Vintners and wine drinkers talk often about terroir as it relates to grapes.
In "The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey Into Terroir," Amy Trubek discusses the topic as it relates more broadly to food, where it is grown in the United States, and how it is cooked and served.
It matters a great deal because "concerns about practices, tastes, and origins in fact can help create alternative cultural values about place, about community, about agriculture, and about hospitality."
Trubek, whose work includes "Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession," takes decidedly French ideals and applies them to California, for example, among the richest agricultural regions in the country.
She looks more specifically at the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco, a major attraction for residents as well as visitors, using it to highlight ways in which growers, producers, sellers and consumers can interact on a regular basis.
The building hosts farmers markets that draw thousands of people to the waterfront; it also includes "a mixture of (businesses) selling artisan products - cheese, chocolate, olive oil, wine - restaurants, a coffee shop, bakeries, and fish and meat shops, as well as a kitchenware store and a bookstore."
In subsequent chapters, Trubek examines farming traditions in Wisconsin and Vermont, for example, giving this insightful title on the food movement in America both topical depth and geographical breadth.
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