Wineries as tourist destinations.

Article in Friday's NY Times about state and regional tourism campaigns to bring people to local wineries. The idea is to lure tourists to wine regions in their areas - Missouri, Virginia, Texas, Michigan - to get them to visit wineries and buy wine (and presumably to spend other tourist dollars as well, at hotels, restaurants, and other tourist locations). And if those tourists think they're in the Napa Valley of Pennsylvania, say, they'll enjoy themselves and support the local wine industry, both admirable goals.

I can't say I'm entirely opposed to the idea, as I always seek out wineries when I'm on trips, and have been to wineries in at least 20 states. And I'm in favor of promotions that bring people out to visit small wineries, and that expose people to the possibility that good wine is made near them, thereby encouraging good wineries to grow and make more good wine.

But I'm concerned when wineries shift their focus from making high quality wine that will be good enough that people will buy the wine for itself and will want to buy more when their initial purchase is consumed, to marketing themselves as entertainment or as a novelty in hopes that enough new people will come through each year and each buy one bottle that they can make their profit on new sales. Wineries should go for quality first, with the repeat business and growth that will follow from that, rather than pushing novelty sales on one-time visitors.

I'm especially concerned by Virginia's Gov. Warner's statements in the article: "You can visit wineries in the morning and Monticello in the afternoon" and "It is clearly not to the California model yet, but we are trying to build wine tours around destination wineries." Instead of promoting wineries located near tourist destinations, it would be better to have wineries making such good wines that the wines themselves are the destinations. (And "Monticello in the morning, wineries in the afternoon," is what I'd suggest. Tasting young cabernet franc at ten in the morning is not an especially comforting thought.)

Yes, I understand that small wineries need all the assistance they can get to have people try their wines - but the goal should be to bring people to the winery to try the wine and not just to get people to the winery as an end in and of itself. And events that are wine-related - barrel tastings and release parties, or vertical tastings, or wine and cheese pairings - ultimately will pull in the right customers, where grape-stomping and open bar destination parties will only bring in the one-time visitors, even if it's by the busload.