Overview

Winery cellar doors are no longer simply venues to taste and purchase wine.  Many offer a complete tourism experience – services such as restaurants, accommodation, tours, picnic facilities and recreational facilities.  Today's cellar door is a place where consumers and visitors can interact with the product, the winemaker and experience first hand, the rich diversity that the wine region has to offer.   

The Big Picture - First Impressions

The cellar door is an essential interface between your brand and your customers, bypassing traditional retail channels and allowing for development of a direct relationship.  With this objective in mind, winery cellar doors aim to offer services that meet – and exceed – visitor expectations.  Considerable effort is put into design elements that create a relaxed and friendly environment, conducive to the visitors’ needs.

If you’re planning a cellar door or are keen to review your existing facilities, here are four key areas to consider:

Location

• Being close to, or preferably part of, a main tourist route
• Proximity to target markets and/or high population areas
• Being part of a strong tourism region and/or close to other wineries

Branding

• Brand consistency through signage, buildings, grounds and facilities
• Professionally presented and maintained entrance, ground and buildings
• Authenticity and a clearly recognisable point of difference

Signage

• Strong entry statement that entices visitors to stop
• Good directional signage into and throughout the property

Extra Selling Points

• Adequate parking for a range of visitors
• The ability to create a “destination in its own right”
• Family-friendly facilities
• Links with nature-based activities
• A range of facilities that lead to a “total tourism experience”

Street Signs to Cellar Doors

The People Factor

Service levels are also paramount, with cellar door staff being encouraged to conduct tastings in a jargon-free unpretentious manner – a common criticism of the wine tasting experience for many visitors.  Cellar door staff are literally the winery’s “walking, talking brand ambassadors” and require a high level of wine and tourism knowledge, coupled with people-friendly personal attributes.

Lasting Memories

The all important lasting positive impression of a visit to cellar door is the key to a successful operation.  Word of mouth customer-driven promotion based on positive experience is a potent way to grow your business.  There are many ways to evoke memory in visitors, from the wines themselves, the staff, food on offer, architectural features to the opportunity to observe a working winery.  No one of these factors is the key on its own.  Rather it is a combination of these and other things that create the winning impression.  Different people will respond to different aspects of their visit so it is important to focus on building a complete experience that reflects and complements your brand.

Tasting at a Cellar Door

A Case In Point - Gerald Ellis – Meadowbank Estate, Tasmania

“We always talk about giving visitors an ‘experience’. I think in some ways what our visitors really want now is entertainment – in actual fact we should consider ourselves to be in the entertainment business! The big difference is that we do have an opportunity to keep on entertaining our visitors for the rest of their lives. We would like to think that after a visit to Meadowbank a visitor seeing our wine on a wine list in another state or city would be inclined to purchase it.”

To enhance the tourism experience at Meadowbank they offer entertainment including blind tastings with prizes, a restaurant, an art gallery and an events centre that caters for parties. But Gerald is quick to stress the importance of making winery tourism a regional experience.

“If a winery does not look at the whole regional tourism picture then they are likely to be very disappointed at the number of visitors to the cellar door. At Meadowbank we consider the winery cellar door up the road almost to be on our payroll. If they give the visitor a good experience it effectively makes our job even easier – on the other hand a bad experience up the road has a very detrimental effect on the yield of that visitor at our cellar door!

Regions should really champion their champions because that is the driver that will bring visitors to the region and then other cellar doors will benefit. Standing in splendid isolation is not the way to get visitors.”

Meadowbank Cellar Door

Summary

A successful cellar door operation generates a direct increase in business as well as strengthening the long-term affiliation between producer and customer.  Remember, the cellar door experience doesn’t stop when the customer leaves. Mailing lists, newsletters, wine clubs and websites are all extensions of the cellar door experience and have the potential to generate significant ongoing business, brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Acknowledgements

Winemakers Federation of Australia.