Emotions Uncorked: Inspiring Evangelism for the Emerging Practice of Cool-Climate Winemaking in Ontario

This paper examines how organizations create evangelists, members of key audiences who build a critical mass of support for new ways of doing things. We conduct a longitudinal, inductive study of Ontario's cool-climate wineries and members of six external audience groups who evangelized on behalf of their emerging winemaking practice. We found that wineries drew from three institutionalized vinicultural templates—"provenance," "hedonic," and "glory"—to craft rituals designed to convert these audience members. These rituals led to inspiring emotional experiences among audience members with receptive gourmand and regional identities, driving them to engage in evangelistic behaviors. While a growing body of work on evangelists has emphasized their individual characteristics, the role of emotions in driving their activities, as well as how they advocate for organizations, our study demonstrates how evangelism can be built through ritualized interactions with organizations. Specifically, we reveal how organizations develop rituals that translate emerging practices into inspiring emotional experiences for particular members of audiences. This suggests that rituals can be used not only to incite dedication within organizational boundaries, but to inspire members of external audiences to act as social conduits through which emerging practices spread.