Aesthetics as market devices: Taste as a logic of and for practice in the natural wine market

Existing research suggests multi-directional relationships between the construction of cultural fields and everyday aesthetic practices and preferences. Looking beyond the well-­documented link between consumers’ tastes and their patterns of consumption, we can see that tastes serve as operational logics of production and not only of consumption. Gatekeeping cultural intermediaries draw on their own sense of taste to filter what makes it to the publishing, fashion and television markets (Entwistle 2006; Childress 2012; Kuipers 2012); television circulates new repertoires of good taste to China’s emerging middle class (Xu 2007); ‘cool hunters’ scope out taste-­leading marginal consumers for a glimpse of future fads (Gladwell 1997); consumers’ creativity feeds into product development co-­creation schemes (Zwick et al 2008). The aesthetic norms and material content of cultural fields are co-­created by cultural producers (whose aesthetics are occupational tools and outcomes) and intended audiences (whose aesthetics are to be mined and/or Mobilized). [Opening paragraph]