When Wine Reinvents Itself: Breaking the Mold to Promote Creativity
Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat – November 18, 2025
The Bibliothèque Humaniste hosted the third conference in the ADT–EM Strasbourg series, organized by Alsace Destination Tourisme [Fr], the Wine & Tourism Chair, and the MAESTRO Cluster at EM Strasbourg. It was a rich evening, bringing together professionals from the sector around a common question: How can we break the rules to promote creativity in the wine industry?
Why this theme?
Wine is very much part of cultural and creative industries, alongside gastronomy, arts and crafts, and the visual arts. It carries symbolic value, an experience steeped in emotion, a connection to the land, and an aesthetic that goes far beyond its technical dimension.
To regard wine as a cultural, creative, and artistic product is to acknowledge the role of creativity and sensory experience in its making.
Roundtable 1 – Rethinking Entrepreneurship and Gender in Viticulture
With Eve Lamendour (IAE La Rochelle) and Mathilde Bleesz (Domaine Léon Bleesz).
Key ideas presented:
- Women who take over or transform wine estates navigate between family heritage and innovation, forging hybrid pathways that combine loyalty to the terroir and new practices
- The role of women remains too often invisible, despite their significant contribution to transmission, relationships, governance, and renewal in the sector.
- New dynamics are emerging to counter normative and technical obstacles: sharing experiences, women's networks and groups, and more inclusive management styles.
- Female entrepreneurial identity is revealed as a process of adjustment, gradual change, and progressive innovation.
These elements fully echo management studies on creative and cultural industries, where female identity is creating new creative territories, distinguishing itself from established practices (as in Scandinavian crime novels or auteur cinema), and where commissioned art is practiced to secure projects that meet demand while daring to explore new ideas and thus fuel creativity (as in architecture).
Roundtable 2 – Rethinking the Role of Wineries in Their Regional Ecosystems
With Inès Corinto (Université de Lorraine), Massimo Carletti, and Maria-Grazia Sagretti (Domaine Podere Sabbioni).
Key ideas presented:
- At Podere Sabbioni, the vineyard has become a place where sustainability, poetry, deep ecology, and inclusion intertwine
- Art acts as a language of transformation, revealing the practices, values, and memory of a region—even in the monumental frescoes that tell the story of the connection to the land, native grape varieties, and communities
- Governance is conceived as a craft-based and social approach, where hospitality, vulnerability, disability, and local cooperation become levers of identity
- Wineries thus emerge as regional players, engaged in wine tourism, research, and energy redistribution, promoting sustainable vineyard practices
The evening ended with a convivial moment offered by Alsace Destination Tourisme, with a tasting of wines from Domaines Podere Sabbioni, Domaine Léon Bleesz, and Domaine Dirringer. It was an ideal opportunity to continue discussions about creativity, terroir, and the transformations taking place in the industry.
Breaking the mold means paving the way for unprecedented collaborations between vineyards, the arts, and academic research. What if we dared to imagine more inclusive, more sensory-based, and more creative paths for the world of wine?
A big thank you to all the institutions and partners without whom this event would not have been possible: EM Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg [Fr], Alsace Destination Tourisme [Fr], France 2030 [Fr].
And a huge thank you to all the participants for your presence and energy!
