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Little is known about restaurant professionals’ views on wine sustainability and how these beliefs are embedded in cultural norms of wine quality. Using wine spaces as an entry point, this ethnographic study sought to explore the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. The article depicts wine spaces as emblems mediating a particular wine culture with its own norms which guide such assessment. These spaces provide professionals with a setting to accumulate culinary capital as curators, and so wine spaces can be understood as the realm of experts. The results show that incorporating sustainability in wine assessment is challenging for restaurant professionals. First, there are inherent conflicts between environmental and sociocultural sustainability. Second, some norms and practices ingrained in heritage and tradition act as barriers to the adoption of, for example, more sustainable packaging. Third, the perceived sensory attributes of more sustainable wines are sometimes considered detrimental to wine quality. However, we argue that in their role as curators and intermediaries, restaurant professionals can use their expert status to challenge norms and give sustainability the same importance as other parameters such as acidity, tannins, and overall balance.

The way food is preserved, prepared and consumed is embedded in cultural symbolism strongly connected to the geographical landscape. This article focuses on the memories of Sami actors within the wild Arctic char value chain to explore how changes in the foodscape influence the way this produce is prepared and consumed in contemporary Sápmi and the use and view of traditional preservation techniques. The empirical material was obtained through interviews and observations with Sami actors as they are the dominant agents related to this produce. Consequently, I traced different narratives attached to the char in the region called Swedish Sápmi and its connection to Sami food culture. Although the wild Arctic char still can be considered a staple ingredient within Sami food culture, it is not widely available nor consumed in the same ways nowadays. As certain traditional cooking and preservation methods such as salting, drying and fermentation are no longer needed to survive the stark winters, and cold technology is widely available, these products and specific flavors has become nostalgic food products, in connection to early memories and tradition. Hence, I argue that the Arctic char has moved from everyday consumption within the mountain Sami to an iconic ingredient within contemporary Sami gastronomy.

Genom djupintervjuer och observationer, som har analyserat tematiskt, har jag undersökt de olika kulturella aspekter som framträder i sommelierers och matsalspersonals föreställningar kring viners kvalitet och hållbarhetsfrågor. Detta för att förstå hur dessa aspekter upprätthåller ett dryckesideal som avses som en gastronomisk upplevelse. Tolv intervjuer om vinkvalitet, hållbarhet och mat- och dryckeskombinationer genomfördes med anställda på sju olika verksamheter där vin är i fokus eller som erbjuder olika slags vinservering (glas, flaska och/eller på fat). För att få bred bild av sommelierer och matpersonalens föreställningar studerades olika typer av verksamheter: ett café, två bistroer, en restaurang relaterad till en kulturell verksamhet, två hotellrestauranger och en vinbar med vinförvaringsservice. De deltagande krogarna lokaliseras i olika delar av Sverige: en på landsbygden, två i mindre städer och de resterande i huvudstaden. Under analysen framkom två centrala teman som jag kommer att fördjupa mig nedan. Det första temat rör gastronomisk hållbarhet och beskriver föreställningar kring vinkvalitet och vinhållbarhetsfrågor. Den andra temat beskriver hur normer och förväntningar kring en gastronomisk hållbar dryckesupplevelse skapas. I båda temana har förpackningen en särskilt viktig roll tillsammans med föreställningar om exklusivitet och traditioner.

Sustainability is a key concern within the restaurant industry, which offers a variety of initiatives and approaches to it. This, in turn, creates different shared understandings, what we here call sustainable cuisine imaginaries. The practices fostered by these imaginaries are now facing unforeseen challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic, creating a dissonance in the way restaurants normally operate. By using storage and preservation practices as an entry point, this ethnographic study of six Swedish restaurants uses the concept of imaginaries to explore the different beliefs and ideals for restaurant sustainability and the practices fostered by those ideals. Three distinct imaginaries of sustainable cuisine were identified: locality as a quality, reducing meat in favor of vegetables, and the creative and knowledgeable professional. These imaginaries are materialized through different storage facilities, like root cellars, wine cellars, or meat aging fridges. This study shows how disruptions in restaurants, triggered by unexpected situations, exposed the fragility of these imaginaries. We argue that the sustainable cuisine imaginaries, as a complexity reducing mechanism, help restaurant professionals manage the intricacy of sustainability. However, they also demonstrate an array of simple solutions very susceptible to external factors. Sustainable practices can thus easily become unsustainable.