Can wine tourism help wineries export their wine abroad?

How to create the right strategy for wine tourism
Where to turn? How do I choose importers who are interested in what I do?

Endless stretches of vineyards embellishing the landscape, beautiful small towns with their unique history, wines that are the expression of worldwide loved territories. Only mentioning the kind of beauty by which Italians’ eyes are nourished on a daily basis is enough to understand the impact that wine tourism can have on wineries’ export markets and on the importers interested in Italian wines.

Diving somewhere, breathing in its tradition, art and history, is an extraordinary way of telling what sets a particular wine apart from the others and why it can only be what it is because of where it comes from. In addition to that, the pairing of typical local food with your glass of wine completes the picture and matches the experiences of taste, smell and sight in a feast of the senses.

Wine tourism seems thus to be a truly effective strategy to promote your wine even abroad, but it’s an everything-but-trivial mission. To carry it out at best and create an unforgettable experience for our guests, it is important to walk the right steps and to identify the best international interlocutors to whom we can introduce our wine.

How can you create a strategy for wine tourism?

Wine tourism is much more than a winery visit. It’s a 360-degree experience that combines wine tasting with typical local food but also with sightseeing of places and territories where the wine is produced. It’s a real dive into history and traditions which contributes to making the wine shine and to its value communication.

Which country could be more appropriate for this purpose than Italy? The endlessly vast variety of wine and food and the rich landscape and culture heritage of our country are surely among the most renowned in the world. Why not taking advantage of this extraordinary potential?

In this article we won’t be diving into every tiny technical detail of wine tourism, but we’ll try to give you some small tips to start and innovate what you offer in this direction.

Where to begin? Start from the definition of your true identity. As trivial as this may seems, thinking about the characteristics that make your wine unique and those elements that could be valued by an international importer is a step that’s as fundamental as it is complex.

Trace the history of your business and make sure you highlight everything that sets you apart: the unique terroir, the business and family path to becoming what it is now, your working methods, your views on sustainability and the special bond with the territory. Everything plays a role in the creation of your story in the context of marketing.

Keep in mind you should consider the actual market trends and the particular sensitivities of each country: a German importer will have different priorities than someone from Denmark and it is important that you give each of them the most custom-tailored experience they need.

Here comes the most operational part of the matter, the real definition of how the experience of tasting should be carried out. First of all, organize the winery visit, choose the most interesting places to see and the most fascinating paths to follow and think about the most exciting food and wine pairings that you want your guests to experience. Remember that it is crucial to look beyond just the wine itself and to integrate the experience of your guests with side elements that they will cherish and easily take away with them.

But as we already mentioned there is much more than the winery visit itself to wine tourism.

Bring your guests outside of your winery too and let them explore vineyards and areas where your wines are produced and touristic highlights or places of historical interest. Some examples? A bike tour exploring the enchanting hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, with some breaks to taste local food paired to wine, a tour to discover medieval castles in the region of Trentino – an area that makes you feel like you are living in a fairy-tale, a brief lesson on art in Sicily, where Arab culture had a deep impact also on the culinary tradition of this dreamy and sunny region.

It’s impossible to run short of ideas in a country that is so rich of beauty.

However something is still missing.

Where do I turn? How do I choose importers who could be interested in this?

As per any other strategy of wine export, a wine tourism experience also requires the right target.

Which are the countries where the type of wine I produce is demanded? Who are the importers that would really like to know what they buy, the area where it comes from and the history of my business? Without a clear definition of the people we want to address, we only risk missing the target and wasting the precious resources we’d have invested in this project.

At Vianello Wines we support wine producers in the export of their products in the whole of Europe and in particular in Germany. Starting from an analysis of your wines in relation to our the markets we work for, we choose the target that is right for you among our 150 customers – importers, wine shops and retailers. We study market trends on a daily basis, to see if the strategy is working over time and to be able to adjust it to the newest developments. We also offer support during importers’ visits in Italy, to help them get to know the real worth of what you do.

Want to know more? Get in touch