Understanding The Wine Tourist
Mark Norman
Lifetime Wine Lover, mostly retired wine professional. Future Centenarian living a focused life! Experimenting in nutritional farming for the purpose of living a healthy lifestyle, fulfilling a vision and a passion!
Wine tourism is very important in any wine region but especially for a country like Italy.?The negative impact of COVID-19 on tourist revenues has been significant for everyone involved.?
There are many discussions on what to do as global travelers get vaccinated, get green passes, and begin to think about returning.?I read about many events happening throughout Italy focused on providing a better experience but I have yet to read anyone taking into account the different kinds of wine tourists that visit wineries.
Tourism, especially wine tourism, must change. A one-size-fits-all approach creates boredom for savvy wine travelers. A standardized beginner tour is fine, but for someone like me, I've literally gone on hundreds of winery tours. My wife laughs, I can often explain things better than tour guides. This is not really a laughing matter.
Mostly, tours are provided on the basis that "everyone" is a beginner. Here lies the problem. If you've seen a winery and heard the process, it's very similar (usually) from winery to winery. Listening to the same story (in a different place) becomes boring.?Instead, tours should focus on what is different from the winery, the family that owns it, and the history of the immediate place, what makes the winery’s wines unique.
Word of mouth has become very powerful and if a region adopts a more varied customized approach to tours, wine drinkers will hear about it relatively quickly and sudden shifts will happen fast.
President at Juris Corporation
3 年Mark, that's perfectly sound explanation of the problem with Italian (and others) wine tourism approach. If you know the winery folks and they know your background, the experience is nearly always elevated. To the novice wine tourist, the approach is to show them through the stages of production and get them to the tasting (selling) room quickly and one to the next group. When reserving a tour, the winery should ask about the level of expertise and tailor the experience to fit = better tour = better sales = long-term customers for the winery.