Un processus évolutionnaire de création institutionnelle d'une convention de qualité : l'histoire exemplaire de la création d'un produit de luxe, le champagne

The history of champagne is a very strange one because, initially, champagne wine was not a good wine but only a standard one. By the means of a spectacular historical process of creativity, champagne industry succeeded in transforming champagne wine in a luxury good and in segmenting the old market in two strongly separated compartments. As pointed by the "economics of conventions", creating a market needs a conventional agreement on the characteristics of this product, i.e. a quality convention. In the exemplary case of champagne, the creation of a luxury wine market, through the creation of a quality convention, emerges from a specific institutional process, the invention of a new legal system, the geographic label of origin.