Amateurs are neither regular consumers nor professionals. What makes them distinctive? To answer that question, this ethnographic study focuses on wine amateurs who show a distinctive feature compared to regular consumers: for them, wine is not a straightforward reality but a world to explore. Wine exploration drives an evolution that transforms both wine and amateurs’ disposition towards it. Amateurs usually start with the discovery of the wines and their tastes, which may turn into an ability to attune to and finally produce taste and good quality. Amateurs’ passion, initially fuelled by the discovery of unknown tastes, is then informed by the renewal of the taste experience itself. Following amateurs in their exploratory activity allows us to extend the analysis beyond scholars’ usual focus on one of its particularly normative stages, and to propose a renewed account of the amateur that is quite remote from the standard image of the ‘cultural prescriber’.

业余爱好者既不是普通消费者，也不是专业人士。是什么让它们与众不同？为了回答这个问题，这项民族志研究侧重于与普通消费者相比表现出独特特征的葡萄酒爱好者：对他们来说，葡萄酒不是一个简单的现实，而是一个需要探索的世界。葡萄酒探索推动了一场变革，改变了葡萄酒和业余爱好者对它的态度。业余爱好者通常从发现葡萄酒及其口味开始，这可能会转变为适应并最终产生口味和优质品质的能力。业余爱好者的热情最初是由对未知口味的发现所激发的，然后是由味觉体验本身的更新所激发的。跟随业余爱好者的探索活动使我们能够将分析扩展到学者通常关注的特定规范阶段之一，