Viticultural practice innovation in the light of history: novelties, heritages, and blending of knowledge

Abstract

Innovating means introducing a change in a process, from mistakes, a curiosity or the desire to do better. Concerning winegrowers, ancestral skills remain at the heart of the relationship between them and the vines they cultivate. However, the work at each stage changes according to social, economic and technical contexts. If a new practice gives satisfaction, first it can become part of a regional professional knowledge. What is new somewhere can be useful somewhere else. However, even the smallest change leads with time to a global transformation of the way of working. Innovating has to be understood in the way novelties are becoming part of a practice. Constantly, old skills remain sources of inspiration. Nowadays, experimental science and fundamental science interfere more than ever with winegrowers’ practices. From a historian point of view, it seems quite sure that what we name “novelties” are more often the development or the reappropriation of oldest knowledges or skills than a real transformation of a practice.