Fabrizio Pegoraro, Vicente Gandia

With some 5,500 wineries in the whole of Spain how many do you think there are geared up to actively encouraging wine enthusiasts to go and visit them? 500?, 100? Count them on two hands? What is for sure is that there are more than there were 3 years agao when Wine Pleasures started getting invloved with events for the international wine tourism sector. One of the main players in the Spanish Wine Tourism market is Vicente Gandia located in the Utiel-Requena (Bobal) wine producing region conveniently located en route Madrid-Valencia-Madrid.

Vicente Gandia Visitor Centre Manager Fabrizio Pegoraro will be delivering a talk at the Wine Pleasures International Wine Tourism Conference 2010 titled:

History of an ambitious Wine Tourism Project in the DO Utiel – Requena (Valencia)

Tuesday 2nd February 2010 at 15.15

Vicente Gandia will also be participating in the Wine Tourism Workshop holding one-to one meetings with carefully selected international tour operators specialised in wine and culinery tourism (Groups, FIT, MICE and so on). Participants in the Workshop will get the chance to try wine made from the Bobal variety during the Networking Wine Tasting Evening on day 1. Bobal is one of the 6 commonly grown grapes of Spanish origin  in the world. Can you name the other 5?

He tells us “If a winery wants to bet on wine tourism it has to be ready to face new issues, typical of any company wanting to diversify its own business. On one hand it should have its objectives clear, and build up a strategy according to them. On the other hand, it should understand logics and needs of a completely new market (the tourism one) in order to identify the different players (target and intermediaries) and find the right means to catch them”.

Fabrizio’s talk will be structered in the following way:

Quick overview of  the situation of wine tourism in Spain.

Vicente Gandia: who we are.

Vicente Gandia is one of the oldest and one of the most export oriented wineries in Spain. A brief overview of the history and business structure of the company.

Vicente Gandia first steps in wine tourism.

An explanation of when and why the winery decided to enter into this new business channel, the problems and challenges it had to face, and how we managed to solve them.

The touristic offer.

Presentation of the different kind of visits and services we offer.

Some figures.

Some interesting figures about our winetourism business: numbers and types of visitor, weekly, monthly and seasonal variance in visits.

Wine Pleasures International Wine Tourism Conference Registration Form.