Wine tourism and the active development and marketing of the wine tourism product is a relatively recent phenomenon, even in the European countries with a long established wine-producing history which are usually collectively described as Old World wine regions. While Hall and Macionis (1998) note that visits to vineyards have been part of organized travel since at least the time of the Grand Tour and that wine trails have been a component of the German tourism industry since the 1920s, European wine tourism is essentially still an emerging tourism product (Choisy 1996; Colombini, pers. comm. 1997). Indeed, Mallon (1996) notes that wine tourism only began to gain momentum in France during the 1980s as a result of declining rural economic conditions which led many wine-growers to consider direct sales to tourists in order to expand and diversify farm incomes.

At a pan-European level three key wine tourism organizations exist:

• the European Council of Wine Regions (Assemblia das Regioes Europeias Viticolas);

• RECEVIN, a network of wine-producing towns (based on the Italian Citta del Vino or Cities of Wine concept), which aims to improve the standard of living of residents of wine-producing towns by promotion of wine culture and developing wine-based tourism (Dower n.d.); and

• the Dionysus multimedia network of European wine-producing regions (Hall and Macionis 1998).

The European Union has also been involved in wine tourism development at a regional level through the LEADER and Ouverture projects (Nitsch and van Straaten 1995). The activities of the European...