The Gran Wine tour, the first Italian association of wineries united in the enhancement of wine tourism, appoints Nadia Zenato and Elvira Bortolomiol as communication managers: “Together to enhance and develop quality wine tourism, with the goal of reaching 40 members in the next three years.”
The Grand Wine Tour – association that brings together the best Italian wineries with the aim of enhancing the potential of the high-quality wine tourism sector-announces the renewal of its Executive Board.
To respond to an expanding but extremely fragmented economic scenario such as that related to wine tourism in Italy, the new composition will see prominent personalities from different areas with a great wine vocation. Nadia Zenato – co-owner of the historic winery located between Lugana and Valpolicella – and Elvira Bortolomiol – at the helm of the Valdobbiadene winery of the same name-will serve as vice president and member of the Executive Board, respectively, both with responsibility for the association’s communications. “The Grand Wine Tour constitutes a unicum of its kind in Italy,” they state. “We are very proud to represent in the world a project that allows to codify and consequently unify and enhance the immense Italian wine tourism heritage.
Our goal?
To arrive at forty member wineries in the next three years, in order to be able to present to visitors the Italian wine-making reality in its different territorial articulations “.
The two women entrepreneurs will be joined in their duties by Lapo Mazzei of the historic Tuscan group and Alberto Chiarlo of the Piedmont-based Michele Chiarlo winery.
Giovanni Minetti, CEO of Tenuta Carretta, a historic winery with vineyards in Langhe and Roero, will chair the board.
The Grand Wine Tour
The association was born in 2017 from an intuition: to reinvent wine tourism in Italy through the philosophy of the Grand Tour, which at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries accompanied European nobles and intellectuals of Goethe’s caliber to discover the artistic and cultural heritage of the Bel Paese.
Wine thus becomes the protagonist of unique and enriching cultural experiences, and The Grand Wine Tour establishes itself as a meeting point for the best Italian wineries, bringing together wine territories that are different but united by uniqueness, beauty and a high quality wine tourism offer, from the Unesco heritage Langhe, Roero and Monferrato and the Prosecco hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene to the Colli di Luni, from Chianti Classico to the Colli Orientali del Friuli, reaching the borders of the Val di Noto in Sicily.
The participating wineries
Today, the association includes 16 prestigious wineries located in eight Italian regions: Cascina Chicco, Ceretto, Coppo, Marchesi di Grésy, Michele Chiarlo, Tenuta Carretta and Villa Sparina in Piedmont; Lunae in Liguria and Torre Rosazza in Friuli Venezia Giulia; Bortolomiol, Costa Arènte and Zenato in Veneto; Castello di Fonterutoli in Tuscany, Umberto Cesari in Emilia-Romagna, Casale del Giglio in Lazio and Zisola in Sicily.
A synergy between realities of excellence aimed at promoting a welcome between the rows dedicated to wine enthusiasts and a demanding clientele both in terms of product and service standards.
To pursue this goal, The Grand Wine Tour’s Seal of Quality – unique in Italy in its category – certifies the standards of hospitality required of members according to precise evaluation parameters, screened by an external Technical Body.
Also tour operators
The Grand Wine Tour is also a Tour Operator owned by the Association itself and active in Italy and abroad in offering exclusive and personalized wine and food tours to the territories of member wineries.
Training and refresher courses on the subject of wine tourism are also offered to the staff of the Association’s wineries, in order to keep up with a market that is constantly rising and evolving.
Enriching the new board’s 2024-2025 agenda are participation in trade fairs and B2B meetings with specialized tour operators to achieve greater penetration in foreign markets, renewed communication with a strategic focus on the end consumer, andexpanded training offerings to strengthen the skills of staff responsible for hospitality. “There is still a long way to go,” conclude Nadia Zenato and Elvira Bortolomiol. “In order to increase the attractiveness of hospitality, a radical change of perspective is needed in the winery: from a productlogic it is necessary to move to one of service , from a vision geared toward professionals to one directed toward the private consumer.
For this, economic investments are not enough: it is essential to acquire specific skills, which can talk about the product but also know the language of hospitality and are aimed at customer service.
Once again, the starting point can only be training “.
