Fruit forward?

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, a global boom in wine drinking has revitalised many rural regions through consumer interest in wine products. “Wine regions” are often tourism destinations where working vineyards and wineries co-exist with visitor facilities. This chapter examines how two settler society or New World wine business clusters within wider agricultural districts dating from the nineteenth century have achieved economic sustainability through tourism development. The responsiveness by successive generations of Hunter Valley winegrowers to shocks and opportunities has made this Australia’s oldest continually producing wine region. This longevity is the basis for preserving the scenic vineyard landscape required to maintain gastronomic tourism as the more viable source of wine-region income than selling wine. We compare this community’s innovations with those in the Okanagan Valley, one of Canada’s most highly visited wine and culinary tourism regions, with a growing focus on ecological responsibility. These case studies broaden understanding of economic communities in “wine regions” as rural agents adaptive to agricultural tourism sector dependence on metropolitan consumers.

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