ICH does not have to be nostalgic: heroic viticulture, SDGs and the drafting of the ‘Madeira Wine Traditions’ application as an enactment of virtuous bureaucracy

This article examines the ‘Madeira Wine Traditions’ UNESCO application, challenging nostalgic tropes of elite consumption and romanticised landscapes that have obscured the social reality of production. Moving beyond ‘museumification’, the research conceptualises heroic viticulture as a vital green and social infrastructure essential for territorial resilience. Drawing on 72 interviews across the value chain, the work introduces the concept of virtuous bureaucracy to explain how the entanglement of the nomination requirements – specifically Chapter VI of the ICH Operational Directives and Criterion R.4—functions as an actant. This virtue is not the result of intentional design but emerges through auto-organisation, whereby the sequential logic of procedural forms generates productive misalignments and structural dissonances. The analysis demonstrates how these constraints act as a device of inversion, challenging established filters of recognition. By translating vinegrowers’ vernacular grievances (‘semantic switching’/ agulhagem semântica’) into the normative language of ICH and sustainability, the bureaucratic apparatus generates a new consensus that realigns the balance of power. This process melts the ‘economic iceberg’, bringing to the surface invisible layers of undervalued labour and unremunerated environmental stewardship. Ultimately, bureaucracy, when followed to its logical consequences, can bypass nostalgic representation to produce new forms of political agency and collective futures in labour-intensive heritage systems.