This chapter analyzes the landscape role in the promotion of wine and tourism of the five most emblematic Portuguese winegrowing regions. The use of landscape in promotional images strengthens the regional identity, becoming a value-added component for wine marketing and tourism destination. Both have great significance in enhancing the growth of winegrowing regions. The global economy and mechanization of viticulture operations tend to simplify and specialize land-use vine parcels, particularly in areas of sustainable large wine production, according to European Union rules. This research implemented an innovative and integrative approach that represents and focuses on the promotional features of producers, tourism, and their official bodies. Selected images were sorted into landscape, trademark, and tourism categories, and evaluated via Cohen's textual model, followed by a multiple correspondence factorial analysis. The results showed a hierarchy of categories and variables consistent with their expression in promotional features.
TopIntroduction
Vineyards and wines have a millenary history of adaptation and improvement, being one of the most promising assets of Mediterranean countries, both in environmental and economic terms. In the past twenty years, Europe has witnessed the growth of a new perspective on wine regions, representing a specialized area for specialized production and specialized tourism (Tempesta et al., 2010), which implies new opportunities for regional development as regards multifunctional rural management. According to Valduga (2007), the study of wine tourism in Europe - the process of conceiving wine, cellars, and landscapes as tourism products - started in Italy, in 1993, through the Wine Tourism Movement and the world event called Wine Day. Some authors place the beginning of this field of research in the 1910-decade (López-Guzman & Sánchez Cañizares, 2008). The aim of those studies was related with both, rural tourism and its contribution to rural areas economic diversification (Charvet, 1995), and the market segmentation and behavior of wine tourists (Getz, 2000; Hall, Sharples, Cambourne & Macionis, 2000). Therefore, the early 1990s are assumed as the begin of European wine tourism attending the actual integrative vision for wine regions development (López-Guzman & Sánchez Cañizares, 2008).
During the year of 1993 in France, the landscape was considered a visual expression of a technical, social, and economic project and was inscribed in law as an asset that needs to be managed and preserved (Ambroise, 2003). The recognition of the value of landscape for the development of wine regions is apparent in the fact that Le Val du Loir (France) obtained for the first time the category of World Heritage (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 1994). In 1998, during the International Symposium of Wine and Territory, the Urban Planning of the Wine Cities was presented. This was an important tool for the governance of Italian territories that consider vineyard landscapes relevant for the quality of their economic development and the quality of life, linking the useful with the beautiful (Pioli, 2010). By that time, many other wine regions in Europe had been classified as World Heritage, including two Portuguese wine regions: the Douro Valley (UNESCO, 2000), a demarcated region with over 250 years, and Pico Island, in the Azores (UNESCO, 2001). After Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, new markets, techniques, and perspectives on the wine business have emerged, focusing on wine quality, mechanization, and globalization. In the last decade, wine tourism has added further complexity to the wine business, mostly due to younger and/or more noteworthy traditional producers and companies. The high quality and market value of the wine industry has been attracting new investment in vines and reshaping the distribution of the wine region map of Portugal, taking into consideration the sub-regional, regional, and national scales (Figure 1).
Within the framework of the European Agricultural Policy, within the umbrella of multifunctional rural management, landscape constitutes a reliable complement to production, as stated in the European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe [COE], 2000). In 2003, the Fontevraud International Charter was signed in France by the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, the National Institute of Origin and Quality, the Val du Loire Mission, and the International Organization of Vine and Wine aiming to protect, improve, and manage vineyard landscapes in Europe. In fact, landscape can contribute to the wine regions’ development, since it combines heritage values, cultural practices, and memory. These references are particularly interesting in the construction of wine tourism experiences in rural areas, influencing visitors’ expectations and their search for new places or experiences thus stimulating ‘the tourist gaze’, usually ‘heavily shaped by tourism promoters’ (Schnell, 2011, p. 283).