Highlights • Transition toward quality wine production in the Midi region of southern France reflects wider norms in French quality agro-food production and regulation but also departs from it. • Diverse practices and policies comprising a move toward more sustainable wine production in the Midi are highly relevant to the shift to quality wine making but are not synonymous with it. • The Midi shift to quality wine production involves a dynamic re-articulation of independent and cooperative modes of vinification and includes important changes to cooperative practices and governance. • Cooperative growers have been slower than independent growers in the uptake of more sustainable agronomic practices, owing in large measure to economic and logistical challenges. • In-depth profile of three ethnographic subjects highlights ways that individuals negotiate and give shape to broad changes in the Midi winescape but also the ways these individuals make choices constrained by broader social, institutional and environmental context.