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buying in other valleys - so that there spread of wines (particularly in white versus red)
can be no longer linked to just one valley.
Technological change has not only come from the classic Old World countries such as
France that have always strongly influenced the style of Chilean wine production but also
from New World countries such as Australia and New Zealand (Richards, 2006). Thus
the geographical sources of information flows for research into new process and product
technologies (such as France and Australia) are different from the main geographical
sources of knowledges relating to sales and marketing (such as the UK). This is an
example of Lagendijk’s (2004) concept of interconnected locales. Places of winemaking
in one country (which are spread along a 1,200 kilometre axis in Chile) are connected to
places of exchange and consumption in another. At the same time, these places are
connected to knowledge centres in other countries, such as the Pomerol region in France
(where flying winemakers such as Michel Rolland are based) or the Adelaide region in
Australia (home to Roseworthy, one of the world’s leading wine universities, and another
group of flying winemakers).
The ‘systemworld’ of the wine value chain thus not only links producing spaces with
consuming spaces but also links these with the spaces that generate technology and the
applied knowledges of wine. The systemworld also involves the ‘cultural circuit’ of the
wine sector - wine associations, trade journals, websites, wine critics and journalists,
scholars and experts. Some Chilean wine firms have been able to forge export growth by
harnessing the potential of the cultural circuits as well as the value chains of the global
wine sector.