1 The Research Project and the Relevance of the Topic Te project of a book collecting papers about diferent European wine regions was developed during Spring 2017 by Paolo Tedeschi and Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro, scholars in economic history and members of the informal group of research about the Italian Oeno-History. Considering that, from food and agricultural history points of view, the wine sector is at the core of the present scientifc debate and the social, economic and legislative relevance of the products of the terroir Terroir, Institutions and Improvements in European Wine History: An Introduction Silvia A. Conca Messina, Stéphane Le Bras, Paolo Tedeschi and Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro © Te Author(s) 2019 S. A. Conca Messina et al. (eds.), A History of Wine in Europe, 19th to 20th Centuries, Volume I, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27772-7_1 S. A. Conca Messina (*) Department of Historical Studies, University of Milan ‘La Statale’, Milan, Italy e-mail: silvia.conca@unimi.it S. Le Bras CHEC, University of Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France e-mail: stephane.lebras@uca.fr