Territorial proximity and the dynamics of french appellations
The protected designation of origin (PDO) model, which has ensured the success of French wine for decades, is an exemplary form of territorial collective strategy based on a combination of cooperation/competition relationships among local players. We intend to analyze this model with the support of proximity economics, a school of thought at the intersection between industrial and spatial economics. Our purpose is to appreciate the part played by organized proximity in the economic performance of a vineyard. In a first part, we see how proximity economics can be used to analyze territory-based collective strategies in the wine industry, focusing on the so-called « terroir » strategy at the heart of French PDO vineyards. In a second part, we apply the proximity framework to the particular case of two vineyards – Cahors and Chablis. We suggest that different degrees of organized proximity entail distinct types of cooperation-competition relationships and economic records.