Circular Economy Business Model—Let’s Wine about it: An Exploratory Research Applied to Portuguese Wineries

Sustainability requires businesses to adopt a more holistic approach, rethinking how products are designed, manufactured, and distributed and finding ways to reduce waste and increase resource efficiency. The wine sector can benefit significantly from adopting circular business models as they offer opportunities to reduce waste, increase resource efficiency, and create value from by-products. This chapter aims to discuss the following questions: Are companies in the wine sector adopting circular economy practices? Are the managers engaged in a circular economy strategy? What are companies’ main difficulties when switching to circular economy business models? This exploratory study is a case study. The qualitative methodology applied semi-structured interviews in two wineries and one wine association. The results suggested a scarcity in the adoption of circular economy models. Generally, the managers are not engaged in sustaining the transition to a circular approach on the assumption of maximum efficiency. Finally, the study also reveals the perception by critical informants of wineries that higher education institutions can make an essential contribution to the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Therefore, the creation of idea-sharing networks with them can be a catalyst for new developments.