Over many decades of wine tasting I’ve carefully observed that the tasting room experience is far more valued than the taste of the wine.  The right tasting room staff can turn a sweet white wine taster into a cab sav taster in less than a hour.

During my ethnographic research of tasters in tasting rooms I tried to bring some science to my observations.  I am no longer a believer in focus groups and surveys.  The best understanding of people can come from careful observation of the subjects in their environment.

My hypothesis is supported by my observations:

The overwhelming value of the tasting room visit, and the value of the wine that tasters purchase, is created by the taster’s experience in the tasting room and what that means to them.  The wine is just something to talk about.

So how do you create meaning in a winery experience?  This will be covered in the future but please add your thoughts in the forum for wine tasting experiences and ambiance.

- jim

Tags: Meaning, tasting room experience, wine value

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Calif regions, Wines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.