The Wine Lab. Generating Innovation between Practice and Research

Europe is a leading producer of wine, and the world’s leading wine exporter: wine is part of our culture, shapes our landscapes, and provides employment to millions. Wine producers are mostly small and micro enterprises: the sector “is composed by an overwhelming majority of small producers, and is therefore extremely atomised in comparison with other food and drinks industries” (DG Agriculture). Often, small and micro wineries deal also with the specific-sector difficulties, related to territory – e.g. small size vineyards not always contiguous, often in terraces, labor-intensive, various grape typologies in small quantity. It is widely recognised that small wineries achieve better performance when they are networked or clustered, but often firms located in areas that are geographically disadvantaged, have difficulties also in establishing relationships that are crucial for their survival. Isolation, limited access to learning opportunities against the need of a range of competences different from production - as a small business is still a business, characterise the target group. The aim of The Wine Lab is to create a knowledge alliance between Universities in Agriculture, Oenology and related fields, and small wineries located in disadvantaged areas, to stimulate knowledge flow, share problems and solutions, and jointly generate innovation in the wine sector. The Wine Lab creates the basis for a dialogue between research, business and regional communities, based upon clustering and networking, and aimed at providing learning opportunities applying action and experiential research and learning, and at exploiting knowledge on regional bases towards new methods and approaches in policy planning