Through a Glass Darkly: Reinforcing Beverage Icons By Leveraging Cultural Identity at Beverage Sites, the Guinness Store House, Dublin and la Cité du Vin, Bordeaux
“To explore food and drink is unavoidably to visit culture also.” (Boniface 2003, p.1).
The Guinness Storehouse, Dublin and La Cité Du Vin, Bordeaux are ambitious beverage tourism sites. Both have successfully leveraged the cultural capital associated with the iconic beverages produced in their environs to devise dedicated visitor attractions.
Beverage tourism is a developing, niche sector of a larger global food tourism trend. This paper explores La Cité Du Vin, Bordeaux and the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin, and shows how these sites have become the physical embodiment of the story or culture of these beverages. Research pertaining to the broader field of food tourism is referenced as it offers insights which help to frame beverage tourism in a wider gastro-tourism context. It is impossible to separate food and drinks from the people and cultures that have developed them. As people migrate, their food and beverages also travel the globe functioning as cultural ambassadors for their place and culture of origin. Croissants, ramen, tacos, Irish stout and Bordeaux claret are no longer only enjoyed by locals or visitors. These iconic food and drinks have a world-wide consumer base. If the cultural essence of a country can be distilled into one glass, then the icons of a glass of red wine and a pint of stout have become a synecdoche for France and Ireland respectively. Moreover, these beverages have spawned a tourist industry founded on pilgrimage to the source of these liquids
