Unlike France, or the US, where wine tourism is an important aspect in the management of a winery, in Italy, in spite of its long tradition in wine making, wine tourism is still largely un-developed and often neglected.
France is the country where modern wine business developed already at the end of 18th century. French wines were already exported and appreciated all over Europe more than two hundred years ago and especially in those world renown wine regions such as Bordeaux or Champagne, wine tourism is taken very seriously.
On the other hand, in the US, wine making is a quite recent activity and most wineries have been built and ar managed by people who are aware of the importance of marketing and communication.
Wine Tours Vs Farmers’ Mentality
Italy has almost three thousand years of wine making history but, until relatively recent years, wine has often been made for local consumption. French chateaus where estates highly specialized and totally devoted to the production of wine. In Italy wine was only part of the wide production of a farm, together with fruit, cereals, olive oil, etc. drunk mainly by the farmer and his family and sold only if they had more then what they needed for their own consumption.
In the past fifty years in Italy too many farms in wine producing regions became specialized wineries where wine is the only production, but mentality of people running them often remained the old farmer’s one.
In Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ the peasants who, at the beginning are desparate because they’ve been runsacked by bandits, at the end of the movie, to celebrate the victory, open big jugs of sake they’ve been hiding under the floor of a hut.
This scene can describe very well the old fashioned attitude that many Italian cellar masters, still have towards strangers entering their cellar. They are often suspicious, they think that those people willing to enter their cellars might steel some secrets of their wine making techniques, make trouble or just make them loose precious time, especially foreingers who, with new security restrictions on hand luggage, cannot buy more then one or two bottles.
Luckily things are changing fast but, a part from some areas like Tuscany and Piemonte, were wine tourism has a longer tradition, this attitude can still be found.
Amarone Tours’ Choice
Amarone Tours staff is all made by wine experts, sommeliers, wine tours specialists. Thanks to their long experience we have been able to build a wide network of wineries that understand the importance of welcoming people interested in their wines and are willing to collaborate with us, open their cellars and share their knowledge and passion with visitors and wine enthusiasts from all over the world.
In every different wine region of those were we organize tours there are many different types of winery. There are wineries that are still family estates of few hectars handed down from generation to generation and still following the old traditional wine making techniques. Other wineries are new style cellars using cutting edge technology in the production of very modern wines. There are wineries hosted in gorgeous Renaissance and Baroque style villas decorated with stunning frescos and statues and surrounded by romantic gardens. And there are also factory style wineries bottling millions of liters per year in huge facilities.
If we also consider all the wine producing area around Verona the choices in the organization of a winery tour become almost unlimited.
Thanks to our long experience, Amarone Tours will take care of chosing the wineries in the organization of a wine tasting itinerary in your favourite wine producing area. You don’t have to worry about anything, we take care of contacting the winery, booking the tour and doing the English translation during the visit of the cellar if necessary.
When organizing a winery tour for our guests we select the most representative wineries in the selected area in order to give a comprehensive experience of what that terroir has to offer. For an half day winery tour we usually choose a small, family run cellar and a bigger, historical one. With a full day tour it is possible to include also a visit to big, modern wineries or to compare different estates sharing the same wine making style, maybe in more than just one producing area.
Our wine tours are fully customizable so if there are wineries in particular that you would like to visit you only need to tell us and we will try to arrange a tour there.
Do not hesitate to contact us for any information and further details on our and tour or to book your exclusive wine tasting tour.