I’ve just submitted a new paper for publication that takes a system-level look at U.S. regional wine development by synthesizing more than two decades of peer-reviewed research. Rather than adding another single-region case study or proposing a new competitiveness index, the paper conducts a systematic review of how scholars have actually explained wine region growth in the United States since 2000.
The goal is not to rank regions or identify a universal formula, but to map the dominant explanatory drivers used across economics, tourism, agribusiness, policy, and regional development literatures—and to examine how those drivers differ by stage of development. What emerges is a fragmented field: clustering, tourism, entrepreneurship, institutions, consumer perception, and policy all appear repeatedly, but rarely in integrated ways. The paper argues that this fragmentation helps explain why strategies borrowed from mature regions often fail in emerging ones, and why sequencing and institutional context matter more than simple replication.
Once it’s through review, I’ll share more—but this work is about synthesis, structure, and rethinking how we study (and support) wine regions as evolving economic systems rather than static success stories.
