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Peru has been the centre of origin and diversity of more than 3,000 varieties of native potato, although only a few varieties were typically consumed beyond the Andean region. Of little value outside the Andes, these tubers were long considered the food of the poor and the indigenous and thus intimately bounded to the Andean towns. However, since the Peruvian Gastronomic Boom took off in the mid-2000s, some native potato varieties together with other tubers like ocas, ollucos, and mashuas have started to be commercialised and became more widely consumed in the capital Lima. This ethnographic work relies on fourteen months of fieldwork conducted across different urban and rural locations. It follows the activities of a Peruvian entrepreneur, Edilberto, and the creation of what I call the potato chain. Moving back and forth between restaurants in Lima, a farm in Condorccocha where potatoes were grown and collected, and Huamanga, the capital city of the region of Ayacucho which the potatoes must pass through, this thesis ethnographically attends to, and photographically reveals how different values are created and re-created in order to make new circuits available for the native potato. Accordingly, I looked at that the different ways in which native potatoes and the other tubers are 'made' and 'crafted' visible into valuable products along the chain, and across different paths of circulation and novel routes of consumption. Through the five chapters of this thesis, I describe how my informants - farmers, precarious workers, chefs, entrepreneurs, and consumers - differently engage with the tubers. Therefore, this thesis sets off to unravel how potatoes acquire different values in relation to ethics, aesthetics, standards regulations, and the temporal coordination of the many parts and of the diverse rhythms of production peculiar to the potato chain. As with any capitalist enterprise, the potato chain is never smooth, and certainly not linear. I suggest that the formation and endurance of the potato chain are actually rendered possible by the conditions of the Gastronomic Boom, which must be understood within Peru's unique political, economic, and cultural histories.

'Terroir' is a concept that is used in France, and increasingly elsewhere, to evoke character and quality in food and drink in relation to the place it comes from. In this thesis, I investigate how terroir has attained its present-day economic value and cultural resonance; how it is subject to multiple forms of articulation across France; and how it is put to use as part of the philosophies and practices of environmentally sustainable modes of production. I use cultural and historical modes of enquiry and I draw upon interviews, participant observation, discourse and archive analysis carried out on fieldwork in three production chains in eastern France; being wine production in Burgundy, walnut production in the Isère valley, and Reblochon cheese production in the Alps. In the course of this thesis, I elucidate the cultural significance and epistemology of the concept, and make arguments that propositions for terroir consist of both specific geographical extent and historical density of explanation; that the rhetorical assembly of stories about terroir permits claims for continuity in production and tradition; and that the adoption of organic and biodynamic methods of farming troubles inherited understandings of what terroir is, through the intervention of the lively propensities of biotic actors. This is a story about food, farming and culture in France that I tell to critically examine the local, loyal and constant predicates of terroir, and to make an original contribution to our understanding of the cultural and historical background to the French and European systems of geographical protection in food and drink.

The relationship between soil and wine quality has been recognized for generations but has had limited scientific validation. Vineyard soils in the eastern United States are largely unstudied although proper site selection and good soil management have the potential to improve fruit composition for high-quality wine production. Soils that provide excessive plant-available nutrients and water often produce vigorous vegetative growth and negatively influence fruit chemistry. We investigated three aspects of Eastern vineyard soils, including potassium availability, methods of reducing infiltration, and the influence of topsoil on fruit chemistry. Our first goal was to determine the best soil sampling, processing, and extraction methods for predicting potassium availability in Mid-Atlantic vineyard soils. Excessive potassium can result in high pH fruit, which negatively affects wine quality, but until now the best methods for predicting soil-available potassium had not been investigated. We found that moist-extracted soil sampled from 0-38 cm appear to best be suited predicting vine tissue potassium. Our second goal was to test methods of reducing rain infiltration at critical times during the growing season. One of the soil stabilizers we tested successfully reduced infiltration in field trials. Vineyard trials in 2021 were compromised by dry weather, but further research is ongoing. Our final project involved a three-year investigation where we attempted to isolate the influence of soil properties on grapevines and fruit composition by monitoring vines and fruit in single vineyard blocks. The most consistent result was positive relationships between topsoil and fruit titratable acidity, suggesting that the fruit was ripening earlier in vines growing in thinner topsoil. Topsoil depth better explained differences in fruit titratable acidity than other explanatory variables including crop load and sunlight exposure of fruit. Overall, this research increased our understanding of the soil properties that influence vine growth and fruit chemistry in the Eastern US. The results will help growers improve sampling methods, fruit chemistry, and increase resilience to soil and climate related challenges.

Recent theorising about place-making – a key element of regional development and a core theoretical construct in the field of human geography – emphasises the need for researchers to adopt a relational perspective and a naturalistic methodology to understand how, through action and interactions, people create new economic spaces. Building on this literature, this study examines the implication of the commodification of place based on the global countryside and rural culture economy in the context of a wine region in China. The study interprets how local, regional and national actors and agencies in China are working in concert to create a globally-recognised wine region. The study’s location is Ningxia – a rural area with established vineyards and boutique winery clusters. The place-making process involves the local implementation of central government policies and initiatives designed to raise the region’s international profile as a place of high quality wine production and associated wine tourism opportunities for visitors. Throughout the process of commodifying place, this wine region is marked by evidence of global connectivity and flows but, at the same time, this study reveals that these global forces intersect with, and are modified by, local contingencies and specificities including political, economic, physical, cultural and technological elements. The political influences are mainly framed around the regional government and the government authority, the Administration of Development of Grape Industry of Ningxia (ADGIN), as well as regional policies and regulations from the central Chinese government. Economic influences are primarily recognised through financial transactions and capital investment, and marketing activities. The physical characteristics of the location are fundamental to any wine industry and, in this context, have been largely explained in terms of the physical elements of terroir, a French term, further reflecting the influence of the global in the local. Local cultural influences are manifest in the interpretation of the concept of terroir through a traditional Chinese culture and philosophy lens, so that the physical elements of terroir are influenced by local cultural elements. The technological forces discussed mainly relate to the adoption, at a local level, of technological knowledge and equipment in grape growing and wine production. Thus, global forces are interwoven with the local development of the wine industry, through industrial (capital investment), technical and cultural attributes, and new social relationships associated with wine originating beyond the regional level influence the development of a collective regional body. This study contributes to the conceptualisation of a relational sense of place in a particular Chinese wine region and the examination of the process of making a wine region by discussing the construction of a wine region from the perspective of key supply-side stakeholders; by understanding the role of Chinese political and cultural values in making a wine region; and by addressing the interaction of local and global forces in the locality. This study also contributes to the creation or interpretation of local terroir from local-global nexus by investigating a wine region with its specific features in the Chinese context. Finally, his study contributes to providing a reflection of the fact that the global-local nexus means that the emergence of a wine region is not uniform and that global factors and local/regional factors are manifest in different ways. These global-relational perspectives provide insights into how the Ningxia wine region can be perceived as a “newly differentiated global countryside”, being transformed by the interaction of global forces with extant local elements.

The hop plant (Humulus lupulus L.) is a perennial, climbing species within the Cannabaceae family that produces cones used for brewing. Hops are grown worldwide. In the United States most hops production occurs in the Pacific Northwest, but growth in the craft beer industry is driving efforts for hops production in other U.S. regions. Recommendations on hops cultivar suitability, fertility, and management are needed for the U.S. mid-south region. Objectives of this research on Arkansas-grown hops were to 1) assess the impact of cultivar and fertility rate on plant and cone attributes of six cultivars of Arkansas-grown hops and 2) determine impact of pruning timing on plant and cone attributes of Arkansas-grown ‘Cascade’. For the first objective, six hop cultivars (Cascade, Cashmere, Centennial, Crystal, Nugget, and Zeus) were planted at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Fruit Research Station (UA System FRS) in Clarksville, AR in 2018. The six cultivars with three fertility rates (low, standard, and high) were grown in a completely randomized block design consisting of three replicates of three plant plots for each cultivar and fertility treatment combination in 2020 and 2021. Fertility rates consisted of low (97 kg/ha), standard (145 kg/ha), and high (193 kg/ha) rates of Triple 13 (13-13-13) applied in four evenly spilt applications in biweekly intervals on May 15, June 1, June 15, and June 30 of 2020 and 2021. Hops cones were harvested at 70-80% moisture content from August-September 2020 and 2021, dried, packaged, and frozen (-10 °C). Plant, cone, and sensory attributes were evaluated at harvest and compositional attributes of the cones were assessed postharvest. The cultivar x fertility interaction was not significant for any of the plant attributes at harvest while only the immature cone percentage was impacted in 2021. No differences were seen in acid content of the dried hops cones between the fertility rates in 2020, but all acid attributes were impacted in 2021. Cultivar impacted all harvest attributes except number of bines/plant (2.71) and number of nodes/plant (62.70) in both years. The total cone yield for all plants was 26.91% greater in 2020 (31 kg) for 48 plants compared to 2021 (24 kg) which had 45 hop plants that yielded cones. ‘Crystal’ (755.80 g), ‘Cascade’ (983.63 g) ‘Zeus’ (797.58 g), had the highest cone yield/plant while ‘Centennial’ (67.45 g) had the lowest. ‘Crystal’ and ‘Cascade’ had alpha acid levels within standard commercial ranges, while all ‘Zeus’ and ‘Cashmere’ were lower than typical levels. Regardless of year, ‘Cascade’ (5.50%), ‘Cashmere’ (5.41%), and ‘Zeus (4.75%) had the highest total alpha acids while ‘Crystal’ (7.74%), ‘Cascade’ (5.80%), and ‘Cashmere’ (4.91%) had the greatest total beta acids. A trained descriptive sensory panel (n=5-7) evaluated the aroma of dried, ground hops cones and found that aroma of the cones varied by year, and cones harvested in 2021 had a general increase in aromatic intensity, overall impact, and were more distinctive in defined attributes. For objective 2 in 2020 and 2021, ‘Cascade’ hops plants at the UA System FRS were pruned April 15 (Early), April 30 (Mid), or May 15 (Late) by removing all new plant growth from each crown at soil level. There were three replications per pruning timing. The impact of pruning timing and year on plant and cone attributes were evaluated. Pruning timing did not impact any of the plant attributes and most of the cone attributes except the percent of damaged cones/plant with the Mid pruning having the highest damage. Year impacted the number of laterals/plant, total cone yield/plant, and estimated dry cone yield/plant. Total cone yield/plant had a 60.1% reduction in 2021 (421.51 g) compared to 2020 (701.33 g). The ‘Cascade’ hops had total alpha acids (6.28-7.66%) and total beta acids (6.45-9.32%) that were slightly higher than commercially-grown hops. In 2020, the Early pruning had the highest level of alpha and beta acids, while in 2021, the Mid pruning had the highest level. This research indicated that ‘Crystal’, ‘Cascade’, and ‘Zeus’ cultivars have potential for commercial hops production in Arkansas, fertility rate had little to no impact on the measured plant and cone attributes, further pruning timing evaluations are needed to determine best management practices, and cultivar had the most significant impact on plant and cone characteristics.

With the development of wine tourism, vineyards and wineries are no longer merely a place for planting grapes and wine production, they have become an attraction for local and international visitors. There is a greater demand for vineyard landscape to be designed compared to other productive landscapes. The design of the winery and vineyard landscape has become a significant challenge and a popular commission in recent years. More wineries have hired architects to design the cellar door as a form of promotions and part of their branding strategy, and there is a growing research interest in ‘wine architecture’. However, there is a gap in the literature on the relationship between landscape architecture and the wine industry, and very few landscape architects have been involved in the practice of vineyard design in New Zealand. In this dissertation, two wineries and vineyards from the Hawke’s Bay wine region will be critiqued to examine visitors’ experience provided by the existing design and provide strategies for enhancing this experience in the vineyard from the perspective of landscape architecture. By examining the winery design that links place to terroir, this dissertation will explore and demonstrate the possible contributions that landscape architecture can make to the wine industry.

This dissertation analyzes how winegrowers in central Ohio and the eastern French region of Alsace respond to changes in their vineyards, wine cellars, and tasting rooms, as well as how changing ecological conditions influence changing social processes (and vice versa). I build upon the French notion of terroir to reconceptualize it as a theoretical model of social-ecological “sense-making” that helps people make sense of the various interactive components of the winegrowing system. Such a framework also provides individuals with a guide for understanding through their sensory faculties what an idealized system of winegrowing feels like. By analyzing how they define the taste of place, I argue that winegrowers and others are able to pinpoint not only changes in their respective landscapes, but also opportunities for adaptation and/or innovation. Amid discourses of global climate change, winegrowers are experiencing its differential effects. Central Ohio winegrowers tend to be more concerned with increased rainfall and freezing temperatures, while those in Alsace are concerned with periods of less rainfall and very high temperatures. These conditions appear to prompt winegrowers to (re)consider whether they can plant new varietals, how they may intervene in the fermentation process, and what wines are available for their clientele. In short, vitivinicultural practices are invariably linked to cultural behaviors that continue to change over time and space. Bringing together multisensory ethnography and multispecies perspectives, and based on my case studies and each new vintage, I characterized the extent to which changing landscapes influence the production and elaboration of place-based goods. Accordingly, I asked: (1) What changes do winegrowers perceive in their winegrowing landscapes? (2) How do they adapt to changes in winegrowing conditions? (3) How do these changes influence winegrowers’ constructions of terroir and the “taste of place”? I interviewed over 24 winegrowers, as well as their co-workers, family members, and volunteers. I also incorporated into my analysis characteristics of local birds, yeasts, plants, weather, and trellising systems. The principal chapters of this dissertation are composed of four articles, which are synthesized in my conclusion. The first article frames my understanding of terroir in central Ohio and Alsace. The second article presents my multisensory approach. The third article considers who (or what) comprises the winegrowing system. And the fourth article uses actor-network theory to trace interactions between and among terroir actants. While the actual taste of a wine may be different from year to year as a result of local conditions and winegrower practices, I demonstrate that the proverbial “taste” of a place does not in itself change, as winegrowers make incremental adaptations to maintain a sense of consistency. Winegrowers, vines, and wines from Ohio or Alsace are still Ohioan or Alsatian, despite changing practices or cultural norms that result from changes in weather, legislation, and/or market demands. As I have learned through more than 18 months of fieldwork, this study of terroir reveals how winegrowers and the plants in their care are able to reproduce, redefine, or in some cases create anew, place-based identities in times of change.

This practice-led thesis is a creative exploration of crossmodal correspondences, the systematic association of sensory features from different modalities. It identifies correspondences between elements of gustation and audition that originate from this universal trait of perception, as distinct from neurological synesthesia. How these correspondences might be applied in the creation of crossmodal art is investigated, a category proposed as more appropriate for art that uses these shared correspondences. These inquiries are framed within the notion of sensory terroir, a metaphor harvested from the French concept of terroir; the symbiotic environmental and human factors that combine to create the distinctive character of a wine from a specific place. Sensory terroir was conceived to evoke the complex intersecting conceptual, affective, personal, and cultural systems linked through the senses in aesthetic experience. Wine is the gustatory focus, while the sounds employed – pure tones, musical features, and experimental sound works – extend the scope of prior research in this area from conventional musical genres to the wider field of creative experimental sound practice. Potential correspondences were suggested through reflective sensory and creative practices that draw on a professional background in both sound, and wine tasting and writing. This process was informed by crossmodal science and embodied theories of cognition and linguistics. Correspondences were investigated through the making of and responses to creative works produced throughout the project, as well as empirical studies using the methodologies of sensory science and experimental psychology. Novel methods were developed to attend to and tune audio-gustatory correspondences in creative contexts. These include sensory and temporal oenosthetic mapping systems to assist in making connections between a wine’s sensory characters and sonic/musical properties, and the synchronisation of their spatiotemporal unfolding. Contemplative deep sensing practices were explored to promote expanded multisensory awareness conducive to engaging with correspondences in art practice and reception. Understandings are applied to the concluding project, Sensory Terroir. An embodiment of the concept of sensory terroir, it illustrates how such works of crossmodal art might encourage and exercise the multisensory imagination, thereby offering access into a shared extrasensual world that could otherwise remain overlooked.

This dissertation explores the revalorization of Italian extra virgin olive oils after a food scare that revealed some oils to be inauthentic or adulterated. In the process of distinguishing products, producers and tasters looked toward terroir or the “taste of place” as proof of their declarations of authenticity and as a method for differentiating oils. However, in this attempt, they engaged with other pervasive tropes of difference including those that intersected with belonging, the local and global, and race. This dissertation argues that terroir is a material-semiotic object; that while it may be grounded in the materiality of oils is chiefly produced through the discursive practices of identification and description. This conception of terroir breaks down categories of authenticity and quality as equally discursively produced, and allows for observing the ways personal taste experiences are connected to broader politics through the (re)production of axes of differentiation across scales and domains.

The effect of water stress on grapevine performance has been extensively studied in different wine producing regions around the world, but little has ocurred in New Zealand. Pinot noir is the second most planted variety in the country and the most planted in Waipara. An improved understanding of the physiological responses of Pinot noir vines growing in different soils under a water restricted scenario is crucial for winegrowers, because vineyard irrigation is commonly practiced in Waipara and water is expected to become scarcer in future seasons. Three Pinot noir vineyards having similar characteristics, but planted in three of the most representative types of soil of the Waipara region were selected to investigate the effect of reducing irrigation by about 50% under commercial conditions. Control (CON) vines corresponded to those receiving the irrigation applied according to the viticulture manager’s criteria, and a reduced irrigation (RI) treatment was implemented by modifying the drippers spacing and flow rate. The experiment was carried out during the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 seasons. Edapho-climatic characteristics were compared within the region and among the three sites. “Terroir” provides the link between wine composition and place of origin. Thus, soil and climatic conditions, were characterised to understand the uniqueness of Pinot noir wines produced in Waipara. Differences in soil profile available water were found between the three types of soil. Also, variations in temperatures, wind speed and evapotranspiration, among other parameters were found within the region as well as between sites. A range of analyses was used to identify differences in grapevine physiology between vines under RI and those normally irrigated. Primary leaf area abscission and stomatal closure were short-term responses to water stress, which together with the lack of differences in stem water potential suggested the isohydric behaviour of Pinot noir under the conditions of this study. Other parameters like carbon isotope ratio, leaf proline content and root carbohydrates were little affected by RI. Berry weight was reduced by the treatment, but this varied depending on the site and season. Seed water content, seed fresh and dry weight were unaffected by RI which may suggest that seeds remain “isolated” from the rest of the berry from veraison onwards, even under moderate water stress. Taurine was found in berry juice, the first time that this nitrogen compound is described in Vitis vinifera L. Wines produced during the first season showed differences in wine titratable acidity (TA), colour and aroma profile by GCMS only at the site having the lowest profile available water, while wines from those sites with high and very high profile available water did not report differences between CON and RI for most of the parameters evaluated. This study demonstrated the edapho-climatic variability within the Waipara region, as well as the adaptive responses to water stress site by site, confirming irrigation as one of the main factors modifying “terroir” expression. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest merit for the use of reduced irrigation in vineyard management, as a means to save cost whilst maintaining grape quality.

Phenolic content is an important dimension of Pinot noir wine quality. This study aimed to find generic relationships between the phenolic content of Pinot noir wines produced from well-defined locations (single vineyards) in New Zealand, as determined from various chemical analyses, and aspects of terroir relating to local climate, soils and methods of production and information collected from questionnaires. Two New Zealand Pinot noir wines were stored at room temperature (with and without headspace sparging with N₂), at 4°C (with and without sparged N₂), at - 20°C, and at - 80°C following flash freezing with liquid nitrogen, after the original, sealed bottles were opened. The changes in total phenolics, total tannins, anthocyanins and colour parameters over 134 days were quantified. Results showed that the colour-related parameters were more sensitive to storage conditions and time compared with the other parameters. Storage at - 80°C could be the optimal way to preserve colour parameters, as it generally caused the least change in values and induced the least precipitation over the whole experimental period, followed by storage at 4°C. A total of 86 single-vineyard Pinot noir wines were collected from the 2013 Bragato wine competition. Analyses, using standard methods for total phenolics, total tannins and colour measurements, and HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) analysis of monomeric species separated using a published SPE (solid-phase extraction) method, were carried out on these wines. Some strong correlations were found between the different ways of taking measurements on the same, or similar, compounds in wines. Generally, the regional or vintage differences in total phenolics content and total tannins, were not dramatic, but there were evident regional and vintage differences in the colour parameters. Wines awarded different medals grades also differed in their colour parameters. Specifically, wines with gold or silver medals tended to have deeper colour densities and were higher in total anthocyanins than the bronze and no-medal wines, but were not necessarily lower in colour hue. The overall phenolic content differences investigated using PCA (principal component analysis), showed separations between Otago wines and Marlborough wines, and also between vintage 2012 wines, 2011 wines and 2010 wines, although there were some overlaps in these separations. A total of 41 viable questionnaires were returned. Viticulture, winemaking and barrel ageing practices were all quite similar among wines and influences for these parameters on individual phenolics were not able to be drawn. In contrast, soils differed considerably between regions and there were consistent negative and linear correlations between vine potential vigour as affected by soil parameters (carbon content, potential rooting depth and profile readily available water) and key colour parameters (total anthocyanins, total red pigments, ionised anthocyanins, and malvidin-3-glucoside), while positive correlations with some hydroxybenzoic acids were also found.

Terroir combines the physical landscape of the vineyard with the grapevines and the methods and techniques used to produce wine from the grapes. This study used a GIS to identify the characteristics of the physical landscape in Pottawattamie, Mills, Montgomery, Fremont, and Page counties in southwestern Iowa. The components were combined in the GIS using a weighted linear index to identify areas suitable for vineyard development and to identify the general characteristics of the area. Vineyard owners were interviewed to help determine the weighting system to use in the GIS and to determine their perceptions of how the physical landscape impacts their vineyards, as well as to determine what grape varieties they plant in their vineyards and their decisions on making wine from these grapes. This information was collected to identify whether the vineyard owners had developed a sense of place for their vineyards and how this sense might aid them in the development of a terroir for their wines. The resulting perceptions about the individual wineries were then considered in conjunction with the results from the GIS modeling to understand how the physical landscape influences the concepts of sense of place and terroir in southwest Iowa. The physical landscape of southwest Iowa was fairly uniform, as were the grape varietals planted in the vineyards. This created a measure of similarity among the wineries, while individuality between wineries was then created by the wine-makers as they used different techniques to produce wine from the grapes. This allows each winery to develop a sense of place, yet be part of a larger sense of place that encompasses multiple wineries within the area.

This report attempts to determine what craft beer can tell us about American culture, and to situate craft brewing within the larger discourse on food and locality. Following political scientist Carlton Larsen, who posited that craft beer associations are creating a “nascent public sphere within the dynamics of profit-driven production,” and that proponents of the craft beer community see it as “constituting a pragmatic, alternative community to international capitalist mass production,” I investigate Austin, Texas’ Black Star Co-op, the first cooperatively owned brewpub in the United States. I also take inspiration from Amy Trubek’s formulation of the American “taste of place,” which builds on and adapts the French concept of terroir. Trubek argues that the taste of place in America needs to be entrepreneurial and based in community, and that “taste makers” in America are engaged in a process of synthesis, blending our nation’s many historical pasts with its present to create a new taste of place. I argue that Black Star’s unique position as both a taste-making institution and as a business based in the economic radicalism of cooperative self-management and participatory economics allows them the possibility of a degree of local influence that goes beyond what Trubek or Larsen had previously envisioned. I conclude by arguing for an expansion of Trubek’s model that would comprehensively chart the taste of place in a single location, such as Austin, Texas, by looking at various institutions in all aspects of community life.

Festivals featuring food as a central organizing device are a popular form of cultural expression in Northwest Ohio that consciously celebrate food, its production, and consumption as representative of community, local identity, heritage, and place. At these events, local foods are elevated to a “mascot” status and these food icons come to stand in for the host community and are used as a marker of community differentiation. This dissertation argues that food festivals in Northwest Ohio are nostalgic enactments of community identity that illustrate the host community's notions of place, of local food, and of heritage. Furthermore, it examines the multiple ways in which food is used as an organizing device that suggests these events simultaneously resist modernity and globalization.Via ethnographies conducted with cultural producers, thick description of these events, and analysis of four food festivals, this dissertation examines the ways in which local communities engage with food to construct and maintain public identities and festive events. Using the Milan Melon Festival as a case study, Chapter One focuses on the concept of terroir to explore place-based Midwestern food traditions and the connections of these locally-produced foods to the landscape. Chapter Two considers how place is informed by notions of tradition and heritage presented at the Seneca County Maple Festival in Republic, Ohio. In this chapter, I argue that recognizing the linkages between present and past informs notions of place. By examining the connections between locally-produced food and the local population, Chapter Three explores the connection of bratwurst sausage and ethnic identity presented in the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival. Chapter Four asks how the availability of mass-produced food shapes notions of place, heritage, and ethnicity. This chapter examines the ways in which the McComb Cookie Festival presents mass-produced foods as local, place-based food.Ultimately, this project seeks to contribute to the fields of American Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Folklore, and Foodways providing evidence collected from original ethnographic research of four models of food festivals and four different notions of place at events largely overlooked by scholars.