Jan 20: Wine Future 2021, being organized as the first international online wine conference on February 23-26 is preceded by 8 Webinars, the 4th one organized on 13 January moderated by Michèle Shah, our Italy Correspondent-a Journalist, wine critic, specialist in Italian wine marketing and owner of Italy’s top B2B event Speedtasting® chatting with Sylvie Cazes from Bordeaux and Adrian Bridge from Porto, sharing their experience during pandemic and viewpoint about Post-Covid scenario
La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, is a unique urban museum designed to encourage wine lovers to take a self-guided tour punctuated by 20 themed spaces, explaining the culture of wine in an immersive, sensorial setting. It has a restaurant and bar that offers more than 14,000 bottles from more than 80 wine producing countries.
Sylvie Cazes owner of Chateau Lynch Bages in Bordeaux and Owner of Bordeaux Saveurs- a tourism agency and website, which caters for tailor- made tours for wine lovers around the world and events in Bordeaux and in France, was one of the panelists.
Adrian Bridge, is CEO of The Fladgate Partnership, Oporto, who took over as the Managing Director of the Taylor Fonseca Port Group, further expanding the company with the purchase of Croft Port and Delaforce Port in 2001 and forming The Fladgate Partnership. In 2010 He launched a luxury wine hotel, The Yeatman in Porto, which has a 2 Star Michelin restaurant and the largest Portuguese Wine list with over 1,400 references.
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Adrian launched the World of Wine (WOW), a major cultural center covering in July last, with 35,000 sqm of renovated Port wine warehouses in Vila Nova de Gaia, the historic heart of the Port wine trade and an experiential museum dedicated to Wine, Cork, The Porto Region, Chocolate, Drinking vessels from the last 9,000 years He created Explore Sideways Europe, which provides bespoke travel tours for guests to wine regions/countries. He was the second panelist.
David Furer, the co-host of the Conference was also present to give his viewpoints at the webinar, addressed by Pancho Campo, whose company Chrand is organizing the Wine Future 2021.
Since both the panelists were from Bordeaux and Porto, the discussions started with urban Wine Tourism.
Urban Wine Tourism
If we think of the industries which have been hardest hit during the Covid pandemic, for sure tourism has been one of the worst-hit, and this includes wine tourism which has shown to be an ever expanding and important branch of tourism, attracting many visitors to European wineries and the New World.
In discussing and defining wine tourism today, it is important to understand the positive impact that ‘urban’ wine tourism, with museums such as La Citè du Vin and WOW can have in leading enthusiastic tourists (and not necessarily converted wine-lovers) to discover authentic winery and vineyard experiences.
La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, is a unique urban museum designed to encourage wine lovers to take a self-guided tour punctuated by 20 themed spaces, explaining the culture of wine in an immersive, sensorial setting. It has a restaurant and bar that offers more than 14,000 bottles from more than 80 wine producing countries.
Sylvie Cazes owner of Chateau Lynch Bages in Bordeaux with 20 years of experience in the world of Top Growths and Owner of Bordeaux Saveurs- a tourism agency and website, which caters for tailor- made tours for wine lovers around the world and events in Bordeaux and in France, was one of the panelists.
“La Citè du Vin brought wine into the city, creating a network of experiences encouraging more tourists to visit the winelands”, explains Sylvie. “As a tourist it’s a useful and good experience to live, either before or after a trip, because it explains a broader landscape.”
Wine Tourism an interactive experience
Wine tourism should not merely be limited to lodgings, restaurants and wine tastings. Both my speakers agreed that wine tourism should be a living, interactive experience, often a hands-on experience in the vineyards, a walk among the vineyards to understand the different grape varieties, an opportunity to be outside among nature, a ‘go back to authenticity experience’ and a ‘drive to new discoveries’. “Like for example, what they are doing in Sauternes, where you can learn about the importance of botrytis and how this process assists in making Sauternes such a great wine,” said Sylvie.
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During lockdown one of the first changes we saw was cleaner air, cleaner waters, a step towards cleansing and restoring our planet. No doubt, as soon as the vaccine rolls out, air travel will pick up again, even if travelers have to pay a special tax on flying. People want to explore different parts of the world, including wine tourism, which in itself, as outlined by my speakers is rich in its offer, of culture, nature, food and wine pairing. A solution is that people will just have to pay more, perhaps a special tax on air travel.
Sustainability important
We are all aware that sustainability is a major issue today, and wine tourism has a major role to play, not only because tourism and wine tourism involves travel, with some of us taking intercontinental long-haul flights to get to our destinations. Maybe during this recovery period, wine tourism may attract travelers to stay closer to home, shorter trips, staying more local.
“We shouldn’t condemn low cost flights, very often low-cost airlines have better adapted to addressing sustainability, and we shouldn’t make people feel guilty for having chosen to fly on holiday somewhere. Sustainability has different values and different meanings for different people, says Adrian, adding that “each country and each region will face the issue of sustainability in a different manner,” explains Adrian.
South African example
Travel is important, and if we take countries such as South Africa, where unemployment has been impacted by 70%, a country where tourism and wine tourism play an important role in the economy, we need to find a sustainable balance. “It’s not simple to balance carbon emissions, economy and sustainability, we can’t simply compartmentalize these issues, we need to look at the broader aspect and the wine industry is doing a lot to capture the carbon emissions,” says Adrian
The suggestion of being more sustainably conscious by making electric car rentals available and more bicycle rentals available, should be considered. “Wine tourists are more and more engaged with sustainability and therefore sustainability needs to be part of our dialogue, people want to feel that the issue of sustainability is being taken seriously by the wineries in their everyday production processes,” says Sylvie.
New ideas for tourism
Many new ideas came out of this discussion on how to enrich wine tourism with new experiences and how to diversify these experiences, so that each country, region and winery can offer a distinct personalized experience. In cities such as Bordeaux and Porto an ‘urban’ experience could be to travel up the river while listening to music and enjoying wine tasting. Other countries like India are embracing other activities, such as Sula Fest- a wine, food and music festival, attracting thousands of people to the wine lands. Similarly, wineries organize classical and jazz concerts and film festivals. It’s important to mix these different artistic and cultural interests making wine tourism more accessible to all.
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“We need to make all cultures welcome and adapt our ways to make different cultures feel inclusive,” says Sylvie. “This means learning different languages, different customs, accepting and including different foods when showcasing one’s wines, showing how well our wines can pair to the foods of different countries and not just to the local dishes of the region.”
When do we get back to normality
The question remains, when will we get back to normality? A very interesting survey was carried out in November 2020 by a Swedish company https://www.winetourism.com, giving a helicopter view on where we stand today and how confident are wineries around the world with regard to wine tourism getting back to normal. The survey shows wine tourism should already start ‘healing’ by the second half of 2021, but in 2022 and 2023 it should regain its strength and full capacity, and with what we have all learnt during the interim, it will be a richer and more diverse experience.
Looking ahead some 10-20 years from now we will look back on this period and see how well we adapted to the new norms. How wine tourism changed and adapted during this time of 
pandemic and how we developed smart ideas and a new way of looking at and marketing wine tourism.
Wine Tourism during pandemic
During these past months, wineries have had to sharpen their technical skills and continue to do whatever they could via the internet with on-line tours and on-line tastings, activities which are good for reinforcing one’s branding and for creating curiosity among wine-lovers and creating client loyalty. Technology and technological experiences through platforms and apps are important because people want to learn and during a time such as the ‘pandemic’ this was the best choice, but people now want to live the real experience.
Webinar #4 -WINE TOURISM has been posted at: https://www.winefuture2021.com/en/webinars/
There will be 4 more webinars on January 27, February 3, February 10 and February 17. Check the above URL for details and free registration.
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WineFuture Summit will be held online for 4 days on Feb23-26. For Program and buying tickets, please click
Program :: Winefuture 2021 or write to patricia@chrand.es
Michele Shah
CEO Michele Shah SRL
www.micheleshah.com
www.micheleshahtravel.com