as well as the uses and understandings made available by this transfigured state. For our purposes, we have selected Penfolds Grange, widely regarded in the popular imagination as Australia's premier wine. Because of its expense, Grange is tasted relatively rarely, and even then it is only engaged directly by a small group. Yet, while it is not widely circulated among the population at large, Grange is nevertheless generally perceived as a landmark Australian wine. More than this, it draws on a cache of national myths and powerful cultural stories that both elevate and continue to authorize its status as an iconic Australian wine. Thus, like any cultural icon, this wine not only stands as an exemplar of the Australian wine industry, but refers to cherished and valued national stories. Therefore—confirming its iconic status—as much as it is valued for being a premier wine, the wine thus also distinguishes and stands for the history of Australia's wine industry while simultaneously drawing on, and giving tangible expression to, archetypes, narratives, and coded symbols of important national myths.