Given the historical dominance of France in the world of wine, it is hardly surprising that French business schools are world leaders in teaching about the wine business.
From Bordeaux to Champagne to Burgundy, each of the world-famous wine regions has a business school specialising in some aspect of the industry.
At the Burgundy Business School in Dijon, established in 1899, directeur general Stéphan Bourcieu says he intends to build on the school’s reputation for training students in wine management and in promoting the Burgundy brand abroad.
“In this specific area we are able to be recognised as one of the top business schools in Europe,” he says.
Burgundy has introduced a series of summer schools for MBA and MSc students from US universities who want to study French culture and wine management. Courses last between two weeks and two months, and classes range from wine marketing to wine tasting.
This builds on the school’s long-held reputation in the French market for having the top masters programme in the wine and spirits business.
The school established its degree some 20 years ago with the intention of imparting both technical knowledge and management and marketing skills to those in the business.
These days, one third of the 30 students come from outside France and half the French students have previously lived or worked abroad, says marketing professor Joëlle Brouard.
Burgundy professors are joined by industry specialists to teach the first seven months of the programme, which is followed by a six-month internship in a local company.
A second masters degree in wine management is also on the drawing board and will be taught in English – the existing programme combines French and English teaching. There is also an elective on the school’s Grand Ecole masters programme, which Prof Brouard says is proving “very fashionable”.
Meanwhile across France on the west coast, Bordeaux Business School is planning to launch a masters programme in wine management next year and has already made its mark with an Executive, part-time MBA programme, launched in 2001.
Like the Burgundy specialised masters programme, the Bordeaux EMBA is small and specialised, with at present just 15 students.
The plan is to have between 20 and 25 participants, but “it’s never going to be a big programme”, says Philip McLaughlin, director of the school.
Nonetheless, the programme has given the school visibility on the world stage, with the largest number of students – 38 per cent – coming from the US. Just 10 per cent come from France.
The programme has proven popular among Americans for two reasons, believes professor Jacques Olivier Pesme, a specialist in international business. First, the MBA is more respected in the Anglo-Saxon market than in France; second, in the US the MBA is a traditional way to boost careers.
The Executive Wine MBA, as it is called, has many of the hallmarks of a non-specialised programme. Personal development and organisational behaviour are important elements.
And like many of the latest breed of global MBA programmes, it requires participants to travel and study in different countries around the globe. In the case of the Executive Wine MBA, this includes wine producing regions such as Australia.
But the programme also looks at topics specific to the wine industry. Traditionally these have included succession and running a family business, but increasingly teaching looks at concerns prevalent in the industry today, says Prof Pesme. “Until the 1990s the major concern was how to make wine. Now it is international marketing.”
Between 60 and 70 per cent of French wine is exported and not just to traditional markets in Europe.
Since the mid-1990s there has been an increasing demand for French wine in the US, says Prof Pesme, and there is a growing business in Asia.
This poses new questions, he says. “How can businesses, which are usually family-owned and usually small, reach global markets?”
And French wine producers are also increasingly facing international competition. Traditional rivals – Italy, Spain and Germany – have been joined by New World producers such as the US, Australia, Chile and South Africa.
Not only are these countries producing wine, they are rapidly developing programmes in wine management to compete with their French counterparts.
In the US schools the real specialist in the technicalities of wine-making is UC Davis, which has a whole department in viticulture (the cultivation or culture of grapes) and enology (the science that deals with wine and wine making).
It runs everything from undergraduate degrees to distance-learning programmes in growing grapes.
Just an hour north of San Francisco, Sonoma State University runs courses on the business of wine for juniors and seniors on its undergraduate programmes. It is also developing a course on the Global Wine Business for its MBA students.
In Australia it is a similar story. The University of South Australia has developed both degree and executive courses in wine management.
Larry Lockshin, director of the wine marketing group at South Australia teaches executive programmes around the world – in South Africa for example, where both the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University run courses.
“It’s the trend. Lots of universities are launching wine programmes,” says Prof Pesme.
The obvious challenge for his business school, and others in France, will be the same as for the wine industry itself: whether they can hold their position as world leaders.
