In Pursuit of Quality. The Institutional Change of Wine Production Market in Piedmont

Abstract

This article analyses the consequences of the "methanol wine scandal" on the wine production market of Piedmont. Contrariwise to what is usually claimed, these consequences where not the direct result of the scandal, but emerged only when a change in the institutional configuration of the market came about. The paper illustrates how the institutional change following the scandal triggered the quality turn of the wine production market in Piedmont. The key processes at the root of this change are depicted in terms of quality conventions as coordination mechanisms embedded in the institutional context. The first part of the paper outlines the conceptual coordinates concerning the "social construction" of quality. Afterwards both the general and regional trends toward the quality production in the national and local wine sector are summarized. Then "the methanol wine scandal" and its institutional consequences are illustrated.Finally, to appreciate the current organization of the local production market and of the quality conventions among wine producers, findings from interviews with local entrepreneurs are reported.

Quality regimes in agro-food industries: A regulation theory reading of Fair Trade wine in Argentina

“…The analysis of conventions has also been applied specifically to understand the dynamics of quality in the wine industry and how quality conventions have shaped production practices, organization and management, and institutional and regulatory innovation (Barbera and Audifredi, 2012;Guthey, 2008;Lindkvist and Sanchez, 2008;Sanchez-Hernandez et al, 2010;Sanchez-Hernandez, 2011). Value chain analyses for wine in specific countries (see Cusmano et al, 2010;Gwynne, 2006Gwynne, , 2008Hayward and Lewis, 2008;Lewis, 2008) are also available, but are only rarely combined with an analysis of quality conventions (for an exception, see Ponte, 2009).…”

“…It has a long history in valorizing a variety of quality dimensions, and one of the most complex and sophisticated 'quality infrastructures'. Furthermore, it is going through a major process of restructuring in which the battle-lines are drawn along the application, challenge and re-interpretation of different quality content (Barbera and Audifredi, 2012;Barham, 2003;Hayward and Lewis, 2008;Ponte, 2009). Wine is a relatively recent addition to the portfolio of Fair Trade products, having only been certified for the first time in 2003.…”

Convention theory in the Anglophone agro-food literature: Past, present and future

“…Trabalzi, 2007) highlighting how different worlds of production coexist even within individual firms. But more common has been a tendency to highlight collective approaches that strategically position specific clusters, localities and regions through trajectories of learning, innovation, clustering, and institutional change (Cidell and Alberts, 2006;Guthey, 2008;Lindkvist and Sanchez, 2008;Sanchez-Hernandez et al, 2010;Sanchez-Hernandez, 2011), or to specify the innovation systems and regulatory interventions that allow individual firms to move between worlds (Straete, 2004;Barbera and Audifredi, 2012). For example, Cidell and Alberts (2006) examine quality conventions in the chocolate industry, and in particular the negotiations of quality that are related to the location of chocolate manufacturing, rather than where cocoa is grown.…”

“…Challenging established Southern Europe -Northern Europe binomial characterization of dominant conventions, Lindkvist and Sanchez (2008) actually show that wine producers adapted their production systems to new market demands in Spain, while salt fish producers in Norway continued with their traditional conventions and lacked innovation. This possible counter-trend is strengthened by the case study of wine in Piedmont (Italy), where the 'methanol scandal' of the mid-1980s triggered a change in quality conventions as coordination mechanisms that led to a major and successful change in the institutional configuration of wine production in the region (Barbera and Audifredi, 2012). Collectively, these authors argue that innovation can be embedded in the passage from one world of production to another through changing quality conventions, a process which can be facilitated by appropriate organizational structures in local production systems.…”

Economising the Rural: How New Markets and Property Rights Transform Rural Economies

“…Drawing on the insight that quality is not an inherent feature of the good itself, but fabricated within a relational process of production and exchange (Beckert and Musselin ), Rössel and Beckert () have pointed out how competition in the wine market is structured around different classification schemes. Focusing more closely on wine production, Barbera and Audifredi () demonstrate how the ‘quality turn’ in Piedmond's wine production was spearheaded by new innovative producers specialising on high quality production in the 1970s. It was only during the export crisis caused by the methanol scandal in 1986, however, that the idea of quality certification was translated into new institutional rules that would change producers’ behaviour as a basis for constructing a new regional market identity.…”