From Wine Production to Wine Tourism Experience: The Case of Italy

Abstract

Typical products, mainly local food and wine, are considered suitable features to characterise the tourist supply of a destination and in many cases they are a major attraction of a territory. These products contain a strong reference to the territory in which they are produced. They simultaneously represent on the market a geographic area, its traditions and its cultural heritage, they identify a local community and its identity as well. Therefore typical products can be defined as ‘territorial intensive products’ (TIPs). Wine tourism represents the most innovative phenomenon of the more general tourism supply created around a TIP and certainly the most evident. The paper considers the importance of quality wine in Italy in helping to create the tourist supply of different territories through the creation of the Wine and Food Routes (WFRs) that represent a particular kind of tourist thematic itineraries. The paper confirms that quality wines are the ‘driver’ of WFRs creating a model of socioeconomic district.