Volume 29, Number 1, 2026 Access to current issues of this journal requires a subscription. Special issue – New business models & management strategies in global wine industry Guest-edited by Nicolás Depetris-Chauvin, Emiliano C. Villanueva and Mohammad N. Elahee

EN:

This study reconceptualizes luxury consumption as a knowledge-based and emotionally engaged process of distinction. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and habitus, it adopts the concept of epistemic capital, the social and symbolic value derived from consumers’ ability to acquire, interpret, and authentically perform knowledge. Using an interpretive qualitative design, 28 in-depth interviews with luxury wine consumers in New Zealand and the United States were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Findings reveal a developmental continuum of epistemic distinction encompassing three consumer types, Mimic, Metamorphose, and Maestro, that trace the transformation from performed taste to symbolic mastery. This progression is driven by the interaction between objective (factual expertise) and subjective (self-perceived confidence) knowledge facilitated by emotional engagement and experiential learning. As consumers advance along this path, their habitus evolves from imitation toward reflexive authenticity, culminating in embodied fluency where luxury becomes a practice of self-cultivation rather than display. The study contributes to luxury consumption literature by positioning epistemic capital as a dynamic extension of cultural capital that shapes the relationship between knowledge, emotion, and authenticity. It reframes luxury as a process of learning, feeling, and becoming, rather than one of mere acquisition or display. Managerially, it highlights opportunities for brands to foster long-term value through knowledge co-creation and emotional resonance, enabling consumers to transform consumption into symbolic mastery and personal growth.

EN:

Storytelling has been successfully utilized since the beginning of humankind, long before writing was developed to make stories available longer and to a broader audience. In business, brands are based on stories and therefore the narratives are intended to strengthen market positioning and pricing. In the wine business, offering a luxury product that requires a high level of involvement due to its relative price and the need for a certain connoisseurship, storytelling plays a fundamental role in marketing. An explorative assessment deploying quantitative content analysis of the narratives of German and Austrian wineries screening more than 1,600 wineries provided evidence of a common narrative. The identified key words and narratives speak for prevalence of product-centrism and closeness across all wineries but regional profiling, again with strong reliance on legitimacy. Customer-centric and differentiating storytelling falls short.

EN:

This study examines how winery tourism contributes to broader tourism competitiveness across France, South Africa, and Romania using a multiscalar framework that integrates national indicators, sectoral tourism activity, and firm-level data. The analysis reveals a clear disconnect between overall tourism rankings and niche performance: South Africa emerges as a leading wine tourism destination despite a relatively low national tourism ranking, France underperforms in winery tourism despite its global tourism leadership, and Romania shows growing potential as an emerging market despite infrastructure constraints. The findings extend traditional competitiveness theory by emphasizing multilevel dynamics, policy-responsive factor conditions, and feedback effects through which niche-sector success can enhance national tourism branding. Practically, the study underscores the value of targeting high-potential tourism niches and adopting more granular performance metrics, offering a more inclusive and forward-looking model of tourism competitiveness that captures innovation and specialization alongside national capacity.

EN:

This study examines how alternative wine producers in Baja California, Mexico, are adapting to a rapidly changing environment. These producers have adopted various strategies, including focusing on alternative forms of viticulture and prioritizing sustainable practices, as a strategic response to sustainability challenges in the region. The main findings reveal a fundamental shift in business practices and interpretations of alternative winemaking, resulting in emerging business models. Operating in a relatively under-regulated legal environment compared to many established wine-producing countries, small wine producers, supported by local communities of passionate winemakers dedicated to alternative forms of viticulture, are shifting toward sustainable practices. They are also strengthening their business models by expanding into new domains, such as gastronomy, tourism, and the circular economy. This article contributes to the strategy literature on sustainability by analyzing strategic responses centered on diversification.

EN:

This study examines wine production in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, exploring whether their different macroeconomic outcomes and global market access reflect distinct firm-level business models. It characterizes supply structures, productivity, and technology at various stages to identify similarities and differences in business practices, using a unique firm-level database from a standardized survey. The approach draws on Management Science (Institutional theory, Resource-Based View, PESTEL analysis (acronym for political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal) is a framework of external macro-environmental factors used in strategic management and market research and Porter’s five forces framework) to analyze competitive pressures, with quantitative analysis of productivity ratios, Principal Component Analysis for a Capital Index, and proxies for quality and strategies via frequency and correlation analyses. Results reveal two paths: the quality-focused, export-driven “Chilean model” and the protectionist, diverse “Mercosur model.” While all four countries have larger, more diversified wineries than Europeans, Chilean firms excel in quality proxies and market reach. Macroeconomic stability and trade openness matter more for export success than technical practices, which are easier to imitate. The main contribution is applying firm-level data to link macroeconomic trends and micro-level practices in the South American wine industry, providing a framework to understand strategic decisions, institutional factors, and long-term market participation.

EN:

We introduce a new database on bilateral trade flows for the world’s main beverages including wine, as well as some grape-based products. We use these data to analyse the structure of wine trade in the context of the global beverage markets, and the evolution of these markets since the mid-1990s. In doing so, we employ various trade indexes, including novel indexes that we introduce in this study to measure export and import concentrations and similarities, which we use in multivariate statistical analyses. We then show that wine trade growth has increased in value, similar to that of spirits and beer, but less in quantity. This suggests a demand for lower quantities of higher-quality wine, which climate change may make harder to achieve. More pronounced excess stocks of lower-quality wine are another potential consequence of these changes in demand. We show, however, that grape-based products other than wine can be very useful in mitigating potential wine oversupply issues. Further research for diverse purposes could draw on this freely available database.