national audience The understanding of the organisation of firms in the wine sector is confronted with the question of quality determinism. The new institutional economy provides a framework for analysis that is particularly suited to the study of these issues. To validate their assumptions, the authors designed an electronic survey to which around 100 traders from six countries replied. Econometric analysis through a logistical regression on dichotomic and cumulative logit variables on ordered polytomic variables highlights the crucial role of specialised winegrowing assets, in particular skills and know-how. Above all, it shows that the pricing of cuvées has a significant effect on the explanatory variables of firms’ arbitrage between internalisation and outsourcing of their various activities.