Drawing on multi-year fieldwork in two wine regions in two emerging wine producing counties, namely Erlin in Taiwan and the Kofu Basin in Japan, this paper discusses key institutional arrangements contributing the development processes of wine sector in the New-New World. Unlike existing studies on the catch-up experiences of wine industries in the New World with emphases on the capability-enhancing mechanisms embedded in the state- or MNC-initiated trans-local networks, this paper finds that the development of Taiwanese and Japanese wine sectors in these two regions has been driven mainly by local actors' active exploration of competence residing in their regional networks. This article employs the Triple Helix (TH) and Innovation systems (IS) as principal frameworks to narrow the research focus on the industry-government-university interaction, and examine the development process and nature of critical institutions supporting the interactive learning and collaboration among the TH actors. Through studying the cases of Taiwanese and Japanese wine industries, this paper goes beyond stating “institutions matter” as in existing IS and TH literature, by illuminating on how to develop institutions to allow actors' interaction to occur and be boosted especially when their local TH are still in the early phase of formation.