South African wine routes: some perspectives on the wine tourism industry's structural dimensions and wine tourism product

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Wine tourism has emerged as a strong and growing area of special-interest tourism in ‘New World’ wine countries in particular, and represents an increasingly significant component of the regional and rural tourism products of these countries. The development of wine routes throughout Europe, and increasingly in ‘New World’ wine countries, provides the link between wine and tourism. South Africa is believed to be one of the most aggressive in the short- to medium-term in getting out its wine tourism message. The twofold purpose of this paper is to investigate the structural dimensions of the South African wine industry as these specifically relate to wine route estates and to determine the nature and extent of the wine tourism ‘product’ offered on the wine route estates. In this context, 125 face-to-face interviews were conducted with wine route estate enterprises. Wine route estates have long recognised the potential of wine tourism and the implications of their involvement in wine tourism through their inclusion in wine routes are discussed.