In 2008 the European Union adopted an apparently radical reform of its wine policy. However, whether this policy change actually reinstitutionalizes the regulation of this industry is dependent on how it is implemented and represented by both commercial operators and regulators located at national and intra-national scales. Using interview and documentary data generated on this process in France, Spain and Romania, this article sets out to compare and explain the differentiated institutionalization of the reform that has actually occurred to date. Its key empirical finding is that reinstitutionalization is dependent on the degree to which change has been legitimated within such regions. More precisely, durable change or maintenance of the status quo stems from how conflicts over different parts of the EU’s reform have been framed and debated locally. This finding has two wider implications for institutionalist theories of political change. First, constructivist accounts of the framing of collective and public problems need to be brought to the fore. Second, at least when studying contemporary Europe, the question of scale and its institutional effects should be systematically built into research strategies and methodologies